During his freshman year at Bowling Green State University, Stone Foltz was approached in his dormitory by multiple fraternities that recruited him to consider becoming a pledge.
He weighed his options, researched a number of campus fraternities, and even consulted with two relatives who attended BGSU and knew the lay of the land, his parents Shari and Cory Foltz of Delaware, Ohio said in an interview Wednesday with The Blade.
“He actually did a lot of investigation, he looked into a lot of the fraternities his freshman year to make sure they were the right ones, that they were not doing things he did not want to do,” Mrs. Foltz said.
After some research, Stone ultimately decided against joining a fraternity that year, opting instead to focus on his schoolwork and adjusting to college life. Then one February day, “out of the blue” during his sophomore year, Mrs. Foltz recalled receiving a call from her son in which he told her he was pledging a fraternity.
She asked him for some more information and pressed him on why he was joining a fraternity after he had previously decided against it. Stone told his parents he knew a lot of guys in Pi Kappa Alpha, commonly called Pike, that were from Delaware. Because of the commonalities, the Buckeye Valley High School graduate felt a connection to the fraternity, his parents said.
“He was able to relate with this fraternity,” Mr. Foltz said. “He played some basketball over the years against a couple of them. So he knew of the kids.”
Mr. and Mrs. Foltz say they didn’t have any reason to worry about their son joining a fraternity. Stone was caring, compassionate, and took school seriously, was very conscientious of right and wrong, and always listened to his parents.
“He did anything that we asked him to do,” Mrs. Foltz said.
So when a fraternity event in late February kept Stone from traveling home to fulfill a commitment to watch the family’s dogs and babysit his younger brother while his parents attended his sister’s softball tournament, Mr. and Mrs. Foltz were a little taken aback.
Stone promised to be home at 10 p.m. on a Thursday night, but when Mrs. Foltz texted to ask him about his whereabouts that night, he said he was stuck at a fraternity event from which pledges weren’t allowed to leave until they recited the entire fraternity preamble.
Hours went by and Stone was texting with his mother about how he was exhausted, tired, and unable to recite the entire preamble, and that he and two other pledges couldn’t leave. Stone finally left at 2 a.m. and drove two hours to Delaware. Mrs. Foltz thought he had stayed the night in Bowling Green, but when she woke up he was there at home.
“That was not OK for them to do that,” she said of the fraternity’s behavior, while noting it “was not like him” to not follow through on his promise.
BIG BROTHER NIGHT
The event set off some concern for Mrs. Foltz, who called her son her “mother hen,” the oldest of three kids who was very family oriented and would often take care of his siblings.
On March 3, she texted with Stone, who had told her he was “bored” and wanted some Netflix recommendations. Mrs. Foltz said she joked with him and said he could be studying instead. Stone then explained to his mom that his fraternity had a “big/little” the next night, and told her “we are drinking a lot.”
Stone further told his mom he “wasn’t looking forward” to the event, which he explained was a “ritual” when she asked him why he had to drink. She said she then told him, “That’s stupid, it doesn’t sound like a good frat,” and urged him to be smart.
“That’s how every frat is,” he told her.
Mrs. Foltz texted with her son again the next day before the “big/little” event to check in before it took place. It was the last conversation they ever had.
That night, Stone’s roommate returned home and found him face down on a couch and unresponsive. The roommate called Stone’s girlfriend and after noticing Stone was struggling to the point his skin was turning a different color, he called 9-1-1.
Bowling Green Police Department records show they received notice of an unresponsive male about 11:23 p.m. Emergency medical technicians arrived within two minutes and continued cardiopulmonary resuscitation that Stone’s roommate had begun while on the phone with an 9-1-1 operator.
Stone was taken immediately to Wood County Hospital, and by the time his parents arrived in Bowling Green, he was set to be taken by medical helicopter to ProMedica Toledo Hospital, where he would be placed on life support.
He died March 7 at age 20.
“Frustration. Anger. Grief. It was all compounding at once,” Mr. Foltz said.
How Stone got to his apartment, where he was left alone and unresponsive, has become clearer through the preliminary investigation, said Rex Elliot, the family’s lawyer from the Columbus-based Cooper Elliot law firm.
According to Mr. Elliot, Stone and several other pledges were taken to an off-campus house March 4 dressed in coats and ties for an event referred to as “Big Brother Night.” Mr. Elliot said he believes that was done “deliberately” so people on campus wouldn’t know about it.
Mr. Elliot says the pledges’ ties were removed by active members and the students were blindfolded, ushered into a basement, and separated into different basement rooms. Mr. Elliot said it was dark in the basement, and some of the fraternity’s 60-some active members were there with the pledges.
The pledges were then told to stand in front of their “big brother,” who gave them a handle of alcohol — amounting to 40 shots of liquor — which they were to “completely consume” before they were allowed to leave the basement. Stone had specifically chosen his “big brother” because he too was from Delaware, his parents said.
The event started at 9 p.m. and Stone consumed the entire bottle in a “very short time” Mr. Elliot said. Stone was then driven home and dropped off by a fraternity member about 10:30 p.m.
“Stone was placed face down on the couch in his apartment and the individuals who brought him home from the [fraternity] left him alone,” Mr. Elliot said.
When Stone’s blood was sampled several hours later at the hospital, Mr. Elliot said, it tested at 0.394 percent alcohol content — and probably would have been much higher right after the event. The legal driving limit for an adult is 0.08 alcohol content.
“I never imagined in a million years that it would be at that level, as far as how much he had to consume,” Mrs. Foltz added.
In a statement to The Blade, university spokesman Alex Solis said BGSU continues to express its “deepest thoughts and sympathy to the Foltz family,” but didn’t comment on the hazing allegations’ nature.
“Stone’s death is a tragedy. BGSU has taken immediate action to place Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity on interim suspension while we assist local law enforcement with its investigation and also conduct a broader review of student life,” the statement continued.
With the approval of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, BGSU has appointed special counsel David DeVillers, a former prosecutor, to independently review the incident.
Reached by phone Tuesday and Wednesday, Lt. Dan Mancuso, a Bowling Green police spokesman, said the case was still open and detectives were still following up, but couldn’t add anything further. Similarly, Wood County Prosecuting Attorney Paul Dobson said he “didn’t have an update,” at this point.
Mr. Elliot said based on the evidence his firm has accumulated, there should “most definitely be criminal prosecutions” to come.
“It is clearly a violation of the anti-hazing statute, which unfortunately only carries misdemeanor penalties,” he said, referring to the Ohio General Assembly’s recent rejection of Collin’s Law, which would have increased hazing convictions from misdemeanors to felonies.
“Secondarily, I believe that there will and should be some level of a manslaughter charge here as well,” the lawyer said. “It goes beyond the hazing aspect of this because there’s no question that this was a deliberate, reckless event that cost Shari and Cory, and his brother and sister, Stone’s life.”
DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILITY
In response to an anonymous student essay published in the BGSU student newspaper arguing fraternities “have no place on college campuses,” Howard A. Traul II, a BGSU trustee, wrote a March 16 a rebuttal calling the opinion piece “a hate-filled, misinformation opinion letter from an anonymous source” and told his own story of being in a fraternity and his positive experience.
In the piece titled “Conscientious Greek life important to campus,” Mr. Traul made the case for the good fraternities bring to campus, and cast blame for Stone’s death not on fraternities themselves, but instead on youth drinking as a whole.
“Obviously, the senseless recent death of BGSU student Stone Foltz was a horrific tragedy that should never have happened,” Mr. Traul wrote. “Sadly, however, the problem is not fraternities but instead the problem is underage, overindulgent drinking by naïve young people.”
The piece prompted Betty Montgomery, the board of trustees’ chairman, to issue a statement clarifying Mr. Traul’s piece represented one trustee’s view, not that of the entire board.
“While I appreciate the opinions and perspectives of my 13 fellow trustees, this opinion letter is just that — an opinion,” her statement read. “The board was not previously aware of this article, and it is not a formal statement on behalf of the board of trustees.”
But Mr. Traul’s position as a campus leader sends a message that the university’s leadership isn’t taking a serious approach to solving the problem, Mr. Elliot argued.
“When we have people in leadership — he is a member of the board of trustees at Bowling Green — sticking their head in the ground and not seeing what’s going on here, that’s part of the problem,” Mr. Elliot said. “We don’t have people in leadership that are taking control of this situation and doing what’s necessary to put a stop to it.”
“We are demanding today, and Bowling Green can be the leader, that presidents of every university around the country immediately shut down fraternities today, and evaluate each chapter to determine whether or not that chapter can be a positive influence on that particular university or community,” he added.
Mr. and Mrs. Foltz called on the students who were with their son on the night of his death to step forward and reveal every detail about what happened. They also say ending fraternities until stiffer hazing penalties are adopted is the only way to truly create a “zero tolerance” culture.
“I don’t think anyone realizes if you step back and look at it right now, spring pledge is still ongoing,” Mr. Foltz said. “So if we don’t stop this now, there could be another student male or female just like Stone Foltz that could die tonight. So we really need to get the message out that this needs to stop now, and it needs to be zero tolerance to hazing.”
“Our message is for these presidents of these universities and these national fraternities to put a stop to this,” Mrs. Foltz added. “Put a stop to these fraternities until we can have zero tolerance. Until we can get hazing as a felony and harsher punishments, it’s not going to stop.”
Legislative action to create true “zero tolerance” for hazing on college campuses across America will have been too late to prevent her son’s death, but Mrs. Foltz sees it as her mission to prevent the unspeakable tragedy she experienced from happening to anyone ever again.
“I can’t even explain to you what we had to go through for four nights and four days. Sitting there watching our hopeless son with no brain activity,” she said. “I don’t want anyone else to go through it.”
First Published March 24, 2021, 8:00 p.m.
