OXFORD — Pi Beta Phi at Miami University has been suspended for a year for damaging a local lodge during the sorority’s recent spring formal.

Pi Beta Phi Fraternity for Woman announced on its website that Miami has suspended the chapter for one year for behavior at their formal, held at Lake Lyndsay Lodge in St. Clair Twp. The organization had until the end of Monday, May 10, to appeal the decision.

A letter written to the dean of students as testimony for a disciplinary hearing was posted on the Internet, and the owner of the lodge said the ordeal has been a nightmare for her and her family.

“People are talking bad about me. I’ve been accused of lying. Just called ugly names,” said Lyndsay Rapier-Phipps, a 2005 Miami graduate. “If I would have known any of this would have happened, I would eaten the difference and never said a thing about it.”

Rapier-Phipps said she thought the letter was for the dean of student’s eyes only, and she doesn’t know how the letter got online.

In the letter she details how students arrived heavily intoxicated at 8 p.m. “Some could barely manage to walk inside the facility,” the letter states.

She said students carried drinks onto the dance floor, broke a toilet in the women’s restroom and then continued to use it, urinated in the sinks, flipped a table of appetizers onto the carpet and vomited numerous times inside the facility.

At one point, several men climbed over the counter to get drinks after the caterer stopped serving alcohol. They also tried to swim in the lake, according to the letter.

Two crystal vases were taken outside and thrown off the porch and a large concrete lion was knocked over and broken, according to Rapier-Phipps’ letter.

Workers found a pile of human feces outside the building, and two couples were caught having intercourse in different places, she said.

Rapier-Phipps said she expected the event to be like a prom and have nonstudent chaperons.

Pi Beta Phi’s national organization issued a statement on its website that the Miami chapter has been placed on probation “in order to change the culture of the chapter and to ensure it models Pi Beta Phi and Miami University values.”

“Fraternity leadership is observing the university’s decision, but has not yet determined the future of its chapter’s charter,” the statement continues.

Contact this reporter at (513) 523-4139 or mengle@coxohio.com.