Broken pledge
With student’s death in Ohio, criminal law is catching up to fraternity hazing
His fraternity brothers beat him with belts. They forced him to binge drink until he passed out, poured hot sauce on him and made him strip down to his underwear and play tackle football in a small room.
On the day Collin Wiant was buried in November 2018, his parents didn’t know any of this.
They didn’t know that as the 18-year-old freshman Sigma Pi pledge at Ohio University gasped for air the night he died, his fraternity brothers waited 10 minutes to call for help.
Kathleen and Wade Wiant knew only that their son’s body lay in the hearse ahead of them.
“Our son is gone. That won’t change,” Wade Wiant said. “But this predatory system that allows brutal hazing at colleges all over has to change.”
Collin Wiant is one of at least 80 college students
who died in incidents connected to Greek life in the past 15 years. In the span of a few weeks this fall, four people died in circumstances related to fraternities at San Diego State, Washington State, Penn State and Cornell. Others have suffered mental or emotional scars from hazing while those who abused them probably will never face significant consequences.
The Wiant case caught national attention last month when nine people were charged with felony crimes in connection with Collin’s hazing and death. The case is one of the largest criminal cases connected to hazing, experts said.
Among those indicted were Sigma Pi members who were with Wiant when he died.
Corbin Gustafson, 22, of Furlong, Pennsylvania, faces a charge of reckless homicide. Joshua Androsac, 20, of Lewis Center, Ohio, was the Sigma Pi member who allegedly bought the canisters of whip-its, and he faces a felony charge of permitting drug abuse. James Dylan Wanke, 25, of Athens, the store owner who allegedly sold the canister that Wiant used the night of his death, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, trafficking in intoxicants and distributing nitrous oxide.
“The significance of this investigation and the severity of these charges in the Wiant case is incredible,” said Hank Nuwer, a professor at Franklin College in Indiana, who wrote the book “Hazing: Destroying Young Lives.” “It will hopefully serve as the biggest warning to date for those who continue to engage in hazing.”
Wiant’s case was highlighted in a yearlong investigation into hazing on college campuses by The Columbus Dispatch. In response to the investigation, Gov. Mike DeWine called for Ohio to join 11 other states that made hazing a felony. Ohio University expelled the Sigma Pi fraternity from campus in April and conducted a sweeping investigation that led to the suspension of 15 fraternities.
In May, The Dispatch found that only five hazing charges had been filed in at least 25 years in the courts near Ohio’s largest universities. In October, prosecutors charged 18 former and current Miami University students with criminal charges in an incident in which a pledge was beaten with a spiked paddle.
“Having the snot beat out of them is not a rite of passage,” said Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser, whose office handles the Miami case. “There’s no place for it.”
The Wiants asked Ohio lawmakers, prosecutors and police chiefs to support Collin’s Law, a proposal that would increase penalties for hazing and make clearer what groups need to be held accountable.
The Wiants don’t understand how a high school honor student from Dublin, Ohio, who wanted to change the world died two months after enrolling at college.
They will never forget the scene outside St. Charles Preparatory School, Collin’s old school, the day of their son’s burial. Lining the route were hundreds of boys dressed in blue blazers, heads tucked, some wiping tears. Some made the sign of the cross while they honored or said goodbye to their friend and classmate.
A few of Collin’s fraternity brothers from the university in southeastern Ohio attended the service.
Those who pledged to protect him were left to ask themselves whether they did anything that contributed to him being in that hearse.
The pledge
Before pledging to the Sigma Pi fraternity at Ohio University, Wiant sent this text message to his girlfriend: “I’m gonna rush the hardest frat. They have the hardest hazing but imma do it.”
“Oh God,” Brinley Zieg, his girlfriend texted back. “Good luck.”
Wiant wanted the same brotherhood in college that he had experienced with his own brothers and his high school friends. Even before he started the pledging process to become a member of the Sigma Pi fraternity, he knew there would be a price.
And Wiant was willing to pay it.
The demands started with doing laundry for the fraternity brothers and making trips to the store to get food and cigarettes, a university investigation showed. He was summoned in the middle of the night to clean the bars and restaurants where members worked, causing him to miss classes. His grades suffered.
But he liked the 59 active Sigma Pi brothers, and they liked him – so much so that they made Wiant the pledge president and took him on their annual trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
It was there, Wiant confided to his brother, that fraternity brothers punched him and beat him with belts, leaving welts and bruises. He said there was binge drinking, cocaine and Adderall, a drug typically used to treat people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It all left him incoherent.
Wiant told his brother Aidan he was scared. He described his treatment by the brothers as torture and abuse. He cried.
He just had to make it through to December, he said. That’s when Wiant would become an active fraternity member.
The downward spiral
The morning after a homecoming party at the Sigma Pi house in October 2018, a freshman returned to her dorm room and found two used condoms.
Her clothes were scattered in odd places in the room, and on her phone were texts from a number she didn’t recognize.
The texts, obtained by The Dispatch from police records, were from Wiant.
“How did I meet you?” she asked.
“45 mill party,” Wiant responded, referring to the fraternity’s off-campus house.
“Did you walk me home?” she asked. “Yeah,” Wiant said.
“Did you have sex with me?” she asked.
“I am pretty sure,” Wiant replied.
Both had drunk what the fraternity brothers and most students call “jungle juice” – a concoction of fruit juices, vodka and rum that at some parties had been spiked with Xanax, a prescription drug, according to police records. Police couldn’t determine whether it was spiked that night.
After drinking her second cup, the young woman told police, she had no recollection of what happened. Wiant told police they had consensual sex.
She reported it to the police, who began an investigation.
Wiant’s world was crumbling.
He was missing classes. He had broken up with his girlfriend. He was drinking more and taking drugs.
Some of Wiant’s fraternity brothers stood by him, but after the sexual assault allegation, the Sigma Pi chapter president suspended Wiant from participating in formal pledge activities.
The regret
Wiant took the small canister filled with nitrous oxide, inhaled and fell backward onto a futon. His face drained of color, and he began to make noises that alarmed the three Sigma Pi fraternity brothers nearby. He soon was gasping for air.
“He doesn’t look good,” said Corbin Gustafson, according to a statement he gave to a university investigator.
Gustafson’s first call was to fraternity President Elijah Wahib. He asked him if he should call 911. Wahib told him to make the call. Gustafson waited nine minutes to make that call, according to the phone records obtained by The Dispatch from a source close to the investigation.
While they waited for help, Joshua Androsac, for the first time in his life, performed CPR on someone.
Androsac pressed down on Wiant’s chest over and over. Paramedics arrived within minutes at the unofficial, off-campus home of the Sigma Pi fraternity. It was too late to save him.
Wiant died at an Athens hospital shortly after 3 a.m. on Nov. 12, 2018.
Two hours later, Kathleen Wiant was awakened by a knock on the door of her home in Dublin, northwest of Columbus. There stood two police officers and the suburban Columbus department’s chaplain.
In that moment, she knew one of her children was dead.
The Dublin officers told her that her son was gone. They were consoling and compassionate, but they didn’t have the answers the family wanted.
In Athens, the Sigma Pi fraternity held an emergency meeting.
The members immediately made their pledges active members.
By the end of the meeting, one thing was made clear by the leaders of Sigma Pi: Wiant’s death was his own fault, not Sigma Pi’s.
The Sigma Pi fraternity brothers declined to talk with The Dispatch for this story.
The code of silence
Some of the Sigma Pi fraternity members stood in line at Wiant’s funeral and waited to offer sympathy to his parents.
The brothers had to ask permission from Ohio University to attend the service after officials at the college suspended the fraternity soon after Wiant’s death.
They said little to Wade and Kathleen Wiant, except to offer respectful condolences for the loss of their son. No one said a word to the Wiants about hazing. The men of Sigma Pi had known Collin Wiant for only three months, but they liked his electric smile, big heart and generosity. They made him the pledge class president.
But when the fate of their fraternity was at stake, some of the brothers turned on Wiant.
The narrative that developed was that Wiant was drunk the night he died. He must have been high on drugs. He had been accused of sexual assault and probably wouldn’t have been allowed to return to the fraternity.
He was to blame for the whole mess.
“I didn’t kill this kid,” said Charlie Winovic, according to a school investigator who took his statement. “None of the people in my house killed this kid, and I am mad at the school. Collin is a big boy, and he made multiple bad decisions.”
The coroner’s report showed that Wiant wasn’t drunk that night – his blood alcohol content was 0.06%. He didn’t have drugs in his system, except a small trace of marijuana. The sexual assault investigation was dismissed after Wiant’s death.
Aidan, Collin’s younger brother, blamed himself for Collin’s death and for not sharing his confession about the hazing with their parents.
When he finally told them what he knew, months after Collin’s death, they embraced their youngest son and his guilt started to fade.
Now it was time to honor the son they couldn’t bring back by doing whatever they could to combat hazing.
The reckoning
The Sigma Pi brothers went before an Ohio University disciplinary board to face 11 violations of the student code of conduct – allegations that they used hazing, hazing with brutality and harmful behavior.
One by one they recanted, disputed or said they forgot what they had told investigators on the Athens campus months earlier, according to audio transcripts of the hearing provided to The Dispatch by a source close to the investigation.
Hazing? There was no hazing. No one was punched or beaten with belts.
They said the investigator asked leading questions and put words in their mouths.
Yeah, there was some heavy drinking and tackle football in boxers, but that was just “boys being boys.”
One admitted that he had talked with his Sigma Pi brothers about what he might say to the disciplinary board.
They sounded frustrated and angry about having to answer questions about Wiant’s death.
Ohio University officials had seen and heard enough.
They expelled the Sigma Pi fraternity.
That decision would be far from the end for Kathleen and Wade Wiant and their four other children.
Aidan has been through intense therapy to deal with the loss of his brother.
Kathleen Wiant searched online for the best way to respond when someone asks how many children you have after one of your children dies.
Wade Wiant remains angry.
Angry that it took Ohio University almost a year after Collin died to crack down on alleged hazing around campus.
Angry that his son lay there gasping for air while others wondered if they should call for help.
Angry that nothing can bring his son back.
“Our son is gone. That won’t change. But this predatory system that allows brutal hazing at colleges all over has to change.” Wade Wiant Collin Wiant’s father