Error in php 7

Php 5.6 is reaching end of life. Therefor my ISP is changing to PHP 7.2 but Forum server code uses deprecated class instanciation or something

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘new’ (T_NEW) in /customers/d/b/6/vagabond31.org/httpd.www/wp-content/plugins/forum-server/bbcode.php on line 174

Code that fails

 foreach ($filters as $filter) {
            $class = 'FS_HTML_BBCodeParser_Filter_'.$filter;
            $this->_filters[$filter] =& new $class; //This row is un parseable
            $this->_definedTags = array_merge($this->_definedTags, $this->_filters[$filter]->_definedTags);

        }

The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]