A day after dozens of students at San Diego State University ““ including several fraternity members ““ were arrested in a major drug bust, leaders of the Greek system’s Westwood chapters expressed confidence that no such incident was possible at UCLA.
Almost 100 people were arrested Tuesday, 75 of them SDSU students, after a six-month investigation that was prompted after a student died of a cocaine overdose. During the investigation, another cocaine overdose death occurred at an SDSU fraternity house.
Authorities raided several locations ““ including Theta Chi’s fraternity house ““ finding in all two kilograms of cocaine, 350 ecstasy pills, psychedelic mushrooms, hash oil, 50 pounds of marijuana, $60,000 cash, several guns and brass knuckles.
“It’s much more of a party school than UCLA. I’m not that surprised that that happened at San Diego State,” said Ryan Stancil, vice president of UCLA’s Phi Psi fraternity.
Members of at least three fraternities were arrested and SDSU has suspended six of the social organizations.
Leaders at the UCLA chapters of the fraternities targeted in Tuesday’s raids in San Diego said they doubted the arrests would affect the reputations of the L.A. chapters.
“This is a completely different university. Something like that would never happen on that scale at UCLA,” said Jack Welsh, president of Theta Chi at UCLA.
Welsh said the active involvement of his fraternity’s alumni board helps keep members from becoming involved in criminal activities.
“They’re over here every couple days,” he said. “They’d know if something like that was going on.”
Still, some worry that the arrests could damage the reputation of the Greek system as a whole, especially after reports that some of the money from drug sales was used for fraternity activities.
“It’s kind of a scar on the face of the Greek system,” Welsh said.
Fraternity leaders said the arrests, which made national news Tuesday, were the result of a few bad apples.
“There’s a bunch of people who aren’t idiots in the Greek system,” Stancil said. “We all live in the same house, we know what’s going on, and we don’t let stuff like that happen.”
Nancy Greenstein, director of police community services for university police, said the sale of hard drugs was not as prevalent at UCLA.
There were 82 reported drug abuse violations at UCLA in 2007, according to the UCPD’s annual report.
Still, Greenstein said the arrests at SDSU could spark dialogue on stronger preventive measures against drug sales.
“Typically people may not want to talk about sale of illegal substances,” she said. “But this is an easy way to bring up the topic of conversation.”