Page 8 The Behrend Beacon Texas hazing charge cites water as a 'deadly weapon by Michael Graben The Dallas Morning News Eight men could face up to 20 years in prison on a charge that they assaulted Southern Methodist Univer sity fraternity pledges with an unusual deadly weapon: water. In a Dallas apartment last month, Brayton Curry and another fraternity pledge were forced to drink hot sauce and gallons of water and were beaten with wooden paddles, authorities said. Curry, an SMU junior, went into a coma, suffering from pulmonary edema, a condition in which water enters the lungs, and hyponatremia, a sodium imbal ance brought on by excess fluid consumption, doctors said. "If they refused to drink, if they stopped drinking, if they weren't drinking fast enough, they were beaten with paddles," said Bill Tumage, a deputy Dallas po- Students look north to Canada, where quality education costs less by Patricia Alex The Record McGill University has been called "the Harvard of the North" and, indeed, the Montreal school has a reputation that ranks with the American Except for the price tag. The full freight at Harvard tuition, room and board is nearly $38,000, compared with $12,000 (U.S.) for McGill. American enrollment in Canadian universities is up about 86 percent in the past four years to more than 5,000 students, according to the Ca nadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. It's not exactly a groundswell the number pales compared with the 23,000 Canadians who study in the United States annually but the word is out that there are good educational buys to be had north of the border. "I'm very happy I made this choice," said Sally Warner. an engineering student from South Or ange, N.J., who attends McGill. "I didn't even apply to the Ivies because I didn't want to shell out $40,000." Warner ranked second in her class and scored more than 1400 on her SATs stats that would have put her on good footing at the best of Ameri can schools. But McGill added up for her, in more ways than one. She loves the cosmopolitan flair of French speaking Montreal, where housing prices are a fraction of those in the New York area. She pays about $2OO U.S. a month for a share in a modern, centrally located apartment. Seven hours by car is not such a long schlep home, and the drinking age is 18 in Quebec. Because she is a Canadian citizen by virtue of her mother's place of birth, Warner's resident tu ition at McGill is about $6,000 U.S. annually. "It was cheaper than going to Rutgers," she said. "And I love it." The increase in American students attending college in Canada is fueled, in part, by aggres sive recruiting campaigns by schools such as EEO/AA Employer lice chief in the northeast division Dallas police arrested three men Monday and have issued arrest warrants for five more connected with the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. SMU students Brandon Perry and Cornelius Smith were taken into custody in their dormitory rooms. A former member, Uche Kalu, 23, was arrested at his apartment. One student who has not been arrested attends an other area college, police said. The others are former members of the fraternity. Hazing experts and attorneys said the case appears to be the first in Texas in which water has been consid ered a deadly weapon. The weight of the felony charges is unusual for hazing cases and could challenge the state's definition of "deadly weapon," they said. "When the Legislature wrote that statement, they didn't know it was going to be used for water and for air," said Greg Westfall, a criminal defense attorney in McGill. And, in fact, about a third of the Ameri can students in Canada are at McGill. About 1,500 of the 30,000 students at McGill are American. The language is familiar, except at some pre dominantly French universities in Quebec, and student visa and entrance requirements generally aren't too burdensome. Coursework and sched uling are similar to universities in the United States, and Canadian degrees are generally re spected and portable. "An undergraduate degree from our university is very competitive for admissions to graduate schools in the U. 5.," said Jo-Anne Brady, regis trar at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. If anything, the large Canadian universities get a rap for larger class sizes, but generally they are academically rigorous and American students find themselves competing with Canadian coun terparts who are often very well-prepared for college. Unlike American undergraduates, stu dents at many large Canadian universities must declare majors as freshmen. To be sure, Canadian recruiters are helped by the good academics that their publicly funded uni versities enjoy. And the relative strength of the U.S. dollar has worked in their favor when court ing American families. "It's a great value," said Eve Jacobs of Verona, whose daughter Rachel is a McGill graduate. "We have a kid now at Cornell, and I can't compare it money-wise." Michele Papavasiliou has also turned north ward in search of a "good education for the dol lar." She traveled a month ago to check out uni versities in Canada with her son Jesse, a high school junior. Jesse plans to apply to both McGill and Queens. "He is looking for a foreign experience," said the mom. "The thing about Canada is, you can be in a foreign country and still take the bus home. To me, it's the best of both worlds." If you're into snow, that is. "You really have to like winter to go to school up there," Papavasiliou allows 0„-, Bonus! WM2 illitkai 1= ..iire"Atikl Friday, December 12, 2003 *6.50 Per hour Representotives to place *Mors 0.00 by „ , Foil Worth. "We're seeing more and more folks get ting creative with how high they can make the offense." Texas law defines a deadly weapon as anything that in the manner of its use or intended use is capable of causing death or serious bodily injury. To prove their case, prosecutors will have to show that the fraternity members knew the dangers of drink ing too much water. SMU officials said the university had held an educa tional anti-hazing event the Friday before the Nov. 14 incident and published a half-page advertisement of Texas hazing law in the campus newspaper that day. "They had prior knowledge that consuming that much water could cause death or serious bodily injury," Deputy Chief Tumage said. In a similar incident in Plattsburgh, N.Y., 11 mem bers of a State University of New York fraternity were charged with a combined 172 charges, ranging from conspiracy to criminally negligent homicide, after an Live Downtown Directly Across From Campus Spacious 2 I]ki:laßath Apartments Utilities & Bask Cable Induded On-site Laundry Fantastic Fitness Center Study Lounge '1 ki Novx and be entered to NAin a VICS FREE RENT!!! 646 Ea 4 College Avenue Stale College, PA 16801 (814) 231-9000 WW. menclianoncollegeavenue.com L _ - I ... 4.. . 2004-2005 meridian We now have seasonal opportunities available Ask us how you can earn an additional $1.50 for worithlg 4wr A... 18-year-old student died from drinking excessive amounts of water through a funnel. The students all pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of hazing. One student faces a year in jail, was expelled from the university and was ordered to pay thousands of dollars for an educational video on the dangers of hazing. In Texas, Vehicles, fists and pencils have been clas sified as deadly weapons. "We have had cases in Texas before where items were declared deadly weapons, and I'm not really sure should have been," said Cynthia On of the Texas Crimi nal Defense Lawyers Association. She pointed to a 2000 case in Austin in which a man was charged with giving cocaine to a minor 20 to 30 times. The court found that cocaine was not a deadly weapon because the man did not intend to injure the victim and because the minor ingested the cocaine vol untarily, she said. on colleere /tvenzie -"
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