Fraternity House Fire Kills Three

Note: Even when tragedy strikes, the newspaper still has to drag up any chapter indiscretion which had nothing to do with the topic of the article.

The Associated Press
August 27, 2004

Three Dead Miss. Fraternity House Fire
Three Students Killed in Fraternity House Fire at University of Mississippi

OXFORD, Miss. - A fire swept through a fraternity house at the University of Mississippi early Friday, killing three members, school officials said.
The blaze at the brick and wood-frame Alpha Tau Omega house broke out before dawn, and firefighters needed about two hours to bring it under control, chapter adviser Al Bell said. Hours later, smoke billowed out of where the roof had been.
Two dozen students and a house mother had been in the building at the time, school spokesman Mitchell Diggs said. Diggs confirmed the three deaths.The chapter has about 100 members, Bell said.
In 2001, the university suspended the fraternity because two members appeared in an Internet-posted photograph showing a man dressed as a police officer holding a gun to a man in blackface pretending to pick cotton. Alpha Tau Omega expelled the two members and apologized, and the fraternity was reinstated in 2002.