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Hazing and a hamster: What happened at the Texas Cowboys retreat the night before UT student's fatal car crash 

A year after a Texas Cowboys annual tradition ended in tragedy, the University of Texas has released hundreds of investigation documents painting the clearest picture yet about the strange rituals, traditions and hard-partying ways of the iconic organization.

AUSTIN — After a raucous night of chugging beers, grilling burgers and playing football, a few dozen members of the Texas Cowboys — one of the University of Texas’ oldest and most elite student organizations — gathered at a barn on a private ranch in Brown County last September.

“Do it! Do it!” they yelled, forming a circle around a student who was gripping the body of a live hamster. Then, the man at the center bit off the animal’s head and spit it into a bucket.

This wasn't the first time the Cowboys barbarically killed a hamster in that manner. In fact, it's become something of a recent tradition at the annual retreat for the group, whose illustrious alumni include governors, U.S. senators, judges and prominent businessmen.

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Last year’s retreat ended in tragedy. Nicky Cumberland, a 20-year-old student from Houston, died a month after he was in a car accident on the way back to Austin, causing the university to launch an investigation into what happened that night.

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A photo of Nicholas "Nicky" Cumberland, a 20-year-old UT student from Houston, was included...
A photo of Nicholas "Nicky" Cumberland, a 20-year-old UT student from Houston, was included in an investigative report by the University of Texas. Cumberland, a member of the elite Texas Cowboys fraternity, died Oct. 30, 2018, from injuries sustained a month earlier in a car crash on his way home from the Texas Cowboys' annual retreat.(University of Texas)

The school handed down a suspension of up to six years for the organization, whose members are best known for firing the cannon at UT home football games.

Now, a year after the retreat, the university has released hundreds of pages of documents to The Dallas Morning News, including notes from at least 95 interviews with Cowboys. All student names were redacted.

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The interviews detail a night of terrorizing animals, shotgunning beers with Tabasco sauce and striking new members with sticks, in what is the clearest picture yet about the rituals, traditions and hard-partying ways of the iconic organization.

The grocery list

“Tomorrow is going to be a phenomenal day and we have a lot of great things planned for yall,” one of the Cowboys wrote to his friends in a group messaging app on Sept. 28, 2018. Wear a white T-shirt, whitewashed jeans and boots, he told them. The freshly minted Cowboys wouldn’t get their custom hat and signature chaps until a formal initiation ceremony with family that took place later in the fall.

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The student told the group where to meet with supplies before they would head to the highly anticipated “Ranch retreat.” The retreat is an annual tradition for the Cowboys, a group established in 1922.

The retreat had gone uninterrupted since 2000, when it was called “Picnic.” In 1995, 19-year-old student Gabe Higgins drowned in the Colorado River during his retreat. The Cowboys, already on probation at the time for hazing violations, were banned for five years.

Before last year’s retreat, Cumberland and other recruits had just endured a grueling selection process that spanned a month and required students to write five essays, submit letters of recommendation and attend interviews, dinners and happy hours with Texas Cowboys and alumni.

The exclusive group takes only 25 new members a year, often recruiting from fraternities. Freshmen aren't eligible. Women need not apply. The organization, which touts its philanthropy and public service, targets people who exemplify "pillars of scholarship, leadership and service," according to the application. 

Two nights before the retreat, the Cowboys brought the new recruits to UT’s football stadium. The inductees, commonly referred to as “New Men,” fired Smokey the Cannon for the first time. This would be their responsibility now.

Alumni spoke about what being a Cowboy meant to them. Then everyone celebrated with dinner at a Mexican restaurant and a free bar tab.

The next day, the New Men were given a lengthy shopping list that foreshadowed the night ahead: 125 hamburgers, 100 hot dogs, ketchup, mustard, mayo and bags of chips.

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Six gallons of milk. 50 bottles of Tabasco sauce.

Then the debauchery: 10 cases of Bud Light, 10 cases of Coors, 15 cases of “Natty or Frio or Cheap Beer,” 10 cases of White Claws, five handles of Tito’s vodka, five handles of “cheap vodka,” three handles of Jack Daniels, 12 Bud Light 24-ounce, tall boy Cheladas, four boxes of Franzia wine and two bottles of tequila. The list also included 10 cans of Copenhagen tobacco dip, a Juul e-cigarette for every New Man and five packs of cigarettes.

All of this for about 65 people, at least 14 of whom were underage, and a handful who agreed not to drink.

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Also on the grocery list — the three items which would later confound university officials: a dead octopus, a live chicken and two live hamsters.

The Ranch

The location of the retreat changes based on which member has access to a private ranch that year. The Brown County retreat was 150 miles northwest of the university in the tiny town of May.

The New Men carpooled to the ranch that Saturday evening. They arrived early to mow the lawn, gather firewood, fill coolers, set up chairs and fire up grills. They used pickaxes to dig rocks out of the grass to create a safe surface for football. About 40 of the more senior Cowboys, called “Old Men,” showed up in a chartered bus at about 10 p.m.

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They grilled burgers and hot dogs, listened to country music and drank beers by campfires. The octopus, purchased for shock value, also got grilled, but no one was forced to eat it.

After dinner, the New Men competed in relay races. Some of the students interviewed characterized the activities as “hazing,” but many told administrators they felt everything was optional.

A couple of Cowboys the university interviewed said the relay races were divided into stages. One Cowboy would drink a gallon of milk, then the next would stuff hot dogs, ketchup and mustard down his shirt and do army crawls across the field. Another group would do human wheelbarrow races with tobacco dips in their mouth, and others waited to be hit by a football to begin their race to chug a bag of wine.

Other students reported participating in Oklahoma drills, an exercise banned by the NFL that pits two people against each other on opposite sides who violently collide with the intent of taking the other down.

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After the relays, they played a game of football in the mud. Then, the Old Men transported the New Men to the edge of the property and told them to walk back to the retreat, which took about 40 minutes. They carried the chicken with them in the dark.

When the New Men returned, they took turns introducing themselves and firing the cannon. The loud booms drew a noise complaint, which resulted in a visit from  local law enforcement, causing many of the Cowboys to hide. But no citations were issued, and several students interviewed said the officers fired the cannon before leaving. The Brown County Sheriff’s Office said it did not have any calls to the ranch address that night.

As the night drew on, the activities intensified.

Cowboys split into subgroups — many of them breaking away with their fraternity members. Here, New Men experienced different levels of hazing, depending on the group. Some reported none. Others reported chugging a beer with Tabasco sauce or Spam. At least one Cowboy said he had to put cat food in his lip while shotgunning a beer.

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The Cumberland family told the university Nicky was paddled so hard he had “bruising on his buttocks” visible for nearly a month after the retreat.

The hamster

The hamster and animal cruelty allegations were a major focal point of the interviews university officials conducted about the night.

They were also the talk of the retreat.

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“‘Do you guys think they’ll do a hamster?’ is what people talk about,’ ” one Cowboy told an interviewer.

The hamster was killed while the Cowboys had broken into subgroups. The second hamster was not harmed.

Only eight students admitted watching the hamster get its head bitten off. Most of them denied it or said they heard about it from rumors. Many said they knew it was going on but walked away. One Cowboy interviewed said he wouldn’t discuss the incident. But those who said they saw it guessed that almost half of the people at the retreat were present and egging it on.

Students interviewed said Cowboys bit the heads off hamsters at previous Ranch retreats from 2015 to 2017.

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The hamster story has “always been lore,” one student told the interviewer. “You hear about it maybe happening once you get in. I had heard maybe it happened at retreats in the past. I know it happened at this retreat because everyone crowded around.”

The student expressed disgust.

“We made it a point to keep the chicken safe,” he added. The chicken was left at the ranch.

The accident and aftermath

The activities ended around 4 a.m., when some Cowboys decided to drive home, despite an invitation to spend the night at the ranch.

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Cumberland and five other students loaded into a 2017 GMC Canyon truck and hit the road for Austin. He and two others didn’t wear seat belts.

After more than an hour, the driver fell asleep and the car drifted to the right onto the grassy shoulder of the road somewhere in Lampasas County. The driver awoke and sharply overcorrected, veering left.

Photos in a Texas Cowboys investigative report provided to The Dallas Morning News by the...
Photos in a Texas Cowboys investigative report provided to The Dallas Morning News by the University of Texas showed the damaged vehicle in which Nicky Cumberland, a 20-year-old UT student from Houston, was riding the night it crashed in September 2018.(University of Texas)

The vehicle fishtailed, flipped across the highway, over the median and into the opposite lanes of traffic. It was 5:43 a.m. Cumberland was ejected from the car and found 10 feet away, lying face down. He was immediately taken to the hospital, where he died after a month on life support.

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After the incident, the Texas Cowboys Association stressed that hazing did not contribute to Cumberland’s death. The driver was sober and had not been intentionally sleep deprived as part of a hazing ritual, the group said.  As for the hazing that did occur, the Cowboys said they expelled a few bad apples.

During the months-long university investigation, the Cowboys were free to fire cannons during football season and hold social events.

“I’m feeling really frustrated about Cowboys and the fact that there hasn’t been any punishment yet,” Shawn Cumberland wrote in an email to the school more than four months after his son died. “Hopefully something happens soon because Cowboys is still having date events, having bar tabs and choosing new members, etc.”

The University of Texas announced in March that the group would be banned through May 2025. But in June, school officials said they’d allow the Cowboys to make the case for early reinstatement in 2022. In the meantime, the Silver Spurs, who take care of the Longhorn mascot, Bevo, are manning the cannon.

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The University of Texas announced in March that the group would be banned through May 2025....
The University of Texas announced in March that the group would be banned through May 2025. But in June, school officials said they'd allow the Cowboys to make the case for early reinstatement in 2022.(File 2016 / AP)

The university’s investigation found that “the actions of fraternity sub-groups contributed to the hazing culture within the Texas Cowboys,” but the probe did not lead the university to investigate what was happening at other fraternities, said Andel Fils-Aime, director of student conduct and academic integrity.

Fils-Aime also said he could not say whether students were individually disciplined as a result of the investigation, citing student privacy concerns.

The University of Texas Police Department has an open investigation into any criminal activity but has yet to make arrests. The Legislature passed a law this year broadening the definition of hazing, granting immunity to students who voluntarily report it and creating new reporting requirements for universities.

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Edward Lopez, president of the Texas Cowboys Board of Directors who lives in Austin, declined an interview but said in an email that the organization is working on a plan with the university to implement “meaningful reform.”

“Let me be clear: Some of the actions taken that night were egregious and not in keeping with the high standards of the Texas Cowboys,” Lopez said. “As an individual, I can say I was incredibly disappointed by the misconduct of certain student members, as was our entire alumni organization. That’s why we took swift action to expel them from the organization.”

“We hope to be able to educate and mobilize our student members, giving them the tools, not only to combat hazing, but to lead the fight against it,” he added.

In the university’s report, officials noted the similarities between Cumberland’s death and Higgins’ in 1995. Officials wrote that the Cowboys retreat has “changed little in almost 25 years.”

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Shawn Cumberland could not be reached for comment. But in another email he sent to the university in March, he questioned whether the Cowboys would ever take responsibility for their actions.

“It tells us that nothing has changed since Gabe Higgins’ death,” he said. “There is no ownership, but rather lack of sincere remorse. The Cowboys alumni does not accept responsibility for the continued culture of hazing and for the deceptive and dangerous system that was put in place to protect and promote hazing.”