“I’m done with people like you… I don’t ****around. You think your ROTC commander’s tough? Well, guess what. You guys just met your match.”
That’s Donovan Golich, former Associate Director of Accountability for PACE, the “Policy, Accountability, and Critical Events unit” of UVA’s Student Affairs office, speaking to a student. Golich was interviewing a new member of the now-terminated Theta Chi fraternity regarding a hazing investigation. Allegedly, an audio clip was recorded by the Theta Chi brother and was subsequently obtained by The Jefferson Council, who published it online on Monday, September 23rd.
Following reports of hazing last semester, Theta Chi was investigated by the University from March 22nd to May 15th, 2024. The university ultimately found the organization guilty of several hazing behaviors, the most egregious of which being that new members were forced to consume “ a mixture of heinous/unknown items and habanero peppers,” causing several of them to vomit. The complete hazing report can be found on UVA’s student affairs website. Following the investigation, UVA terminated Theta Chi’s Fraternal Organization Agreement, prohibiting them from reestablishing their chapter at the University until the 2028-2029 school year at the earliest. Theta Chi is one of three fraternities to have its FOA revoked by the University in 2024, and one of five since 2022. This year, the University also referred two other fraternities to UJC, following hazing investigations, and those two organizations now await sanctions.
The audio recording, available on The Jefferson Council’s Youtube channel, is incomplete. It doesn’t contain the beginning or end of the interview, and segments appear to have been edited out. The name of the student being interrogated is also censored.
The recording, as it is published on Youtube, begins with Golich bringing up the new member’s ROTC membership and seemingly implying that he could get the student’s ROTC scholarship revoked if he doesn’t cooperate more fully with the investigation:
“You’re in ROTC. The information I have is something I can give to your commanding officer, and I will, based on what we have already corroborated. So, I don’t like doing that, but I’ll tell you, at a previous institution I worked at when I did that, they were discharged from ROTC after that came to light. I don’t say that lightly for you, because I understand you have more collateral impacts than other people do, especially if you have a scholarship with them and they’re paying for your school… I am going to single you out here, as well as one of your other brothers that I believe is in ROTC… I worked at Ohio State, that’s where I went to school. That was the first student conduct job I had. What the cadet did was relatively minor, and they got discharged… That’s really what we’re here to do, give you that chance, so you don’t throw your ROTC career potentially away, or at least put yourself at risk of that being the case.”
Initially, Golich is confrontational, but not egregiously so in the context of a student misconduct investigation.
He also claims he’s written up an honor case referral for the student, because his answers to a questionnaire regarding the investigation were similar to those of other former Theta Chi members, and copied his ROTC officer on the report. He then claims that “[he] can rip this up and make it go away for you. I can’t necessarily make it go away for other new members at this point.” Again, intimidating, but not unreasonable.
However, around halfway through the recording, the tone of the interview changes. Golich lays out the allegations against Theta Chi, which he claims the University has confirmed. The allegations he lists are described in full in the hazing report, released after the end of last semester. They include new members being forced to participate in humiliating and dangerous ordeals in which new members were “quizzed on fraternity and biographical information” and punished if they answered incorrectly, consume food and non-food items, carry around certain items at all times, and engage in “personal acts of servitude.” The new member responds by claiming that he had never been quizzed on anything, although he had voluntarily learned some of the fraternity’s historical information, and claims that he wasn’t very involved with Theta Chi and didn’t spend much time there. After hearing this, Golich’s rhetoric becomes aggressive and outright threatening. Here are some notable excerpts:
- “I’m not bull****ing you, this is already typed out. I have your commanding officer of Naval ROTC copied on this. I don’t care, I will submit it to him because you will need to learn a hard lesson.”
- “Maybe you’re not cut out to be in the navy. No, seriously!”
- “The commonwealth’s attorney was notified that a police investigation is probably going to be ensuing… That’s probably already going to put you in some hot water with Naval ROTC, because you’ll be subject to a police investigation… you’re going to be adding, one, your honor charges, two, I might even add obstruction of the student conduct system with UJC, so you’ll have to go to two boards, because I’ll do that too.”
- “ you’re not special… I’m not bullshitting you, I don’t care, I will send you to honor, and I will sleep at night just fine, even if it has harsh consequences for you.”
- “ I’m just going to send you to honor, because I don’t want to waste my time anymore with you… I’m done with people like you… I don’t fuck around. You think your ROTC commander’s tough? Guess what? You guys just met your match. I’m going to ask for a suspension of you, probably. That will be my making amends with you, because I seriously don’t want you on grounds. I think you are a threat to the health and safety of other people on this campus with how you act, so my amends are gonna be temporary removal.”
- “I went to law school. I’m a little bit more trained and learned than a lot of you guys. I know what I’m doing.”
- “This is nothing to me. This is easy.”
Apparently not. The Jefferson Council reported that Donovan Golich no longer works for the UVA, which University Spokesperson Brian Coy confirmed in a statement to The Jefferson Independent: “I can’t comment on the specifics of any personal matter, but I can confirm that Mr. Golich is no longer an employee of the University.”
The exact circumstances of Golich’s departure are unknown, including exactly when he left, why, and whether it was of his own accord. There is no evidence that his departure was caused directly by the hazing investigations or the leaked audio tape. He has since seemingly deleted his Linkedin profile and minimized his online footprint.
The recording has prompted an aggressive opinion article published by The Jefferson Council, and sparked mixed reactions online. At the time of writing this article, it has been watched over 1.7k times on Youtube, and a shorter clip, posted on Twitter, has amassed over twenty thousand views.
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