Last Friday night, a Saint Louis University sorority’s charity
dance was disrupted when an off-duty Department of Public Safety
officer attempted to end a fight between the group’s guests and was
struck in the head and back by a chair, according to Director of
Public Safety Jack Titone.

The altercation provoked a DPS response, then a response from
the St. Louis Police Department. Titone said about eight SLPD
officers arrived, cleared the Busch Student Center, where the event
was being held, and eventually arrested three non-SLU, non-Greek
individuals for resisting arrest.

“It appears the trouble makers were not affiliated with the
University,” Titone said. “They were outside agitators.”

Titone said the number of guests at the event, hosted by Sigma
Gamma Rho, was about 100, as the sorority had intended, at 9 p.m.
When the officer volunteered to check in on the group around 11
p.m., though, there were closer to 400 guests.

Some of the non-sorority guests, Titone said, were from two St.
Louis fraternities, Kappa Alpha Psi and Alpha Phi Alpha.

The disruption began, according to Titone, with chanting among
different groups of people in attendance, which turned into a
“pushing match.”

The DPS officer who was present intervened to try to stop the
scuffle and was struck from behind by a chair. At that point,
Titone said, more chairs were thrown and the officer called for
back-up. The SLPD was notified shortly afterwards.

“If he (the DPS officer) hadn’t arrived there,” Titone said,
“this thing may have gotten uglier than it was.”

Two DPS officers received hand injuries while trying to remove
individuals from the fight, and one SLPD officer injured his hand
while handcuffing a suspect.

“It was a charitable dance to raise money for a good
organization,” Titone said, adding that it was unfortunate that
non-SLU individuals under the influence of alcohol disrupted
it.

Event organizers were not selling alcohol at the dance, so the
University did not require DPS presence.

“[Sigma Gamma Rho], for the most part, did all of the right
things,” said Assistant Vice President of Student Development Phil
Lyons. “They were cognizant enough to have security there. They
also had their chapter advisor there.” That advisor, he said, was a
University employee.

“In the future, security will be at that location,” Titone said.
“I think the event just demonstrates when outsiders come in [they
raise] the risk for problems.”

“There are things that you can do to [reduce] the possibility of
that kind of thing happening,” Lyons said, “and those girls did
that.”

The sorority itself declined to comment on the incident.

Titone said his department is working with student development
to ensure that security officers and moderators are present at
future student events.

In a meeting on Tuesday, representatives from student life,
event services, student government, student development and other
administrative departments held a meeting and established temporary
guidelines for public campus events.

Last night, Senator Cari Johns introduced legislation at the
Student Government Association meeting that contained many of the
same rules that the group hashed out on Tuesday evening, including
requiring that DPS officers be present at all BSC events open to
the public–in numbers proportional to the number of guests.

The legislation also stipulates that “all students show their ID
at the door … and all attendees submit to a metal detector test,
in good faith, that they are not carrying weapons or banned
items.”

Off-campus guests, the resolution said, will be required to
register themselves with a valid, state-issued ID.