Pullman Fraternity Hazing: WSU Sigma Chi Sanctioned — Your Student’s Rights Under Washington’s Sam’s Law
You just read that Sigma Chi lost its recognition at Washington State University for a year. Maybe your son or daughter was a pledge this past fall. Maybe they came home different — quieter, jumpy, ashamed of something they won’t talk about. Maybe you drove them to Pullman Regional Hospital at 3 a.m. for alcohol poisoning and were told it was “just college.” Maybe you are the student, reading this on your phone in a dorm room on College Hill, and you are starting to understand that what they did to you was not a tradition. It was a crime.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial attorneys who take catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases, and right now we are actively litigating a hazing lawsuit — the kind of case that puts a fraternity and the institution behind it on trial. We know what hazing does to a person, because we have sat across the table from the families it broke. And we know what Washington law says about it, because the Washington legislature wrote it down in a statute named after a student who died.
The university’s one-year suspension of Sigma Chi is an administrative action. It is not justice for what happened to your student. It does not pay a single medical bill. It does not cover a semester of tuition lost to trauma. It does not name the people who did this, or the national organization that let them. That is what a civil case does — and the day you call us is the day that fight starts working for your family instead of against it.
The call is free. The consultation is confidential. And we do not get paid unless we win your case. 1-888-ATTY-911 — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a live person answers, not an answering service.
Sam’s Law: Washington’s Shield Against Fraternity Hazing
Washington’s legal framework for hazing is stronger than most people realize — and the defense is counting on the fact that you do not know it.
Washington follows a pure comparative negligence system under RCW 4.22.005, meaning a plaintiff’s recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault but is never barred entirely. In a normal injury case, that means if you were 20% at fault, you still collect 80%. But in hazing cases, Washington law and Sam’s Law increasingly recognize something that changes the entire calculus:
A student cannot “consent” to hazing due to the coercive nature of fraternity culture.
That sentence is the wall the defense runs into. The fraternity will say your student “chose” to participate. They will say pledges signed up for it. They will say “it was voluntary.” Washington law says that argument is a defense, not a door — and Sam’s Law was written specifically to close it.
Here is why that matters: in a pure comparative negligence state, if the defense can pin even a portion of fault on the plaintiff, every percentage point is money off the recovery. The fraternity’s lawyers know this. Their entire strategy in a hazing case is to shift blame onto the student who was hazed — to argue that the pledge “wanted it,” “agreed to it,” or “could have walked away.” Sam’s Law and the coercive-environment doctrine are how we answer that. A student who is trying to earn acceptance into a brotherhood, who is surrounded by older, larger, socially dominant members who control their membership status, who is being fed alcohol by people they are trying to impress — that student is not exercising free consent in any meaningful legal sense.
The WSU Student Conduct Code (WAC 504-26) establishes the standard of care for student organizations on this campus. The university’s finding that Sigma Chi violated that code is evidence of a breached duty — not just to the university, but to every student the chapter was supposed to protect.
If the hazing involved any element of sexual harassment or assault, federal Title IX regulations add another layer of liability and another set of institutional duties that may have been breached. That determination is case-specific and requires immediate legal review.
The Evidence Clock: Records That Disappear
In a hazing case, the evidence that proves what happened is on a clock — and some of it is already dying. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally disappear.
Internal Fraternity Communications — GroupMe, WhatsApp, Discord logs. Hazing events are planned in group chats. The messages say what the pledges will be made to do, who is running it, what time to show up, what to bring. These logs are the planning documents of the hazing itself — and they are the fastest-dying evidence in the case. GroupMe messages can be deleted by any participant. WhatsApp chats can be set to auto-delete. Discord servers can be wiped. The moment news of an investigation surfaces, the instinct to delete is overwhelming. Status: IMMEDIATE — high risk of deletion. A preservation letter must go out the day we are retained.
Video and Social Media Footage. Hazing events are frequently recorded by the participants themselves — on SnapChat, Instagram, TikTok. The very people who committed the hazing often filmed it. That footage is proof of the actual conduct. But SnapChat stories expire. Instagram posts get deleted. TikToks come down. Status: IMMEDIATE — content expires or is deleted rapidly after sanctions become public.
WSU Conduct Hearing Transcripts. The February 23, 2026 hearing produced testimony and admissions from fraternity members. These transcripts are powerful — they are the fraternity’s own members describing what happened under oath in a university proceeding. But they are protected by FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which means they require a properly served, FERPA-compliant subpoena to obtain. Status: MEDIUM — needs a FERPA-compliant subpoena, but the records themselves are preserved by the university.
Sigma Chi Membership Review Records. The sanctions include a mandatory membership review — which means the chapter is identifying which members to purge and why. Those records point directly at the most culpable actors. They are corporate property of the national fraternity, not the local chapter, and they are not easily obtained without litigation. Status: HIGH — these records exist, they are controlled by the national organization, and a preservation demand must reach the national, not just the local.
Pullman Police and WSU Campus Police Records. The Pullman Police Department and WSU Campus Police maintain a strictly documented relationship regarding off-campus Greek housing on College Hill. Any calls for service, incident reports, or welfare checks connected to the Sigma Chi house during the fall 2025 period are public records that can be requested — but they sit on agency retention schedules and can be archived or purged. Status: request early; some agencies purge within a few years.
Medical Records. If your student was treated at Pullman Regional Hospital or any other facility for alcohol poisoning, injury, or psychological crisis, those records prove the physical harm. Hospital records sit on medical-retention schedules that vary by facility — they can be destroyed after a set period. Status: request immediately through a properly authorized medical release.
The single most important thing a preservation letter does is convert an automatic deletion into a sanctionable destruction. Once the fraternity, the national organization, and the house corporation receive written notice that evidence must be preserved, any subsequent deletion is spoliation — and a judge can instruct the jury to assume the lost evidence was as damaging as the plaintiff says. That is leverage that begins the day the letter is on file.
What a Hazing Case Is Worth in Washington
Every case is different, and we will not promise you a number before we have seen the medical records, the university file, and the fraternity’s internal communications. But the forensic dossier on this incident provides a range that is grounded in the specific facts of hazing at WSU:
Lower range — approximately $75,000: This assumes psychological trauma — PTSD, anxiety, depression — without permanent physical injury. The student who was hazed, who carries the nightmares and the flinching and the inability to trust, but who was not hospitalized, whose body healed, whose grades recovered. That harm is real, it is compensable, and it is worth pursuing. A semester of lost tuition, a year of therapy, and the pain of what was done — that is not a small case, even at the lower end.
Higher range — up to $1,500,000 or more: This applies if the October 2025 reports included severe alcohol poisoning requiring hospitalization, physical battery causing lasting injury, sexual assault, or any harm that required significant medical intervention and produced lasting physical or psychological damage. The national fraternity’s involvement provides a deep-pocket defendant with high-limit liability coverage — meaning the coverage exists to actually pay a significant recovery, not just a fraction of one.
Washington generally does not allow punitive damages in personal injury cases unless specifically authorized by statute. But the non-economic damages in a hazing case — the pain, the suffering, the humiliation, the loss of trust, the loss of the college experience your student was supposed to have — can be significant given the systemic and deliberate nature of hazing as an organizational practice. The fact that an organization sanctioned and tolerated the conduct is what elevates these cases above ordinary negligence.
The damages categories we build:
Economic damages: Medical expenses (ER visits, hospitalization, ambulance, alcohol poisoning treatment, psychological counseling, ongoing therapy), tuition loss (if the student was forced to withdraw or could not continue), lost wages or lost earning capacity, future medical costs (long-term PTSD treatment, substance-use counseling if the hazing involved forced alcohol consumption).
Non-economic damages: Pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, the lasting stigma and psychological trauma, the betrayal by an organization that was supposed to be a brotherhood, the lost educational and social experience.
Life-care planning: In cases of severe psychological injury, a life-care planner builds a year-by-year projection of treatment costs — therapy, medication, support services — across the student’s expected lifetime. That document is what turns “she needs counseling” into a specific, defensible dollar figure a jury can award.
These figures are honestly framed. We will give you a case-specific assessment after we review the facts. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If your student was involved in hazing at Sigma Chi or any other fraternity at WSU — as a pledge, as a member who was hazed, or as someone who witnessed it — here is what to do, and what not to do, in the next 72 hours.
Do this:
Get medical care first. If your student has not been seen by a doctor or a licensed mental-health professional, get them seen now. Alcohol poisoning can cause lasting organ damage. Head trauma from physical hazing can produce a brain injury that does not show on a first scan. Psychological trauma — PTSD, acute stress disorder, depression — requires clinical evaluation. The medical record is not just treatment. It is the proof that the harm was real and was connected to the event. Pullman Regional Hospital handles acute cases; for specialized psychological evaluation, your student’s primary care provider or WSU’s counseling and psychological services can refer to a specialist.
Document everything. Your student should write down — or record, in their own words — what happened, when, where, who was present, and what they were made to do. Memory degrades. The details that are vivid today will blur in a month. A contemporaneous personal account, dated and signed, is evidence that does not degrade.
Preserve communications. Do not delete any text messages, GroupMe chats, SnapChats, Instagram direct messages, or emails connected to the fraternity or the hazing. Do not let your student delete them either. Screenshots, with timestamps, of every relevant communication. If the fraternity’s group chats still exist, photograph them before anyone can delete them.
Identify witnesses. Who else was there? Other pledges, other members, guests. Names, if your student knows them. Descriptions if they do not. Witnesses are the hardest thing to find months later and the easiest thing to identify in the first days.
Call us. The preservation letter is the first thing we send. It goes to the local chapter, the national fraternity, the house corporation, and any third-party platform (like GroupMe or Discord) that holds communications. That letter freezes the evidence. It converts automatic deletion into sanctionable destruction. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Do NOT do this:
Do not sign anything from the fraternity or its insurer. If a check arrives, if a release is presented, if someone from the fraternity’s national office calls and says “we want to make this right” — do not sign, do not accept, do not agree to anything until a lawyer has reviewed it. A release signed in the first weeks, before the full harm is known, is the single most common way a family loses a case that was worth far more.
Do not give a recorded statement. If the fraternity’s insurer calls and asks your student to “just tell us what happened” on a recording, decline. That recording is built to be quoted against you. Every word will be transcribed, dissected, and used to minimize the claim. The time to tell the story is in a deposition, with a lawyer present, after the evidence is preserved.
Do not contact the fraternity directly. Your student should cease all contact with the fraternity and its members. Do not confront anyone. Do not send accusatory messages. Do not post about it on social media. Anything your student says to the fraternity or posts publicly can be used by the defense. The communication should run through legal counsel.
Do not wait. The statute of limitations for personal injury in Washington is generally three years under RCW 4.16.080. But three years is a ceiling, not a strategy. The evidence dies on a faster clock. GroupMe logs get deleted. Social media posts come down. Witnesses graduate and scatter. The university’s hearing transcripts require a FERPA-compliant subpoena to obtain. Every day that passes is a day the defense can use to say the proof was lost — and some of that proof genuinely will be lost, because the law does not force the fraternity to keep it forever. The preservation letter has to go out now. The day you call is the day it goes out.
Our Trial Team: Who Fights for Your Family
Ralph Manginello is the Managing Partner of Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. He has spent 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is lead counsel in the active $10M+ hazing lawsuit — a hazing case against a major fraternity and a major university, filed in Harris County in November 2025. That case is not a verdict and not a recovery — it is a live, active fight that is teaching us, in real time, exactly how fraternities defend themselves and how to break through that defense. Read more about Ralph here.
Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer. He understands how institutions protect themselves, how stories get managed, and how the truth gets buried under “tradition” and “brotherhood.” He brings that instinct to every hazing case — because hazing is, at its core, an institutional cover-up dressed up as a rite of passage.
Lupe Peña is our Associate Attorney. He spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like your family. Lupe sat on the other side of the table. He knows how the insurer sets a low reserve in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered to get your student to say “I’m okay,” how the claim is fed into valuation software that discounts pain it cannot see. Now he sits on your side of that table, and he uses that insider knowledge for the people the insurance industry built those tools to defeat. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
The firm operates on contingency. We charge 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free and confidential. This page is legal information, not legal advice — but the moment you call, it becomes a conversation between you and a trial team that knows this fight.
We take cases in Washington working with local counsel where required. We do not claim an office in Pullman. What we claim is the knowledge, the resources, and the will to take on a national fraternity and win — because that is what we are doing right now.
If Your Student Was Hazed at WSU, the Time to Act Is Now
The evidence is dying. The fraternity’s members are closing ranks. The national organization’s lawyers are already working to minimize what happened. And your student is carrying the weight of what was done to them — alone, ashamed, and told by everyone around them that “it’s just part of the process.”
It is not part of the process. It is a crime under Washington law. And the same legislature that made it a crime gave your family a civil remedy to pursue — a way to hold every layer of the system accountable, from the individual member who handed your child a bottle to the national organization that looked the other way.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial attorneys. We are currently litigating a hazing case against a major fraternity. We know how this fight goes, and we know how to win it. If your student was harmed by hazing at Sigma Chi or any fraternity at Washington State University, call us. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And we do not get paid unless we win your case.
1-888-ATTY-911 — 24 hours a day. A live person answers.
Hablamos Español. Your family can speak with us fully in Spanish, without an interpreter, from the first call.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. The moment you call, it becomes a conversation about your case, your student, and your rights under Washington law.