UP: Family suing Upsilon for hazing

The family  of a hazing victim from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, will take legal action next week against the Upsilon Sigma Phi fraternity, according to the UP administration, which initially withheld details about the incident.

The Office of the Chancellor of UP Diliman issued a statement Friday afternoon identifying Upsilon, considered the oldest Greek-letter fraternity in Asia and which counts politicians, academicians and legal eagles among its members, as the group being implicated in a hazing case that sent a 17-year-old student to the hospital.

“I am now able to confirm that it is Upsilon Sigma Phi that has been implicated in a hazing incident during which a UP Diliman student sustained severe injuries,” UP Diliman Chancellor Michael Tan said in the statement.

“The family of the victim has authorized me to divulge the name of the fraternity and to say they will be taking formal legal action next week,” he said.

Inquirer sources earlier said the injured victim had to be treated for a week at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City before being discharged on June 23.

Tan reiterated the family’s request for privacy and stressed that the UP administration would exert all efforts to protect the identity of the victim and his family even after administrative and legal measures have been initiated.

“The victim is a minor, which makes it all the more important for confidentiality in all the proceedings,” Tan said. “Let us spare the family further grief as they go through this extremely difficult crisis.”

Meanwhile, UP Diliman’s University Student Council (USC) on Saturday said it had formed a fact-finding committee to investigate the hazing incident.

In an announcement, the council said it would hold a emergency general assembly on July 7 to discuss its course of action regarding fraternity-related violence.

Upsilon members who hold positions in the council are “preventively suspended” as USC officials until the next general assembly on July 14. They include vice chair JP delas Nieves, councilor Carl Santos and College of Business Administration representative Aaron Letaba.

The USC statement explained that the preventive suspension was not a form of punishment but was only meant to “protect the integrity” of the investigation.

The hazing incident involving Upsilon came to light late last week in the wake of another case—that of an 18-year-old student of De La Salle–College of St. Benilde who died June 28 from injuries sustained during the initiation rites of Tau Gamma Phi fraternity.

The death of hazing victim Guillo Cesar Servando, an 18-year-old sophomore who was taking up hotel and restaurant management, is now the subject of parallel investigations by the Makati City police and the National Bureau of Investigation. The now week-old probe is focusing on 11 suspects.

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