Stanford University administrators are “unjustly” punishing a fraternity for allegations of drugging at a party in 2018 despite lack of evidence, according to a lawsuit recently filed against the university.

The Alpha Omega House Corporation — a group of alumni that own Stanford’s Sigma Chi house — filed the lawsuit in Santa Clara County Superior Court on June 11, outlining a laundry list of ways the university has mishandled the aftermath of the allegations, which were never proven to be true.

The 60-page complaint, which claims that the university broke its ground lease agreement with Alpha Omega by terminating it years before it expired and attempting to take the multi-million dollar fraternity house without compelling reasons, laid bare the events that led Stanford’s Sigma Chi fraternity’s to lose its charter last year.

In May 2018, Stanford’s Sigma Chi chapter lost its charter, was placed on “suspended active status” and barred from participating in any fraternity-sanctioned activities until 2021.

The fraternity’s suspension came four months after at least seven students claimed that they were drugged at a party hosted at the fraternity’s house on Jan. 12, 2018.

The person who was believed to have brought drugs to the event at that time was “loosely affiliated” with the men’s rowing team but was neither a student at Stanford nor linked to Sigma Chi, the Stanford Daily reported.

After the university was alerted to the allegations, its Department of Public Safety and Title IX office launched investigations into the incident. During that time, the chapter was prohibited from recruiting a spring 2018 pledge class.

The conclusion of those investigations in May 2018 found that the Sigma Chi members were guilty of two offenses — failing to follow university guidelines that required them to register the party with administrators and serving alcohol to underage students, according to the suit.

The report, however, did not conclude any drugging took place at the party and it cleared the students of improperly responding to the matter, stating that both the students and multiple administrators all failed to properly alert police, the suit states.

The report further uncovered that nearly a dozen university employees, including those in the school’s Title IX office, were made aware of the drugging allegations nearly four days before reporting it to the police, the lawsuit alleges.

In its decision to suspend Sigma Chi from campus, Stanford said the fraternity violated the university’s alcohol regulations in April 2014, the spring of 2016 and during the party in January 2018, according to the suit.

The January 2018 party co-host, the Pi Beta Phi sorority, was not suspended from campus. And, the university’s men’s rowing team — whose members also attended the party — did not face any similar discipline, the suit alleges.

Pointing to those inconsistencies and the relatively minor university policies that the fraternity members violated, Alpha Omega claims in the suit that the suspension of Sigma Chi was “equally absurd and unjust”.

When the fraternity chapter challenged the recommendation to suspend it, the suit also alleged it was “denied the students the very due process they are promised in Stanford’s own policies.”

According to the suit, the university used evidence from the fraternity’s 2014 and 2016 alcohol-related violations to make its decision but failed to share it with the fraternity, preventing its president from addressing that information in a hearing that took place before administrators decided to suspend the fraternity.

Nevertheless, university administrators decided in May 2018 to suspend the fraternity from campus for three years.

Then, in Feb. 2019, a university administrator notified Alpha Omega that it would not renew the ground lease on the fraternity house after Aug. 31, 2019 and that the university would give the house to another Greek organization for the 2020-21 school year.

The Alpha Omega Chapter of Sigma Chi was founded on Stanford’s campus in 1891. About five decades later, in 1939, alumni and students raised funds to build a house on the university’s property at 550 Lasuen Mall.

In the late 1970s, the two entered into a ground lease. Alpha Omega argues that it has not violated any of the lease provisions and that the lease still has more than four years on it. The University, however, disagrees.

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Stanford: Student possibly drugged, groped at event The university said in a statement Monday that the lease was terminated because Alpha Omega is in violation of the lease’s requirement that the property only be used to house active fraternity members. Because the Alpha Omega Chapter’s charter was suspended by the Sigma Chi International Fraternity last year and the chapter is no longer recognized by Stanford, the chapter no longer has any active members, therefore breaking the lease conditions, the statement said.

Bob Ottilie, chairman and spokesman of the Alpha Omega House Corporation, said Monday that he believes the university is using the party from January 2018 “as the pretext to both get rid of our students charter and to take the last privately-owned house on campus.”

In particular, Ottilie said the university is attempting to get rid of the “harshest critics” of their lack of alcohol and life safety measures.

Following the Jan. 2018 party, Alpha Omega banned alcohol from the fraternity house entirely.

As a result of the fraternity’s charter loss, this past year, Alpha Omega began subleasing its open rooms to the university, which then filled them with non-fraternity students.

When Alpha Omega began subleasing to Stanford, it requested that the house remain alcohol-free but the university rejected that proposal, according to the complaint.

“All of the unique life safety measure designed to preclude underage drinking have been rolled back by the university and now it subleases the property to students groups with no effort to avoid the underage drinking, the very issue that ostensibly is the foundation of this effort to take the multi-million dollar house away from the Alpha Omega House Corporation without paying for it,” the suit states.

In response to the suit filed by Alpha Omega, the university has filed an unlawful detainer case against the corporation as a way to legally evict Alpha Omega and take ownership of the house, according to Ottilie.