Stone Foltz's parents sue Bowling Green State University over his fraternity hazing death
Stone Foltz's parents have filed a lawsuit against Bowling Green State University, claiming the university is responsible for their son's hazing death.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday morning in the Ohio Court of Claims, alleges that BGSU was aware of — and ignored — hazing activities taking place at its Greek organizations, including at Pi Kappa Alpha, the fraternity better known as PIKE, where Stone was rushing before he died.
"BGSU is responsible for Stone Foltz’s death," the lawsuit reads. "For years, BGSU turned a blind eye to hazing within the Greek organizations on its campus while encouraging students like Stone to join its fraternities and sororities. For years, BGSU knew about PIKE’s troubled history of hazing, both locally and nationally but did nothing about it."
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Foltz, a 20-year-old sophomore from Delaware, was rushing PIKE in early 2021. As part of the pledging process, Foltz attended an off-cam "Big Little Night" initiation event on March 4, 2021, during which he drank a liter of Evan Williams Bourbon.
Foltz's girlfriend, Maddy Borja, called 911 for help from his apartment at 11:21 p.m. that night.
He died of alcohol intoxication three days later after giving the gift of life to others through organ and tissue donations.
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The lawsuit claims that Stone died as a result of "BGSU’s gross recklessness, lax policies, lax enforcement of those policies, promotion of PIKE’s Delta Beta Chapter, perfunctory 'investigations,' and willful inaction in the face of repeated warnings."
In a statement, Alex Solis, deputy chief of staff and BGSU spokesman, said Foltz's death was a tragedy and what his family "has endured is unimaginable."
"However, this lawsuit is meritless and undermines our continued efforts to eradicate hazing," he said. "We are resolved in our legal position, and as a state-supported university, we will defend our community vigorously against this action. This will not deter our goal to continue to foster a community of care that serves our students and their families.”
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Shari and Cory Foltz said they filed the lawsuit to hold colleges and universities accountable when they allow hazing to take place on their campuses.
"Despite being completely aware of the hazing activities that have taken place at Bowling Green for decades, the university enthusiastically endorses Greek life to parents and students." the Foltzes said in a statement. "To be clear, any perceived benefit students get from joining a Greek organization is completely and totally outweighed by the risk of injury or death by antiquated and deadly hazing rituals."
The lawsuit details a number of hazing incidents at BGSU fraternities dating back to 2000, and PIKE's history of hazing incidents and deaths nationally beginning in 1965.
It also describes "a long history of hazing" at PIKE's Delta Beta chapter on Bowling Green's campus. The lawsuit claims that the university was aware of the Big Little Night event as of November 2019, when a student made an anonymous complaint to the university.
"I have witnessed firsthand the aftermath of one of the pledges after a party called 'big little party' where the new pledge vomited violently in his dorm room in Centennial hall, on the first floor in 2018," the complaint read.
The complainant told BGSU that Big Little Night had "been taking place for years," long before 2018, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims that BGSU's response to this complaint "was wholly inadequate and did not constitute active enforcement of a policy against hazing."
The university interviewed two new members and the chapter's president, but ultimately decided that there was not enough information to move forward with sanctions, the lawsuit said. BGSU alerted PIKE's national organization, which in turn placed the chapter on probation from Dec. 9, 2019, to May 8, 2020.
"The probation was futile because the chapter simply picked up where they left off once the probationary period ended," the lawsuit reads. "Indeed, in February 2021, when a student complained to the Dean of Students about BGSU fraternity hazing culture, he specifically noted that he had reported concerns about PIKE’s hazing in the past and 'nothing seemed to be done.'"
BGSU is set to host the first-ever Ohio Anti-Hazing Summit on its campus in August.
The Foltz family is seeking an unspecified amount of money, but they are seeking at least $25,000 for each of the two claims listed, according to the lawsuit.
Sheridan Hendrix is a higher education reporter at the Columbus Dispatch. You can reach her at shendrix@dispatch.com. You can follow her on Twitter at @sheridan120. Sign up for her Mobile Newsroom newsletter here and her education newsletter here.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Stone Foltz death: Parents sue BGSU, say school ignored hazing
