The Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Council of the University of Oregon issued a statement today regarding last week’s littering incident that took place at Shasta Lake.
The announcement indicated that one fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, has taken partial responsibility.
Its fraternity members are now required to travel to Lake Shasta and clean the area, establish a philanthropy with the Shasta-Trinity Nation Forest, partner with established environmental organizations on UO’s campus and comply with any other organizations involved with the investigation.
Lambda Chi may run into a snag in their effort to clean the site as a Los Angeles Times article published May 25 indicated that “the university, students and citizens offered to help clean up the mess, but rangers had to turn them away because of the ‘biohazards’ found at the lake”.
As of the date on which the article was published, the area was classified as a biohazard. The Emerald reached out to The U.S. Forest Service to confirm whether or not this is still the case but they were not able to answer the phone.
If the biohazards are not cleaned up by the time the fraternity members return to Lake Shasta, they may be forced to head back to Eugene or wait until the area is deemed safe.
The council stressed that they are taking the incident seriously and extended their apologies to the U.S. Forest Service, residents of Shasta County, the UO, and anyone else who was affected by the images posted on the internet.
The council also made it clear that while Lambda Chi Alpha did step up and admit to some of the littering, there were other greek organizations at the UO involved.
An investigation to identify everyone responsible for the mess is ongoing.
