A Florida Atlantic University student said he hoped participating in a fraternity’s ritual would leave him with a “big brother” and friends for life. Instead, he alleges it left him with a permanently damaged right hand — and the host fraternity facing a lawsuit that could cost it hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In documents filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, the student, Tyler Decowski, accuses FAU’s Delta Tau Delta members of hazing him and 20 other pledges with “humiliating pranks and dangerous activities” for weeks, including the alcohol-drenched night in November 2025 in which he sustained his injuries.
The lawsuit is against Delta Tau Delta’s national fraternity chapter, which operates from two Indiana-based companies. It does not name FAU as a defendant.
What does lawsuit say happened at FAU frat’s ‘Big Brother Night’?
That evening in November 2025, Delta Tau Delta members invited the pledges off campus to receive their “big brothers,” Decowski said in the lawsuit. The “Big Brother Night” is a fraternity tradition where new recruits get paired with older members who will help them adjust to college life.
The complaint says pledges were blindfolded and driven to a house in Boca Raton, where each was handed a Four Loko malt liquor and told to chug it. A smaller group, including Decowski, was then blindfolded again and taken to a second house believed to be in Delray Beach.
There, the lawsuit says, pledges were given bottles of 99 Bananas, a schnapps that’s nearly 50% alcohol, and ordered to finish them within nine minutes. Some began to vomit. Decowski said in the lawsuit he was warned he would be dropped from the fraternity if he didn’t drink the full bottle.
After drinking about half the bottle and then chugging beers on top of it, Decowski vomited and lost consciousness, the lawsuit says.
The complaint adds that Decowski has no memory of what happened next but suspects that, “while in an extremely inebriated state,” he struck a piece of glass, either a glass table or a window, and cut his wrist.
He regained consciousness in a hospital, driven there and “abandoned” by other members of the fraternity, the lawsuit says.
Attorney: Student was ‘peer pressured’ into excessive drinking
Attorney Todd Fronrath, who is representing Decowski, said the university freshman was under 21 when FAU’s Delta Tau Delta members “peer pressured” him to drink alcohol the night he sustained lacerations on his wrist that required surgery and left permanent nerve damage on his right hand.
“The event of ‘Big Brother Night,’ that is supposed to be a huge stepping stone for these guys into the fraternity,” Fronrath said, “turns into alcohol poisoning and a severe injury that he’s going to have to live with the rest of his life.”
Decowski filed a negligence lawsuit against Delta Tau Delta for injuries exceeding $50,000. He says the fraternity failed to prevent the hazing incident after a series of similar incidents in other universities across the country.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Maxime Cheesman on July 16 ordered the civil case will go to jury trial in April 2027.
In 2019, FAU suspended Delta Tau Delta for almost two years because of hazing allegations. The suspension was reduced to six months and the fraternity was placed on probation for a year because of that incident.
The lawsuit lists hazing incidents by Delta Tau Delta chapters in Florida universities and elsewhere in which pledges were subject to “brutal, humiliating, and extremely unsafe conduct.” The fraternity has previously condemned hazing.
An FAU spokesperson said the Delta Tau Delta chapter had been suspended until December 2026 following the November 2025 incident because of “behaviors meeting the definition of hazing, and alcohol events not aligning with university expectations and guidelines.”
The fraternity will be placed on probation until the end of 2027 and face restrictions on its recruitment and special event privileges until it completes multiple education and training requirements, according to FAU.
FAU’s Delta Tau Delta chapter has not issued a statement regarding the 2025 hazing incident.
This year, Jack Krema, CEO of Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity, described hazing as the “antithesis of brotherhood” in a statement following the death of an 18-year-old pledge in Northern Arizona University.
“It’s a pattern,” Fronrath said. “They were already on notice that there was a problem, yet they just disregarded the notice.”
Decowski also sued three FAU Delta Tau Delta members identified as the fraternity’s president, its pledge master and his “big brother” in the fraternity.
“We want to bring awareness that this kind of conduct perpetuated by Delta Tau Delta is just unacceptable,” Fronrath said. “It’s reckless. It defies any type of logic or safety for these young men that are looking for camaraderie and brotherhood when they try to join one of these fraternities.”
Valentina Palm covers immigration and West Palm Beach for The Palm Beach Post. Email her at vpalm@pbpost.com and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @ValenPalmB.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: FAU student sues fraternity, claims permanent injury from hazing
Reporting by Valentina Palm, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Valentina Palm, Palm Beach Post | USA TODAY Network
