More than half the members of the Sigma Nu fraternity chapter in Boulder were suspended last fall after the hazing of 45 pledges, according to emails provided to the Daily Camera. The messages say 108 members were suspended and every student leader was replaced. The chapter has about 160 members, according to former local board member Scott Davis.
Davis, who is also a Sigma Nu alumnus, said members brought the pledges to the basement of the chapter house, ordered them to strip to their underwear and made them fight one another. He called the scene "extremely violent" and said one pledge was hospitalized. He said he learned of the incident through emails and meetings with fraternity leadership.
Sigma Nu communications director Christopher Brenton confirmed that members of the CU Boulder chapter were found responsible for hazing in the fall of 2025. In a statement, he said each member found responsible was suspended then and will stay suspended while the fraternity's disciplinary procedures, which are still ongoing, are completed. He added that the fraternity was founded in 1869 in opposition to hazing and prohibits it.
National Executive Director Brad Beacham led the investigation and described it as the worst hazing case the national organization had ever investigated, according to a November 2025 email from local board chair Michael Hecht to board members. The probe included three days of in-person meetings with nearly all active members in late September 2025. Hecht wrote that cell phone videos and verbal confirmations verified incidents of severe hazing. The national organization chose about 80 freshman and sophomore members to form a core group to rebuild the chapter. Sigma Nu did not say whether any suspended members were expelled.
Davis said the board voted to remove him effective Sept. 29, after he raised concerns that the chapter was covering up the incident. He said he contacted Boulder police on Sept. 14 and filed a report. The police department did not answer questions, and the Daily Camera filed a public records request for related reports on Sept. 28. Davis also said national leaders refused to show him and other local board members the video.
A Sept. 1 email from a board committee chair to Davis said a member who filmed the incident received death threats, and a group of members went to his home intending to beat him, though he was not there. The student later dropped out of school, the email said. Sigma Nu owns about $53 million in property on the Hill, according to county records, and this fall the chapter was planning a house addition and gym and working to raise $12 million. Davis said national leadership tried to cover up the incident.
Sigma Nu is not affiliated with CU Boulder. It belongs to the student-run Interfraternity Council on the Hill, formed after all fraternities disaffiliated when the university imposed stricter rules in 2005. The university cannot suspend unaffiliated fraternities for hazing but can discipline individual students under its code of conduct. Spokesperson Jade Young-Tucker said the university received a report from Sigma Nu's national organization, which Student Conduct & Conflict Resolution is investigating. She said the case is unrelated to two hazing reports campus police announced in a Sept. 24 alert.
Hazing expert Elizabeth Allan of the University of Maine said it is hard to know whether hazing is worsening. She said more than 125 deaths nationwide have been tied to hazing since 2000, and noted that Gordie Bailey, 18, died of alcohol poisoning at Boulder's Chi Psi house in 2004. Her 2008 national study found nine in 10 hazed students do not recognize it, and 95% of those who do not report it. She is relaunching the study. Allan said prevention requires resources, trained staff and transparent enforcement, not education alone.
Davis said he had been developing a team-building program before his removal and criticized the existing online training. "Our culture isn't going to change until we change it," he said. In 2006, the national fraternity suspended 27 of 29 members of the Boulder chapter over hazing. This fall, the University of Oklahoma found its Sigma Nu chapter responsible for hazing, and Indiana University placed its chapter on cease-and-desist status during an investigation.
