Since 2005, Qubein has raised more than $300 million for the school, transforming it from a sleepy Methodist institution to a lavishly appointed campus of outdoor hot tubs and big-screen dorm TVs that draws affluent students from across the U.S. Qubein, whose $2.35 million in annual compensation makes him one of the highest-paid college presidents, has donated to — and raised tens of millions of dollars for — the city of High Point. In 2010, the police department named him an honorary colonel.
The university said it “strongly rejected” Deborah Tipton’s accusations. Spokeswoman Pam Haynes, declining to make Qubein or other officials available for interviews, notes that a judge removed the university from a wrongful-death lawsuit the Tipton family filed. The court ruled that, under the law, the school and its administrators did not have a duty to protect Tipton, a decision that was upheld on appeal. “We continue to be saddened by the loss of Robert Tipton, whose tragic death at an unaffiliated, off-campus-housing apartment complex six years ago was ruled a drug overdose by the state medical examiner,” Haynes says.
The judge also removed the national fraternity, which declined to comment for this story, from the suit; the remaining defendants are two fraternity members, who deny wrongdoing. Walt Jones, the supervising assistant district attorney in High Point, says there is no evidence of a homicide or any reason to reopen the case.
Robert’s mother is undaunted. “What they’re hoping is I’ll go away,” she says. “I won’t go away. They didn’t just haze my son. They killed my son.”
Parents like Deborah Tipton are fighting to pierce the veil of secrecy that has protected fraternities for two centuries on American college campuses. Grieving families are pushing to investigate deaths once dismissed as roughhousing gone wrong. They are forcing universities and legislatures to publicize fraternity infractions, rein in their behavior and toughen the penalties after injuries and deaths. Tipton belongs to a group of 25 families that lost sons at fraternities in recent years. Members of Parents United to Stop Hazing hope to borrow pages from the successful playbook of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in the 1980s.
For now, few fraternity casualties ever result in punishment or any kind of serious reckoning, though the permissive dynamic has been shifting because of a confluence of trends: Cell phones and video cameras have captured evidence that would have previously been impossible to gather, litigation from families has held fraternities to account and more zealous prosecutions have drawn public attention and outrage.
Deborah Tipton makes for an unlikely sleuth and crusader against Greek life. Now in her 60s, she is a divorced former interior decorator and fixture on the Memphis social scene. With her pearls, pink nail polish and Chanel bag, she looks like the debutante she once was in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
Greek life has long leavened her social circles. Her dad pledged Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University of Virginia. He and his wife, herself heir to vast timber and rice holdings, socialized with Walmart Inc. founder Sam Walton. At Vanderbilt University in the 1970s, Deborah Tipton joined the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta.
Beyond all that history, Robert was a natural for fraternity life. A high school track star, he was easy-going and outdoorsy and liked nothing better than hunting mallards at his family’s Five Oaks Duck Lodge, a wood-paneled redoubt overlooking 6,000 acres of flooded timber and rice fields in Arkansas. With his rugged good looks, tousled curly dark-blond hair and open smile, he was popular with girls; his phone lit up with flirtatious texts from sorority members.
He chose Delta Sigma Phi, founded in 1899 at City College of New York, which has more than 100 chapters across the U.S. Its motto: “Better Men. Better Lives.” But his mother’s investigators found a darker side to the High Point chapter of the fraternity, often called Delta Sig.