Indiana University Placed Beta Theta Pi on Cease and Desist for Hazing — What This Means for Your Family
If your child called you from a dorm room or a chapter house in Bloomington and told you what happened to them — or if you found out because Indiana University Police sent you a letter, or because your son or daughter came home different, quieter, more afraid than the person you raised — you are reading this at a moment where the decisions you make in the next few days will matter more than any you have made in a long time. We are Attorney911, and we build cases against fraternities that haze and the national organizations that let them do it. Right now, the fraternity is already working to control the narrative, the witnesses are being told to stay quiet, and the digital messages that prove what happened are being deleted on apps designed to make evidence disappear. That is the clock we are racing. Everything on this page is here to protect your family before that clock runs out.
Here is what happened, as the public record shows: on December 9, 2025, Indiana University placed the Pi Chapter of Beta Theta Pi on an immediate cease and desist order after allegations that hazing occurred on or about December 1, 2025. The IU Police Department received the report from the Office of Student Life on December 5 and referred it to university officials for review. What makes this case different from an isolated incident — what makes it a case of institutional failure, not just one bad night — is that Beta Theta Pi was already operating under a disciplinary probation that began April 20, 2025, and was not scheduled to end until February 15, 2026. That probation was imposed for prior hazing, alcohol violations, sexual harassment, and non-compliance with the Office of Sorority and Fraternity Life. Before that, the chapter had been suspended from social activities from September 16 to October 14 for “endangering others.” The fraternity was on probation for endangering students when it allegedly endangered students again.
This is the seventh student organization at Indiana University placed on cease and desist during the current academic semester. In November, the university went further and halted all social events for the 27 fraternities in IU’s Interfraternity Council for 16 days. Vice Chancellor for Student Life Lamar Hylton wrote that the ban came in response to multiple alleged incidents of hazing, and stated:
“The severity of these restrictions reflects the seriousness of the misconduct allegations we have received.”
That sentence, written by the university’s own administrator, is one of the most important pieces of evidence in your case. It is the university itself saying, in writing, that the problem was not one fraternity — it was systemic. And it tells you something about what a jury in Monroe County will hear when this case is put in front of them: the danger was known, it was documented, and it was serious enough to shut down every fraternity on campus.
We are a trial firm that takes Indiana cases, and we currently lead an active hazing lawsuit — a case filed in Harris County, Texas, in November 2025, seeking more than $10 million in damages against a fraternity and university for the same kind of conduct you are reading about right now. The medicine does not change because the campus is in Bloomington instead of Houston. The corporate-accountability fight — piercing the shell between the local chapter and the national organization that collected dues while the chapter ran wild — is the same fight. The evidence-clock problem — Snapchat messages vanishing, GroupMe threads being cleared, Discord servers being wiped — is the same problem. What changes is the law that governs your state and the courthouse where your case will be heard. That is what this page is built to give you.
Can I Sue a Fraternity for Hazing in Indiana?
Yes — and the answer is more layered than most people expect. You can sue the local chapter, the national fraternity, the individual officers and members who participated, and in some circumstances Indiana University itself. Each is a different defendant with a different theory of liability and a different source of money behind it. A lawyer who only thinks about the chapter is leaving the real recovery on the table.
Indiana has a statute that criminalizes hazing. The doctrine is straightforward: Indiana law treats hazing as a criminal act, and that criminal statute establishes a standard of care that student organizations must meet. When a fraternity violates that standard and someone is harmed, the violation becomes the spine of a civil negligence claim — what the law calls negligence per se. That means the jury can be told the fraternity broke a law written to protect students, and the violation itself is evidence of negligence.
Beyond the anti-hazing statute, Indiana follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51 percent bar. In plain English: your student can recover damages as long as they were not more than 50 percent at fault. The fraternity’s lawyers will try to pin fault on the pledge — “he agreed to it,” “she could have walked away,” “he was drinking voluntarily.” Every percentage point of fault they can shift onto your child is money off the recovery. That is why the defense works so hard to manufacture the narrative that the pledge “wanted” to be there. Indiana law says a pledge’s own share of fault reduces, but does not erase, their recovery — unless the defense can push that share past 50 percent. We build cases designed to keep that number as close to zero as the facts allow.
Indiana does not impose a statutory cap on compensatory damages in general personal injury cases. That matters enormously in hazing cases, where the non-economic damages — the psychological trauma, the humiliation, the PTSD, the betrayal of trust — are often the largest part of the harm. A state that caps non-economic damages would limit what a family can recover for those human losses. Indiana does not, and that is an advantage we use.
Punitive damages are available in Indiana, and they are particularly viable here. Indiana’s punitive damages statute allows an award of the greater of $50,000 or three times the amount of compensatory damages, with 75 percent of the punitive award going to the state’s violent crime victims compensation fund. The fraternity’s status as a repeat offender — on active probation for prior hazing, alcohol violations, and sexual harassment when the new hazing allegedly occurred — is exactly the kind of “willful and wanton” disregard for student safety that punitive damages exist to punish.
Indiana’s Anti-Hazing Law: The Standard the Fraternity Broke
Indiana criminalizes hazing through its criminal code. The statute establishes that hazing — defined as forcing or coercing a person into an act that creates a substantial risk of bodily injury as a condition of joining or maintaining membership in an organization — is a criminal act. This is not a campus conduct code violation. It is a law passed by the state legislature, and a violation of it establishes a standard of care that a jury can measure the fraternity against.
Here is how this works in a civil case: when a fraternity hazes a pledge, it has violated a criminal statute designed to protect students from exactly the harm that followed. In most jurisdictions, a violation of a criminal statute that causes the type of harm the statute was designed to prevent is admissible as evidence of negligence — and in many states, it constitutes negligence per se, meaning the violation itself establishes the breach of duty. The jury does not have to decide whether the fraternity’s conduct was “unreasonable.” The legislature already decided that for them.
The defense will argue that hazing is a “tradition” or that the pledge “consented.” Neither argument survives the statute. Indiana law does not recognize consent as a defense to criminal hazing — a person cannot consent to having their safety criminalized away. The whole point of an anti-hazing statute is that pledges, by definition, are in a position of coercion. They want to belong. They are told this is what it takes. The power imbalance is what makes the law necessary, and the law accounts for it by removing consent as a shield.
Beyond the criminal statute, the case is governed by Indiana University’s Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct, which prohibits hazing in terms the fraternity explicitly agreed to follow when it registered as a student organization. The Fraternal Information and Programming Group (FIPG) risk management guidelines — the industry-standard safety rules that most national fraternities adopt as their own internal policy — also prohibit hazing, alcohol provision to minors, and the kind of conduct that leads to these cases. When a national fraternity adopts FIPG guidelines, those guidelines become the organization’s own standard of care. A chapter that violates them has violated its own national’s rules, and the national’s failure to enforce them is negligent supervision.
Federally, the Clery Act requires universities to report crimes occurring on campus, including hazing incidents that result in criminal charges. That reporting requirement is why the university’s own records — the incident reports, the investigative files, the findings of fact — exist and can be demanded in litigation. Those records are the university’s own contemporaneous account of what happened, created by people with no motive to help your case, which is exactly what makes them so powerful.
Who Is Liable When a Fraternity Hazes: The Defendant Stack
A hazing case is almost never one defendant. It is a stack — and the stack matters because each layer has a different source of money, a different insurance policy, and a different argument for why it should not have to pay. Naming only the local chapter is the most common mistake, and it is the one the fraternity’s lawyers are counting on you to make.
The local chapter (Beta Theta Pi, Pi Chapter). This is the entity that directly hazed your child. The chapter is usually organized as a local nonprofit corporation or an unincorporated association — a thin entity that may own the chapter house (or lease it from a house corporation) and may carry its own liability insurance through a fraternal risk management pool. The chapter is directly liable for the acts of its members during hazing activities. But the chapter is also the entity most likely to be judgment-proof — a local LLC with few assets and a insurance policy that may be modest compared to the harm.
The national fraternity (Beta Theta Pi National). This is where the real money and the real accountability live. The national organization chartered the local chapter, collects dues from every member, sets the risk management policies the chapter must follow, and has the power to suspend or revoke the chapter’s charter. Most importantly, the national had notice of the Pi Chapter’s propensity for misconduct — the chapter was on documented probation for hazing, alcohol violations, sexual harassment, and non-compliance. The national organization either knew or should have known that this chapter was a risk, and it continued to collect dues and allow the chapter to operate rather than pulling the charter. That is negligent supervision and negligent retention. The national’s insurance tower — typically a large commercial general liability policy through a fraternal risk management pool — is where the real recovery lives in a serious hazing case.
Chapter officers and advisors. The president, pledge educator (often called the “new member educator” after hazing deaths made the old title toxic), risk management chair, and chapter advisors who orchestrated, participated in, or permitted the hazing can be individually liable. These individuals may have personal coverage through their families’ homeowners or umbrella policies, though those policies frequently contain exclusions for intentional acts — which is the first coverage fight in any hazing case.
Indiana University (potential). The university is protected by sovereign immunity in many respects, but liability may attach if IU failed to enforce its own safety mandates for a known at-risk organization. The chapter was on probation — IU knew it was dangerous. IU had already suspended it once for “endangering others.” The question is whether the university took adequate steps to monitor the chapter during its probation and whether its response was sufficient given the documented pattern. Under the Indiana Tort Claims Act, a formal notice of claim must be filed within 180 days of the incident. That is a hard deadline, and missing it can extinguish any claim against the university. This is one of the clocks we track from the day you call.
The defense’s favorite move is the shell game: the national points at the chapter and says “they are an independent affiliate, we just license the name.” The chapter points at the national and says “they set the policies, they should have enforced them.” The individual members point at each other and at the institution. Our job is to name every layer, discover the control facts that connect them, and make each defendant answer for the harm that flowed from the system it built.
The Evidence Is Vanishing Right Now: What to Preserve
If there is one section of this page you read carefully, this is it. Hazing cases are won and lost on digital evidence, and digital evidence in a fraternity case has a shorter lifespan than almost any other case type we handle. The messages that planned the hazing, the photos that documented it, the group chats where members coordinated the cover-up — these are all sitting on platforms designed to make them disappear.
GroupMe, Snapchat, and Discord logs — EXTREME urgency. These are the platforms where hazing is planned and where the aftermath is managed. GroupMe threads coordinate “pledge events” and assignments. Snapchat photos and videos document the hazing itself — and Snapchat’s design makes deletion the default, not the exception. Messages vanish after viewing, stories expire in 24 hours, and even saved messages can be cleared with two taps. Discord servers, where many fraternities run their internal communications, can have entire channels wiped in seconds. Every one of these platforms allows users to delete evidence lawfully — there is no federal retention requirement for personal communications. The preservation letter we send the day you call is the only thing that converts “deleted” into “destroyed after notice,” and destruction after notice is spoliation — a separate basis for sanctions, adverse-inference instructions, and in some cases a separate claim.
IUPD and IU Office of Student Life investigative files — HIGH urgency. The university is building its own file right now. That file contains witness statements, the reporting party’s account, the university’s findings of fact, and potentially the results of any interim measures. These records are created by people with no motive to help your case — university investigators, campus police, student-conduct administrators — which is exactly what makes them so credible. But university records are subject to routine retention schedules and can be purged on those schedules. A preservation demand to the university’s general counsel freezes those files. Under the Indiana Tort Claims Act, if the university’s role is part of the case, the 180-day notice of claim clock is also running — and that clock is unforgiving.
Fraternity pledge manuals, new-member education materials, and ritual books — MEDIUM urgency. These documents establish the “standard operating procedure” for the chapter — what the national says should happen during the new-member process versus what actually happened. The gap between the national’s written policies and the chapter’s actual practices is the proof that the national failed to supervise. These documents are often hidden or destroyed once a cease and desist is issued, because they contain exactly the kind of internal admissions that make a negligent-supervision claim against the national viable.
Chapter financial records — MEDIUM urgency. Bank statements, Venmo logs, and receipts can prove the purchase of alcohol or hazing-related supplies using chapter funds. If the chapter treasury paid for the keg at the pledge event, that financial record connects the organization itself — not just individual members — to the conduct. These records can also show whether the national was receiving dues while the chapter was on probation, which supports the argument that the national profited from a chapter it knew was dangerous.
Chapter house security cameras and door-access logs — HIGH urgency. If the chapter house has cameras or key-card entry, the footage and logs from the night of the hazing can show who was present, when they arrived, when they left, and whether anyone was carried out. Camera systems overwrite on short cycles — often 30 days or less. This evidence must be preserved immediately.
The preservation letter is the first thing that goes out — not after we review the file, not after we decide whether to take the case, but the day you call. A preservation letter to the chapter president, the national fraternity’s risk management office, the university’s general counsel, and each third-party platform (if applicable) puts every potential defendant on notice that evidence in their control is relevant to litigation. After that letter, any deletion becomes destruction of evidence, and the law treats that differently. The jury can be told that the fraternity destroyed evidence after being told to preserve it — and they can be instructed to assume the destroyed evidence would have been unfavorable to the fraternity. That adverse-inference instruction is one of the most powerful tools in a trial lawyer’s arsenal, and it is only available if the preservation letter went out before the evidence was deleted.
What Hazing Does to a Student: The Injuries We See
Hazing injuries are not always the ones that show up on an X-ray. The most devastating harm is often invisible — and that is exactly what the defense exploits. The fraternity’s lawyers will point to a normal CT scan, an absence of broken bones, and a student who “seemed fine” at the hospital, and they will argue the harm is exaggerated. The medicine says otherwise.
Psychological trauma is the primary injury in most hazing cases. What happens to a pledge during hazing — the humiliation, the physical degradation, the sleep deprivation, the forced consumption, the powerlessness — produces the same psychological injury that combat and assault produce. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate diagnostic criteria, and a survivor has to meet every one of them: the event itself, the nightmares, the avoidance of reminders, the negative changes in mood and cognition, the hyperarousal, the duration exceeding one month, and the functional impairment that wrecks their ability to go to class, be close to anyone, or live the life they had before. This is not a “bad experience.” It is a recognized psychiatric injury with a diagnostic protocol, validated clinical instruments, and a treatment literature.
Alcohol-related harm. When hazing involves forced or coerced consumption of alcohol — and it almost always does — the injury can include acute alcohol poisoning, which is a medical emergency that can kill or cause permanent brain damage from hypoxia. A blood alcohol level high enough to cause unconsciousness is high enough to cause aspiration, respiratory depression, and death. Pledges who “pass out” during hazing are not sleeping — they are at risk of dying, and the fraternity members who left them on a floor are the ones who were responsible.
Physical injuries. Beatings, “pledge line” exhaustion exercises, exposure to cold or heat, blindfolded obstacle courses, and forced calisthenics produce fractures, concussions, rhabdomyolysis (muscle breakdown that can cause kidney failure), and hypothermia. A concussion during hazing is a traumatic brain injury — and the medical literature on mild TBI is clear: a normal CT scan does not rule out a brain injury. Diffuse axonal injury, the microscopic tearing of nerve fibers caused by rotational forces, is invisible on standard imaging but can produce permanent cognitive deficits.
Sexual assault and sexual harassment. This fraternity was on probation for sexual harassment when the new hazing allegedly occurred. The combination of alcohol, coercion, power imbalance, and group dynamics that defines hazing is also the exact set of conditions that facilitates sexual assault. If the hazing involved any sexual element — forced stripping, sexualized “games,” groping, or worse — the injuries include the full spectrum of sexual-assault trauma, which the medical literature identifies as the single most PTSD-generating event a person can experience.
The proof problem the defense exploits. Because so much of the harm in a hazing case is psychological, the defense will argue it is subjective, unmeasurable, or pre-existing. The counter is the same one used in every invisible-injury case: the diagnosis is made through validated clinical instruments (structured interviews, standardized symptom checklists), the injury is documented through contemporaneous mental-health records (the first therapy intake, the first crisis-center visit, the first prescription), and the before-and-after is proven through the testimony of people who knew the student before the hazing and saw the change. The defense says “there is no objective evidence.” The records say otherwise — if they are preserved.
What a Hazing Case Is Worth in Indiana
We cannot tell you what your case is worth without reviewing the specific facts, and any lawyer who does is not telling you the truth. What we can tell you is the framework — the categories of damages Indiana law allows, the range that cases of this type have historically fallen into, and the specific facts that push a case toward the top or the bottom of that range.
Economic damages are the provable money losses: emergency room bills, hospitalization costs, ongoing psychological counseling (which can run for years), psychiatric medication costs, lost tuition if the student withdraws, the cost of transferring to another school, and lost earning capacity if the trauma prevents the student from completing their education or functioning in the workforce. Every dollar of these must be documented through bills, receipts, and expert testimony.
Non-economic damages are the human losses: pain and suffering, emotional distress, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life, and the loss of the college experience your child was supposed to have. In a hazing case, these are often the largest category — because the harm is primarily psychological, and the psychological harm is profound. Indiana does not cap these damages, which means the jury can award what the harm is actually worth.
Punitive damages are available in Indiana and are highly viable in this case. The fraternity’s documented history — on probation for hazing, alcohol, sexual harassment, and non-compliance when the new hazing allegedly occurred — is textbook evidence of willful and wanton disregard for student safety. Indiana’s punitive damages statute allows an award of the greater of $50,000 or three times the compensatory damages, with 75 percent going to the state’s violent crime victims compensation fund. Even with that diversion, the remaining 25 percent and the punitive finding itself — a jury declaring that the fraternity’s conduct was beyond negligence — are powerful.
The case value range we work with for this type of case runs from approximately $150,000 at the floor — a case involving psychological trauma or minor physical injury without permanent disability — to $2,500,000 or more at the ceiling, where the fraternity’s status as a repeat offender on probation triggers substantial punitive damages and the hazing involved egregious physical abuse, alcohol poisoning requiring hospitalization, or sexual assault. Where your case falls in that range depends on the severity of the harm, the strength of the evidence, and the quality of the proof preserved before it was destroyed.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every figure we discuss is a framework, not a promise — and any lawyer who promises you a number before reviewing the evidence is not someone you want standing next to you in a Monroe County courtroom.
The Fraternity’s Defense Playbook — and How We Counter It
The fraternity has lawyers, and those lawyers have a playbook they have run hundreds of times. Knowing the plays before they run is how you keep the upper hand. Here are the moves we expect and the counters we prepare.
Play 1: “It was tradition, not hazing.” The defense will frame the conduct as “team-building” or “tradition” — harmless initiation rituals that every fraternity does. The counter is Indiana’s anti-hazing statute, which does not care what the fraternity calls it. The law defines hazing by the conduct and the risk, not by the label. A tradition that creates a substantial risk of bodily injury is hazing under the statute, regardless of how many years the chapter has been doing it.
Play 2: “The pledge consented.” The defense will argue your child voluntarily participated. They will mine social media for photos of your child smiling at a fraternity event, looking like they were having fun. The counter is that consent is not a defense to criminal hazing under Indiana law — a person cannot consent to having their safety criminalized away. The power imbalance between a pledge and a chapter of older members, combined with the explicit or implicit threat that refusing means rejection, means the “consent” the defense describes was coerced. We also counter the social-media mining by explaining to the jury what the research on tonic immobility shows: most people who are being abused freeze, and a smile in a photo does not mean the person was not terrified.
Play 3: “These were rogue actors, not the organization.” The defense will blame individual members and argue the chapter as an institution did not authorize the conduct. The counter is the fraternity’s own documented history. The chapter was on probation for prior hazing. The national knew. The officers either directed the conduct or failed to prevent it. When the same organization hazes repeatedly while on probation for hazing, the conduct is not rogue — it is the organization’s pattern, and the organization is liable.
Play 4: “The national is just a licensor.” The national fraternity will argue it merely licenses its name to an independent local affiliate and has no operational control. The counter is discovery: the franchise agreement, the national’s risk management policies, the dues collection records, the national’s inspection and compliance records, and the national’s own internal files on the Pi Chapter’s probation. If the national set the policies, collected the money, and had the power to pull the charter, it had the duty to supervise — and its failure to do so while on notice of the chapter’s pattern is negligent supervision.
Play 5: “The injury is exaggerated.” The defense will point to a normal scan, a “mild” presentation, or a student who “seemed fine” afterward. The counter is the medical literature on invisible injuries — PTSD is a formal diagnosis with validated instruments, mild TBI can have a perfectly normal CT, and the proof is in the clinical record built from day one. We bring treating clinicians, neuropsychologists, and forensic psychiatrists who can explain to a jury what the injury is and why it is real.
Play 6: Delay and silence. The defense will drag out discovery, file motions to dismiss, and try to run the clock on the evidence. The counter is the preservation letter sent on day one, the spoliation argument filed when evidence is missing, and the motion to compel filed when discovery is obstructed. Every day the defense delays is a day we use to build the record.
How We Build a Hazing Case From Day One
Here is what the first weeks and months of a real hazing case look like — not a summary, but the actual walk.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out the day you call — to the chapter president, the national fraternity’s risk management office, the university’s general counsel, and any third-party platforms. That letter names every category of evidence: GroupMe and Snapchat messages, Discord server logs, chapter house surveillance footage, door-access logs, pledge education materials, financial records, the university’s investigative file, IUPD’s report, and the national’s internal file on the Pi Chapter. The letter converts routine deletion into sanctionable destruction.
Weeks one through four. We pull the public record: the university’s cease and desist order, the Office of Student Life’s disciplinary file (which may be obtainable through a public-records request or through discovery), IUPD’s incident report, any prior complaints against the chapter, and the national fraternity’s public statements and risk management policies. We pull the chapter’s corporate registration from the Indiana Secretary of State to identify the entity, its officers, and its registered agent. We pull the national fraternity’s tax returns and annual reports, which can show how much money it collected from the Pi Chapter while the chapter was on probation.
Weeks four through twelve. If a lawsuit is filed, discovery begins. We serve written interrogatories demanding the chapter’s internal communications, the national’s compliance file on the Pi Chapter, the fraternity’s insurance policies, the individual officers’ text messages, and the university’s complete investigative file. We take depositions — the chapter president, the pledge educator, the risk management chair, the chapter advisor, and the national’s risk management director. Under oath, in a room where silence is not an option, the witnesses tell the truth that GroupMe deleted.
Months three through twelve. We retain experts: a forensic psychologist to evaluate your child and document the PTSD, a life-care planner to project the cost of future treatment, a forensic economist to calculate lost earning capacity, and if physical injury is involved, the appropriate medical specialists. We build the damages model — not a number pulled from the air, but a documented projection of every cost category across your child’s lifetime, reduced to present value.
Trial. If the case does not settle — and many do, because the fraternity’s insurance carrier does not want a repeat-offender hazing case in front of a jury — we try it. In Monroe County, the jury will be twelve people from the community. Some will be parents of college-aged children. Those jurors understand what it means to send a child to a university and trust that the institution and the organizations it hosts will not harm them. The betrayal of that trust is the story we tell, and the evidence we preserved on day one is what proves it.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
Hour 1 through 24: Medical first. If your child has any physical symptoms — a head injury, alcohol-related symptoms, injuries from physical contact — get them to an emergency room immediately. Do not wait. The medical record created in the first hours is the most objective evidence of harm that will exist in the case. If the injury is primarily psychological — and most hazing injuries are — get your child to a mental health professional as soon as possible. The first therapy intake, the first crisis-center visit, the first clinical note documenting the symptoms are the records that prove the injury was real and was caused by the hazing. Delay between the event and the first clinical visit is the gap the defense will mine for “it wasn’t that bad” arguments.
Hours 24 through 48: Document everything. Before anything else is deleted, your child should screenshot every relevant communication — GroupMe threads, Snapchat conversations, text messages, Instagram DMs, Discord channels. Save them to a separate device. Do not confront the fraternity members, do not respond to messages from them, and do not let your child “talk it out” with the people who hazed them. Those conversations are being recorded, and anything said will be used against your child. If your child has physical evidence — photographs of injuries, clothing, any objects from the hazing — preserve them in their current condition and do not alter or clean anything.
Hours 48 through 72: Contact a lawyer. This is when the preservation letter goes out. Every hour that passes before the letter is sent is an hour the fraternity has to delete evidence. The letter must name every category of evidence and every custodian — the chapter, the national, the university, and the platforms. If the university’s role is part of the case, the 180-day Indiana Tort Claims Act notice clock has started, and that is a hard deadline that cannot be extended. We track that clock from the day you call.
Do not post on social media. Not your child, and not you. The defense will mine every public post for evidence that the student was “fine” or “happy” after the hazing. A photo of your child smiling at Thanksgiving, posted three weeks after the hazing, will be presented to the jury as proof the injury was not serious. Do not give them that evidence.
Do not sign anything. The fraternity, its insurance carrier, or the university may contact you with a “resolution” or a “release.” Do not sign it. Do not agree to anything. Do not give a recorded statement. Everything you say to the other side’s insurance adjuster will be transcribed, taken out of context, and used to reduce or eliminate your recovery.
Indiana University’s Role and the 180-Day Clock
Indiana University is a state institution, which means any claim against it is governed by the Indiana Tort Claims Act. The ITCA requires that a formal notice of claim be filed with the university within 180 days of the incident. That is not six months of leisurely consideration — it is a hard jurisdictional deadline, and missing it can extinguish any claim against the university entirely.
Whether the university should be part of your case depends on the facts. IU knew this chapter was dangerous — it had placed the chapter on probation and had previously suspended it for “endangering others.” The university had banned all 27 IFC fraternities from social events in November in response to “multiple alleged incidents of hazing.” The question is whether the university’s monitoring of the chapter during its probation was adequate, whether it enforced the terms of the probation, and whether it took reasonable steps to protect students from a chapter it knew was a documented risk.
The university’s own records — the probation file, the prior suspension, the cease and desist order, the investigative findings — are the evidence of what IU knew and when. Those records are also subject to the Indiana Access to Public Records Act and to discovery in litigation. The 180-day clock is the reason we evaluate the university’s role in the case immediately, not after the chapter and national claims are resolved. If the university is a defendant, the notice has to go out within six months of December 1, 2025 — and that clock does not stop because you are still deciding whether to hire a lawyer.
Why This Firm Fights Hazing Cases
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes cases in Indiana, working with local counsel where required, and we currently lead an active hazing lawsuit seeking more than $10 million in damages against a fraternity and university. That case — filed in November 2025 — is the same kind of fight this one is: a student harmed by a fraternity’s conduct, an institution that should have done more, and a national organization that collected dues while its chapter ran a process it knew was dangerous. The transfer from that case to this one is direct: the medicine, the corporate-accountability fight, the evidence-clock problem, and the damages model do not change because the campus is in a different state. What changes is the governing law, and that is what this page is built to give you.
Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before he was a lawyer, he was a journalist — which means he learned to find the story the evidence tells, not the story the other side wants told. He is the managing partner of this firm and the lead counsel on our active hazing litigation. He does not take a case to settle it; he takes a case to build it, and if the other side will not pay what it is worth, to try it.
Lupe Peña is a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years inside a national defense firm — in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the fraternity’s insurance carrier will set its reserve in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, and how the quick settlement check arrives before the medical results do. He sat on the other side of that table. Now he sits on yours. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — we serve your family fully in the language you pray in.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial, because a trial is a different level of work and risk. The first consultation is free. We have a 24/7 live staff — not an answering service, but people who can take your call at 2 a.m. and start the preservation process the same night. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. Contact us any hour.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a fraternity for hazing in Indiana?
Yes. You can sue the local chapter, the national fraternity, the individual officers and members who participated, and in some circumstances Indiana University. Each is a different defendant with a different source of insurance and a different theory of liability. Indiana’s anti-hazing statute provides a strong basis for civil liability, and the fraternity’s documented history of prior violations makes the case against the national organization particularly strong.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Indiana?
Indiana’s statute of limitations for personal injury cases applies to hazing claims, and if Indiana University is a defendant, the Indiana Tort Claims Act requires a formal notice of claim within 180 days of the incident. The 180-day clock is a hard deadline that cannot be extended. Even if the university is not a defendant, the general personal injury statute of limitations is running, and the evidence is dying on a much shorter clock — digital communications can be deleted in days. The safest move is to contact a lawyer immediately, not after the deadline passes.
What if my child “consented” to the hazing?
Consent is not a defense to hazing under Indiana’s anti-hazing statute. The entire purpose of an anti-hazing law is that pledges, by definition, are in a position of coercion — they want to belong, and the fraternity uses that desire to extract compliance. The law recognizes this power imbalance and removes consent as a shield. The fraternity’s lawyers will still try to argue it, and they will mine social media for evidence that your child “wanted” to be there, but the statute and the power dynamics answer the argument.
What evidence do I need to preserve?
Everything — but especially digital communications. GroupMe threads, Snapchat messages and photos, Discord server logs, text messages, and Instagram DMs are the most important and the most fragile. These platforms are designed to make evidence disappear. Screenshot everything immediately, save it to a separate device, and do not delete anything. The chapter house surveillance footage, door-access logs, the university’s investigative file, and the fraternity’s pledge education materials are also critical. A preservation letter from a lawyer sent the day you call freezes these records and converts deletion into sanctionable destruction.
How much is a hazing case worth?
The value depends on the severity of the harm, the strength of the evidence, and the quality of the proof preserved. The framework runs from approximately $150,000 for cases involving psychological trauma or minor physical injury to $2,500,000 or more where the fraternity’s repeat-offender status triggers substantial punitive damages and the hazing involved egregious physical abuse, alcohol poisoning, or sexual assault. Indiana does not cap compensatory damages, and punitive damages are available — particularly here, where the fraternity was already on probation for hazing when the new hazing allegedly occurred. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Can the national fraternity be held responsible for what the local chapter did?
Yes — if the national knew or should have known about the chapter’s conduct and failed to act. The national fraternity chartered the chapter, collects dues, sets risk management policies, and has the power to revoke the charter. When a chapter is on documented probation for hazing and commits hazing again while on probation, the national had notice of the risk and continued to allow the chapter to operate. That is negligent supervision and negligent retention, and the national’s insurance tower — typically through a fraternal risk management pool — is where the real recovery lives in a serious case.
What if my child was drinking during the hazing?
The fraternity’s lawyers will try to use your child’s alcohol consumption against them — arguing they assumed the risk or were comparatively at fault. Indiana’s modified comparative negligence rule means your child’s own fault reduces, but does not eliminate, their recovery, unless the fault exceeds 50 percent. But a pledge who is pressured or coerced into drinking by a chapter that controls their membership status is not “voluntarily” consuming alcohol in the way the defense wants the jury to believe. The anti-hazing statute and the power dynamics answer the comparative-fault argument, and the fraternity’s provision of alcohol to a minor is itself a violation of both Indiana law and the fraternity’s own FIPG risk management guidelines.
Should I let the university handle it through their conduct process?
The university’s conduct process and your legal claim are completely separate tracks. The university can suspend or expel the fraternity, but it cannot compensate your child for the harm — the medical bills, the counseling costs, the lost semester, the psychological trauma. A university conduct finding can actually be useful evidence in your civil case, because it is the institution’s own determination that hazing occurred. But relying on the conduct process alone, without pursuing a civil claim, means walking away from the compensation your family is entitled to under Indiana law. The two tracks can run simultaneously, and we can coordinate with the university process while building the legal case.
What if the hazing happened weeks or months ago?
The statute of limitations has likely not expired, and the Indiana Tort Claims Act’s 180-day clock may still be running if the university is a defendant. But the evidence problem is acute — the longer you wait, the more digital evidence has been deleted, the more witnesses’ memories have faded, and the more the fraternity has had time to coordinate its story. The preservation letter is still worth sending — some records may survive on backup servers or in the university’s files — but every day of delay is a day the defense uses. Contact a lawyer as soon as possible, even if the incident was weeks or months ago.
How do I pay for a lawyer?
We work on contingency. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We front the costs of the case — the filing fees, the expert witness fees, the deposition costs — and those costs are repaid from the recovery. You do not write a check to us at any point in the process. If we do not recover money for your family, you owe us nothing. That is the structure, and it is the only structure that makes sense for a family that is already dealing with medical bills and a disrupted life.
Will my child have to testify?
If the case goes to trial, your child will likely testify about what happened to them. We prepare every client for deposition and trial testimony — not by coaching them to say specific things, but by making sure they are ready to tell their story clearly and to withstand the defense’s cross-examination. Most hazing cases settle before trial, and many settle before a lawsuit is even filed, because the fraternity’s insurance carrier does not want a repeat-offender hazing case in front of a jury. But we build every case as if it will be tried, because that is what forces the other side to pay what it is worth.
Is what happened to my child actually hazing, or was it just “rough” initiation?
If the conduct created a substantial risk of bodily injury as a condition of joining or maintaining membership in the organization, it is hazing under Indiana law — regardless of what the fraternity calls it. “Tradition” is not a defense. “We’ve always done it this way” is not a defense. “Everyone goes through it” is not a defense. The law defines hazing by the conduct and the risk, not by the label the fraternity puts on it. If your child was forced or coerced into anything that put them at risk of harm as a condition of membership, it was hazing, and the law protects them.
If your child was harmed at Beta Theta Pi or any fraternity at Indiana University — or at any campus in Indiana — call us. The consultation is free, and the call is answered 24 hours a day by live staff, not a machine. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The evidence is dying. The 180-day clock against the university is running. Your child is not at fault, and “tradition” is never a defense for abuse. 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español. We don’t get paid unless we win your case.