CHICO (KPIX 5) — Fraternity brothers at California State University at Chico are accused of hacking down dozens of trees in a national forest. 
 
 They’re facing criminal charges for allegedly going on a tree-cutting binge in Lassen National Forest as part of an initiation ceremony for new pledges. 
 
 But the brothers say they didn’t do anything wrong. 
 
 It’s finals weeks at Chico State and the men of Pi Kappa Alpha are laying low. 
 
 It’s not just the pressure of final exams, it’s also the pressure of a federal investigation. 
 
 The U.S. Forest Service says the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at Chico State left a mess at a campground and now they’re all charged with federal crimes, including their president, Evan Jossey, from Pleasant Hill. 
 
 Chico State student Mark Anderson said, “It sounds like they got a little out of hand in the middle of nowhere and caused some damage. Poor judgment and planning.” 
 
 It happened in April at, according to their own pictures, an initiation event. 
 
 According to the charges, the group illegally chopped down more than 32 trees and fired guns. 
 
 A campground visitor took photos of the mess after the group left. 
 
 Ray Mooney with the U.S. Forest Service said he couldn’t understand how anyone would want to disrespect the forest in this way. 
 
 The chapter doesn’t have a house, but it’s Facebook page says it denies at least some of the allegations launched against them. 
 
 But the U.S. Forest Service released surveillance photos of young men buying the tools they believe were used in the vandalism. 
 
 Each member now faces vandalism, illegal firearms and degrading U.S. territory charges. 
 
 According to their Facebook page, they also face threats from the community. And fellow students say, the scorn of fellow fraternities. 
 
 The fraternity and its president will be in court June 26, 2017. But more charges may be headed their way. ||||| Camper Jon Elam told authorities he was visiting the campsite during the weekend of April 21 when he saw about 80 people there, according to the federal complaint. He was then greeted by Jossey and three other men who introduced themselves as members of a Chico State fraternity, federal authorities said. The men told him they would be participating in an initiation ceremony that night. ||||| Contributors: 
 
 Bill Shaw, 
 
 Ron Ridenhour, 
 
 Andrea Fine, 
 
 Maria Eftimiades. 
 
 The punishment was both tedious and cruel. Last February members of the Kappa Gamma fraternity at Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf in Washington, D.C., reportedly ordered pledge Kevin Clark to stand in a meeting room for several hours without moving. Eventually Clark collapsed and was rushed unconscious to a hospital. He later recovered from head injuries allegedly incurred during his fall, and university officials suspended the fraternity for four years.Such pointless brutality is not unique to Gallaudet. Though colleges have tried to crack down on fraternity hazing in recent years, degrading and sometimes racist initiation activities are still common, In many schools hazing has gone underground, where it is more likely to be abusive," says Eileen Stevens, 52, who founded the Committee to Halt Useless College Killings after her son Chuck, 20, died of alcohol poisoning in a 1978 hazing incident at Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y. A few students have broken the code of silence and offer a glimpse of this dangerous and demeaning rite of passage.In a forced drinking contest, the 'winner' is almost a fatalityDennis Jay, 21, first realized he had problems when he opened his eyes in the intensive care unit at Bloomington (Ind.) Hospital. He had tubes in his nose, needles in his arms and a ventilator hose down his throat. "I'm thinking, 'Man, I must have drunk a lot,' " he says. " 'This is gonna be trouble.' "He was right. His trouble had actually begun the night before, on Jan. 28, 1992, at a pledge initiation party at Indiana University's Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. First he and 19 other pledges were stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and paraded around the fraternity house while sorority girls tugged on their shorts and wrote on their bodies with Magic Markers. Then they were forced to drink from "beer bongs"—containers with a funnel bottom from which malt liquor was poured down their throats through a plastic tube. "The rule was once you threw up you could take your blindfold off and stop doing bongs," Jay says.But Jay couldn't seem to throw up, even though the mall liquor was getting progressively stronger as cheap wine was mixed in. Eventually Jay was the only pledge standing—and that meant only one thing: "victory shots of whiskey. Finally, as he tried to get dressed, he fell on his face and blood gushed from his nose.By the time his fiat brothers got Jay to the hospital 30 minutes later, he was in a coma. His blood alcohol content was .48 (.50 is usually fatal), his temperature was 93 degrees, and he could barely breathe. It took seven hours for him to regain consciousness.At the urging of several fraternity brothers who visited him in the intensive care unit, Jay at first stonewalled university officials about the incident. But when his "brothers" told investigators he was an alcoholic loser who stumbled into the frat house in dire need of medical help, he decided to tell the truth. "I was gelling trashed all over," he says. The university promptly shut the fraternity down for a year.Jay transferred to Holy Cross College in South Bend, Ind., where he is doing considerably better than at Indiana U. His grade point average is up from 1.8 to 3.3, and he has no desire to join a fraternity. "What kind of system forces people to run around naked, behave like morons and drink too much?" he says. "It's the most immature thing in the world."Hell Night at Ole Miss lives up to its nameJohn Gourley and Donovan Bassett, both 20, knew that being invited to join the University of Mississippi's M Club, a select group of some 70 lettered athletes, meant they would be big men on campus. The M Club had all the trappings of a Greek-letter fraternity but even more prestige. Among other things, it named the annual homecoming court. So Gourley, an apprentice trainer for football and baseball, and Bassett, a 400-meter hurdler on the track team, suffered along with 20 other prospective M Club members during a grueling initiation week in October 1992. For six consecutive nights, each initiate was required to do 400 to 500 push-ups and sit-ups during a Two-hour period. "I got pretty strong that week," says Gourley.Strength, however, was no help on the seventh and final night—Hell Night. The initiates were blindfolded. paraded outside in freezing rain and forced to kneel in mud while their M Club elders pelted them with eggs and a liquid potion that included vinegar, fish bait lure, deer scent and shaving cream. "It smelled really bad, and my face started burning," says Gourley. Adds Bassett: "I screamed out that my eyes were burning, but they told me, 'Just a few more minutes.' "When Gourley got into the shower at his dorm an hour later, he discovered that his left cheek had been chemically burned and his left ear was festering with blisters. Bassett, who lived in a different dorm, noticed dark spots all over his face, which he at first thought might have been caused when he bumped into a tree blindfolded. Then his skin started peeling off on his washcloth. Gourley and Bassett were both treated for second-degree burns that night at a local hospital.The next morning, several officers of the M Club sheepishly admitted to school officials that they had violated a campus ban on hazing. The M Club, which had just come off a year's probation for hazing, was disbanded for three years. And 21 upperclassmen who participated in Hell Night were placed on university probation.Gourley's ear has since healed, and his anger has likewise subsided. "It's just one of those bad episodes in life," he says. But Bassett was scarred for life. "I have two spots on my face that will always be there," he says. "That's not right."Students blow the whistle on a frat party with ugly racial overtonesHagen Scherberger, 19, a sophomore at Rider College in Lawrenceville, N.J., was puzzled one day last January when his roommate, Sabato Agathangelou, asked to borrow baggy jeans to wear at a Phi Kappa Psi party for new pledges. When he asked what was going on, Scherberger recalls Agathangelou replying that the frat was having "Dress Like a Nigger Night." "I guess he figured dressing in baggy clothes, like rap stars, was stereotypically black," says Scherberger. (Agathangelou could not be reached for comment.) Scherberger, who is while, refused to lend his clothes. "The whole idea got under my skin," he says. And when other guys in the dorm who had pledged Phi Kappa Psi said they had to paint X's on their foreheads and act like Steppin Fetchit during the initiation rites, Scherberger and a friend, Louis Colombo, 20, wrote a letter of complaint that prompted college officials to close down the fraternity and suspend pledge master John Guerriero for one year. "The incident was degrading," says Tahira Azia, 19, one of about 200 African-American students at Rider.Whistle-blowers Scherberger and Colombo were surprised by the hostile reaction they received from some students. Scherberger says there were verbal death threats, and Colombo adds, "We got spit at, pushed, shoved." Still, they believe they did the right thing. "People keep saying it's hard to do what you think is right," says Colombo. "But it should be harder to do what you think is wrong."DAVID GROGANBILL SHAW in South Bend, RON RIDENHOUR in Oxford. ANDREA FINE in Lawrenceville and MARIA EFTIMIADES in New York City
– Fraternity members from the California State University's Chico campus are facing federal criminal charges after they allegedly cut down dozens of trees in Lassen National Forest during a camping trip as part of a pledge-initiation ritual, CBS San Francisco reports. Per the Los Angeles Times, at least 32 trees were cut down at the Deer Creek Trailhead campground in late April, and members of Chico State's Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, including President Evan Jossey, now face counts of vandalism, possessing firearms, and degrading US territory. The US Forest Service tells CBS the fraternity left the campsite in disarray, and it has publicized surveillance pics showing college-age students buying tools that may have been used to cut the trees down. The trees that were felled included Douglas firs, white firs, and cedars, a Lassen rep tells the Sacramento Bee. Per the Times, camper Jon Elam told federal authorities he ran into 80 or so of the frat's members at the campground, including Jossey and three others who identified themselves as part of a Chico State fraternity that would be taking part in an initiation ceremony; Elam says he heard gunfire and trees being felled that night. He told the feds he saw the downed trees the next day and left, returning almost a week later to find a huge mess at the campsite. Elam filed a police report on April 28. In a Facebook post, the fraternity denies the charges and says it has filed its own police report, apparently against Elam. Pi Kappa Alpha's national organization says the Chico chapter has been suspended until the probe is done; a university rep says the frat has been suspended from campus. (The parents of a deceased frat pledge say he was treated like "roadkill.")