Retired Navy Seals take UCSB fraternity through physical and mental challenges
The fraternity brothers at Kappa Sigma didn’t quite know what they were getting into when retired Navy Seal Robert Roy and his team showed up at their door in Isa Vista last weekend.
They were about to embark on a three-day test of their physical and mental toughness.
“We did a lot of stuff that people weren’t super ready for,” said Kappa Sigma President Richard Archer.
Archer and his fraternity brothers formed a human chain in the ocean, swam buoys and ran down the streets of Isla Vista while their fellow students looked on.
The event was sponsored by the Alumni House Corp Board for the Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity.
Isla Vista landlord Scott Greenwald is a member of the board for Kappa Sigma.
He said the board has been looking for ways to help the community in the years following the Isla Vista tragedy in 2014.
“What we were confronted with four years ago, was a shooting in Isla Vista where people lost lives and people were injured,” Greenwald said.
The board brought the Navy Seals in to teach the fraternity leadership, teamwork, and accountability.
“We are trying to get people to understand that they have abilities beyond their own expectations,” Greenwald said.
Roy spent 20 years as an active member of the SEAL teams, serving with SEAL Team Six. His company SOT-G, which put on the event, first analyzed the fraternity, identifying their behaviors and cliques.
Roy put the young men through rigorous mental and physical challenges to teach them leadership through teamwork and accountability.
“Where they are at now is a very tight, responsible, respectful group of guys who want to be held accountable for when they do things that are wrong,” said Roy. “It’s night and day from where they were. I don’t even think they recognize themselves.”
Archer said the training went beyond what his fraternity brothers could have ever imagined.
“We are looking to push forward and change that Greek dynamic of hazing and unhealthy relationships that people associate with fraternities and we thought this program was a great opportunity for us,” said Archer.
