Carrion, theft and the destruction of greek letters blemished the end of this year’s Greek Week this weekend, as a dead deer was graffitied and left outside a fraternity house and several letters were vandalized on campus.
Brothers of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity woke up Sunday to find the remains of a dead deer on the curb outside their house on 93 Front St. The carcass had the letters TDX ‘ the letters of Theta Delta Xi, an unrecognized fraternity ‘ graffitied on its side.
‘Nobody is usually stupid enough to put a dead deer in their car that’s been sitting there for a few days,’ said Jack Causseaux, assistant director of Campus Life and the fraternity/sorority adviser at BU. ‘It was not a fresh kill, it was pretty gross. It had been dead for some time.’
Theta Delta Xi, Phi Kappa Psi and Binghamton University’s Office of Greek Life all denied that TDX were involved in the prank. The incident is still under investigation with Binghamton Police.
‘Somebody could have done it to make it look like TDX did it. It could have been intended for TDX and just put at the wrong house, or an accident, who knows?’ Causseaux said.
Paul Liggieri, president of TDX, said members of his fraternity had let Phi Psi know ’emphatically’ that they were not responsible, and stressed, ‘We face hostility, not from all, but from various organizations.’
He believes TDX ‘ which is seeking recognition as an official greek chapter at BU ‘ is being framed for the incident.
‘ To be honest, other organizations try to bring us down,’ Liggieri said. ‘This is probably because of the unprecedented success of our organization.’
Vandalism took place on campus over the weekend as well.
On Saturday morning, several of the greek letters which had been posed around the fountain outside the Glenn G. Bartle Library ‘ including Nu Alpha Phi’s and Alpha Xi Delta’s ‘ were found in the water, and others, like Zeta Beta Tau’s, were partially missing.
According to Investigator Dennis P. Bush of Binghamton’s New York State University Police, the vandalism is not uncommon.
‘Usually we get some kind of report about greek letters and people messing with them,’ Bush said.
Still, Causseaux is taking the pranks more seriously this year.
‘It seems like every once in a while, when they put the letters up ‘ a couple of them get stolen, we find out that it’s another group just playing a prank, and sometimes the letters turn back up,’ he said. ‘But this time it seemed to be a lot more prevalent ‘ so much so that I was like, maybe next year we need to reconsider how we display those.’
And though they may have been friendly gags in the past, Causseaux said he suspects those outside greek community this year.
‘It doesn’t make sense why one group would be upset with all those groups at the same time,’ Causseaux said. ‘It doesn’t fit a pattern, [it] makes me think it’s probably somebody that’s not in greek life.’