7 Feb 5th-Feb 11th, 2026 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Hazing details The lawsuit offers an incredibly detailed depiction of the pledge process at SAE, describing a litany of ways pledges were bossed around and exploited. Some alleged hazing practices are fairly run-of-the-mill, such as being forced to set up for and clean up after parties and being required to clean the Greek Leadership Village on ASU’s Tempe campus. Other alleged hazing inci- dents are more eye-catching. The two students claim the frat forced them to receive lap dances from a stripper, who then whipped their “bare buttocks” to the point that they “received welts.” In other instances, the suit says, pledges were forced to consume “live fish and raw meat” and ingest “excessive quantities of nicotine.” One alleged hazing ritual involved the forced consumption of what the complaint describes as “extremely spicy cheeseballs” that registered 2.2 million Scoville heat units, which is hotter than the infamous Carolina Reaper pepper. The suit says the roughly two dozen pledges were given only a half-gallon of water to share during the ritual and, as a result, experienced vomiting and stomach pain. Despite that, the pledges were then forced to do burpees, calisthenics and “brother squats,” in which two pledges face each other in the squat position while holding hands and saying, “I love you.” Pledges were also regularly forced to binge drink, per the complaint. During one of these binge drinking episodes, one pledge allegedly became so severely drunk that he became unresponsive on the ground. The complaint says other pledges had to beg older fraternity members to let him receive medical attention. The pledge eventually ended up in the hospital, the complaint says, and “later indicated he would have died had he not received emer- gency medical care.” That same evening, the complaint says, Brajevic was forced to drive a pledge home while intoxicated and was stopped by police and arrested for drunk driving. Tempe Municipal Court records show Brajevic eventually pleaded down to a charge of reckless driving, a class 2 misdemeanor. The suit also describes several instances in which pledges were put through demanding physical tasks. Per the suit, pledges were routinely forced to perform physical exercises such as squats, situps and pushups as punishment for failing certain tasks or pledge tests. One ritual involved being forced to perform a “human bridge,” in which they assumed plank positions while other pledges “walked across their backs, placing compressive force on their spines.” Afterward, the complaint says, Stevens was forced to “complete a second workout at the Muscle Factory Gym” that caused him “severe abdominal cramping, loss of bowel control and chest pain.” He was taken to the emergency room and was allegedly told not to inform medical personnel that he was pledging with the fraternity. Another ritual involved filming so-called “Weatherman Videos,” in which pledges “were forced to film themselves being struck by eggs launched with hockey sticks while wearing only their underwear, submerging themselves in bodies of water at temperatures well below freezing, diving naked into swim- ming pools, being subjected to electric shocks from tasers, and being doused with flour and other substances.” The complaint says the videos were filmed “to provide sadistic amusement and enter- tainment” to fraternity members. During one ritual described in the complaint, some pledges were sent into a bathroom — which brothers allegedly called “Auschwitz” — where they were “water boarded,” which the complaint describes as “standing in a cold shower, having water sprayed into their mouths, having their mouths covered with a rag, and water poured on the rag.” Several pledges were also allegedly injured in a “jousting” event during the frat’s “Beer Olympics,” with one pledge suffering a serious back injury after falling from another pledge’s shoulders and a second falling into and shattering a glass window. One alleged hazing ritual involved Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledges being forced to eat incredibly spicy cheeseballs. (Hendra Su/Getty Images) Waterboarding from p 6 >> p 9
