Four former Ball State students face criminal prosecution after being charged last week with vandalizing a car.
The former students - Briana Fulton, Bianca Humphrey, Lauren Mason and Leterria Bigbee - were charged with two counts each of criminal mischief, a Class D felony carrying a standard 18-month prison term, according to a Muncie Star Press report.
The incident started when a Ball State student complained about hazing from Zeta Phi Beta, a sorority of which three of the women were members.
Lynda Wiley, associate vice president of Student Affairs, said the university had received the initial hazing complaint in December 2011.
"At that point, we conducted an investigation and we did not find enough evidence to substantiate that claim and so at that point, we did not sanction the sorority," Wiley said.
The then-sorority members and their friend, Bigbee, are accused of going to the ex-pledge's apartment complex in May.
The women are accused of mistakenly vandalizing a car that belonged to a 24-year-old male student, covering it with dog feces and nail polish remover along with scratching a smiley face and the word "bitch" onto the vehicle.
Once they had realized they vandalized the wrong vehicle, the women went back to the apartment complex the same night and inflicted similar damage to the ex-pledge's vehicle, investigators told The Star Press.
"The individual students were adjudicated through the student code through the Office of Student Rights and Community Standards," Wiley said. "Then the organization was sanctioned by the Office of Student Life."
Zeta Phi Beta is now on probation and is required to complete educational activities involving a series of programs on member accountability with students, advisers and staff from the Office of Student Life.
"We are following probationary terms that Student Life has given us and we are just making great steps and really being involved on campus," Tiffany Raber, president of Zeta Phi Beta, said.
The four women are no longer students at Ball State and have been added to the university's trespass list.
"What's been done has been done," Raber said. "You take care of it, you take responsibility and you move on. Your actions speak louder than words so instead of feeding into it, just do what you're supposed to do."
Raber added that the members of Zeta Phi Beta are getting back to their principles and starting from there.
"We're just being positive about it," Raber said. "We are just really motivated I would say - motivated to just be what we're supposed to be and be that excelling organization on campus that we can be."
Chris Jones contributed to this story.
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