Disturbing video footage of a University of Iowa fraternity hazing ritual has gone viral after local authorities released police bodycam footage.
The videos show a bizarre and discomfiting scene of 56 mostly shirtless students pledging the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity seemingly confined in a filthy basement.
Some men also appear to be blindfolded. One appears to have a brown substance smeared on his shirt.
The footage is from November 2024, when Iowa City police discovered the hazing ritual while responding to a tripped fire alarm.
Perhaps most disturbing of all is that the men refuse to respond to the police officers' orders, seemingly afraid to do so.
As the officers entered the room, they told the men:
"This stops here. Who is in charge?"
After one of the men indicated that those "in charge" were upstairs, the officer then commanded the men to start exiting the room, but they all seemed to freeze in place.
Hazing, though disturbingly common in fraternity culture, is forbidden at the University of Iowa and is illegal under local laws.
The Alpha Delta Phi fraternity clearly did not get that message. The scene is so shocking that even one of the officers was disturbed by it, telling the men:
“Does anyone want to be forthcoming about what’s going on? Anyone? Because you gotta see it from my perspective of, what the f*** did I just walk into?”
It appeared to have no effect. When the officer's partner entered the scene, he informed him that the frat pledges seemed afraid to listen to the police and violate what they'd been told to do by the fraternity leadership.
He said:
“I’ve already given multiple commands to clear the room and get out of here, but no one's moving. Clearly, they’re taking this pretty serious.”
When the officers repeatedly demanded that the frat brothers not participating call the "house dad," the men continued to claim they had no means of doing so, even as the police warned them their stonewalling was making the legal ramifications "worse."
When police finally found the fraternity president, they informed him that they would report it as an illegal hazing event. Later, the man who refused to cooperate with police was arrested for interfering with the investigation, but charges were dropped.
The disturbing common thread through each chapter of the incident is the secrecy the men committed to at all costs, even if it meant lying to and not cooperating with police.
The videos left normal people online deeply disturbed, especially given the connection between fraternities and the upper echelons of business and government.
The University of Iowa chapter of Alpha Delta Phi is suspended until at least July of 2029 because of the incident.
