The fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) is suing the University for revoking its program house status last February. The suit filed by DKE attorney Scott Karsten ’74 in the Middlesex Superior Court also asks for an injunction to be filed preventing the University from taking away DKE’s program house status.

The University still needs to give the court cause for why the injunction should not be filed, but, according to Karsten, the court date may be sometime in early May.

Director of Media Relations David Pesci refused to comment on current litigation.The suit comes after failed negotiation between DKE and the University.

“We attempted to reach out to President Bennet and Dean Whaley,” said Karsten, who is a DKE member. “We were met with a stone wall.”

DKE had lost its program house status due to a pledging event last October, in which four students were taken to the hospital for alcohol intoxication by their Residential Advisors. The students drank prior to the event and, according to Karsten, DKE was exonerated of charges of serving alcohol to minors by the Student Judicial Board (SJB).

In a prior Argus article, Dean of Student Services Mike Whaley said that he made the decision to take away DKE’s program house status because DKE’s actions had constituted an “egregious violation” in community standards. Whaley had said that program houses that commit “egregious violations” lose their status according to the program house evaluation criteria.

He said DKE brothers had endangered the safety of the pledging students by having them just sleep it off and not taking them to the hospital when they realized the pledges were intoxicated. He said that similar actions by Massachusetts Institute of Technology fraternity brothers resulted in the death of a student.

“It was one reasonable response under the circumstances that these kids were aware,” said Karsten about the DKE brother’s actions. “The kids who were there didn’t just abandon them in the middle of Andrus Field. They took them back to their rooms.”

“We were very upset and saddened to have to bring litigation at all,” Karsten said. “It really pains me to be involved in this.”

The suit involves three charges, including breach of implied contract, promissory estoppel (when one party incurs a loss when it acts based on a promise broken by another party) and purposeful interference with contractual relations. Karsten said that in revoking DKE’s program house status, the University imposed a punishment on top of the decision made by the SJB. He said this violated the disciplinary procedures outlined in the student handbook and therefore constituted a breach of contract.

He said that because of the loss of program house status, DKE was only able to fill its house with 11 students, rather than the needed 27 by the time of the suit.

Karsten said that the University may allow more students to live in DKE, but with only 11 set to live in the house next year by the time of the suit, DKE stood to lose $78,000 in rent. This would make the fraternity’s alumni association, the Kent Literary Club, unable to pay the mortgage and may lose the house it has had since 1888, according to Karsten,

He said that the University’s actions are part of a plan to coerce DKE to give up its house to the University.

DKE’s actions are a change from the strategy that they had said they planned to take in February. DKE president Rob LeBlanc ’04 said in a prior Argus article that DKE’s plans were to reapply for program house status.