MIT Settles For $6 Million In Krueger Case

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology reached a $6 million settlement with the parents of a first year who drank himself to death at a 1997 fraternity initiation, officials said Wednesday.

MIT will pay Scott Krueger's parents, Bob and Darlene, $4.75 million, endow a $1.25 million scholarship in Scott's memory and implement policy changes intended to curb underage drinking.

Among the most sweeping of the changes is one requiring first-year students to live in university housing instead of Greek housing. The policy will take effect in 2002 when construction of new undergraduate housing is completed.

Other changes include stricter regulations and harsher penalties for alcohol consumption, the requirement that fraternities and sororities have resident advisors and the banning of pledge recruitment during first-year orientation.

"With this agreement, we can now move on with the healing process," said MIT President Charles A. Vest in a statement released Thursday.

The agreement was reached after Vest visited the Kruegers at their home near Buffalo for mediated talks. Vest later sent a letter to the family taking responsibility for Scott Krueger's death.

"Despite your trust in MIT, things went terribly awry," Vests's letter read. "At a very personal level, I feel that we at MIT failed you and Scott. For this you have our profound apology."

Scott Krueger was found unconscious in the basement of MIT's Phi Gamma Delta fraternity with a blood alcohol level more than five times the legal driving limit. He died after three days in a coma. MIT has since banished Phi Gamma Delta from campus.

Bob and Darlene Krueger told The Boston Globe that in order to prevent similar tragedies they decided to decline confidential settlement offers and demand that the terms of the settlement be disclosed.

"We were looking to make people aware of what was going on in the college and to keep it from happening to someone else," Bob Krueger said. "We can only try and bring some good out of our son's death."

The Kruegers' lawyer, Leo V. Boyle, told the Boston Globe that the Kruegers will soon file a civil action suit against the local and national chapters of Phi Gamma Delta. Boyle said the settlement with MIT was unusual because the university apologized and gave monetary compensation even though the Kruegers neither sued nor promised the university confidentiality.

After Scott Krueger's death, five fraternities--Sigma Nu, Beta Theta Pi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Phi Delta Theta and Phi Kappa Sigma--adopted alcohol-free resolutions.

Ash Somani, president of MIT's Phi Beta Epsilon fraternity, said Krueger's death was a wake-up call to the campus.

"The social scene, the party scene, is a lot different now than from when I was a freshman," Somani said.

"The important part [of the settlement] is not the money involved but the changes that are happening. And those changes are pretty visible," he added.

Damien Brosnan, president of the

InterFraternity Council, says Krueger's death has changed the way MIT students spend their weekends and has made them more aware of caring for their fellow students.

"There has been an incredible change in social awareness of alcohol," said Brosnan, who was a good friend of Krueger. "People look out for each other. People are out to have a good time, and not just to get drunk."

The Krueger settlement is the largest to date given by a university in a case of alcohol-related injury or death. In 1993, a $475,000 settlement was given in the death of and University of Nebraska-Lincoln student Jeff Knoll, a Phi Gamma Delta pledge who fell from the fraternity house's third floor window after being forced to drink large amounts of alcohol.

MIT spokesperson Ken Campbell did not return several phone calls seeking comment yesterday.