9 Feb 5th-Feb 11th, 2026 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | In addition to binge drinking and phys- ical punishment, the complaint says pledges had to essentially work as personal assistants for older members, acting as their chauffeurs for dates, picking up food and paying for alcohol and supplies for fraternity-hosted events. Pledges also had to clean the fraternity house, which was left in “squalid and biohazardous condi- tions,” and do older members’ laundry. The complaint says one pledge spent “in excess of $8,000 in out-of-pocket costs” buying things for older members, including “controlled substances.” Hazing controversies with SAE at ASU aren’t new. In 2012, 19-year-old pledge Jack Culolias drowned in the Salt River after binge drinking at a pledge event. A few months later, another fraternity member was dumped at a hospital with a note after a tequila-drinking contest that nearly killed him. The 20-year-old student had a blood-alcohol level of 0.47, nearly five times over the legal limit. The two high-profile incidents led to ASU expelling the chapter from the university in 2013, revoking its university recognition. The following year, the national fraternity instituted a ban on hazing. According to the suit from Spencer and Stevens, the national fraternity “knew or should have known” the extent of hazing at its ASU chapter. Related lawsuit Goad, the attorney for the two students, is also representing the female student suing SAE over sharing her nude photos. The new lawsuit makes oblique mention to the first one, saying that pledges could avoid the frat’s bed-making requirement if a woman had slept over — provided a pledge “record(ed) the female in his bed and transmit(ted) that to” frat brothers. “The females recorded were not informed they were being filmed,” the complaint says, “nor that the recordings were disseminated.” That first lawsuit is still working its way through court, though one of the brothers named in that suit — there’s a great deal of overlap among the defendants in both lawsuits — has responded in court. (New Times has not named the parties to that first suit due to the sexual nature of the claims it involves.) In a 148-page response and counterclaim against the woman who filed the lawsuit, the SAE member claimed he and the woman had an “intimate, sexual relationship” and that she consented to his taking the video and sharing it with a few friends, which he said “was not an uncommon request.” He said the couple was “comfortable being nude around each other” and “documented much of their lives through their phones,” which included taking and sharing photos of each other at “various stages of undress.” “These types of risque photos were typical for their interactions,” the court filing reads. “The photos were mutual, reciprocal, co-produced and consensual.” The video in question was a short, two- to-three-second clip taken on Snapchat of both of them naked from the waist up. The short video alternated between the two of them in frame, and she was “looking directly at the camera and leaning into and against (him). She was not asleep, unconscious or unwilling,” the frat member’s response says. The woman’s lawsuit did not claim she was unconscious or unaware she was being filmed. However, it did say about the video- sharing ritual generally that even if “the subject of the illicit photo or video consented to their photograph or video being taken, that does not mean that they also consented to their intimate photo being shared with hundreds of strangers on campus as part of a long-standing hazing ritual.” The man claimed he was not responsible for sharing the video with the fraternity, saying he didn’t save the video after sending it and had assumed it was “gone and long forgotten.” In a separate response in court, another fraternity member who allegedly shared the video in an SAE group chat also denied that he received it directly from the man who took it. Instead, the man who filmed the nude video claimed that the woman and her current boyfriend, who is allegedly one of the plaintiffs in the second lawsuit, launched a “campaign to destroy his repu- tation and future at ASU” over the video. After the video was shared in the group chat, he claimed that he and people who supported him were met with a “campaign of harassing, intimidating and bullying” by the couple. Due to the fallout, he left the fraternity in March 2025 and withdrew from the university two months later. He’s since enrolled in online classes at Southern New Hampshire University to complete his degree, per court records. Waterboarding from p 7 The Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity has a sordid history, both at ASU and nationally. (TJ L’Heureux)
