Sorority Girls Gone Wild

MAY 24--For the second time in recent weeks, a chapter of the Pi Beta Phi sorority is being accused of drunkenly trashing a facility during a formal dance.

At a March 6 party sponsored by the group's Ohio University chapter, attendees engaged in sex acts, used plates as "missiles" during food fights, vomited on carpets, defecated in urinals, and tried to tear off the clothes of a female bartender, according to a letter written by the director of the West Virginia art center where the formal was held.

In her April 6 letter to the sorority, a copy of which you'll find here, Abby Hayhurst, head of the Parkersburg Art Center, reported that catering staff witnessed "a couple engaging in sexual congress, while surrounded by a cheering throng," and that a bathroom sink was broken as a result of "one of your members and her date attempting to have sexual relations on it, an act which was witnessed by the event's caterer, who walked in on them."

The art center, which reported the damage to the Parkersburg Police Department, is seeking about $47,000 from the sorority, which contends that the art center has exaggerated its damages. Last month, the Pi Beta Phi chapter at Miami University was suspended after a wild April 9 spring formal at a lakefront Ohio lodge. In a letter detailing damages and the sorority's wild behavior, lodge owner Lyndsay Rapier-Phipps noted that the students were "totally obliterated and behaving like immature children." In her letter, Rapier-Phipps mistakenly identified the rampaging sorority as Phi Delta Pi. (6 pages)