The Brothers

By candlelight, the brothers gathered in the Kappa Sigma fraternity house at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. With swelling pride, they chanted occult jargon and Tom Sawyerish vows. With stern mien, one night last week they launched an ancient rite: the not-so-gentle art of hazing new members before accepting them into the fraternity with its friendships and parties.

Eleven pledges appeared. All endured such muscle-straining exercises as strenuous pushups. Then came a sickening test.

One by one, the pledges were marched to a buffet table. On a tray lay thick slices of oil-soaked raw liver, each about the size of a club sandwich. Gagging and coughing, the first six pledges managed to get the liver down without chewing it; that was part of the ritual.

Pledge No. 7 was blue-eyed Richard T. Swanson, 21, of Hollywood, a freshman at the U.S.C. dental school. He tried to swallow the liver three times, gagged, removed it, tried once more. On his fourth try, Pledge Swanson choked and fought for breath. The brothers swatted his back, laid him face down across the table. The liver remained in his throat. Swanson struggled to his feet, stumbled out the door and collapsed. Someone called an ambulance.

What happened next is the subject of angry argument. The ambulance attendant says that the frightened boys told him only that Swanson had "a spasm in his throat," never mentioned the meat, which he could easily have removed. A fire department resuscitator squad that was called to the scene backs up his story. The boys deny the charge, insist that the rescuers carelessly placed the victim on his back. Whatever the truth, on arrival at Los Angeles Central Receiving Hospital at 1:48 a.m., less than two hours after he began to choke, Dick Swanson was dead.

Shocked university officials suspended Kappa Sigma from the campus, put all 49 members on probation. The house was shut down for good, the first such action in U.S.C. history. Said grieving Arthur L. Swanson, Dick's dentist brother: "Those boys are guilty of taking my brother's life."

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