Alarming footage from police body cameras has surfaced, revealing a troubling hazing event at the University of Iowa. The video shows numerous fraternity pledges, shirtless and blindfolded, smeared with food in a dimly lit basement.
Since its release on YouTube this past Tuesday, the footage has amassed millions of views across social media platforms. It documents the response of police and firefighters to a fire alarm at the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity in November 2024, as reported by the Iowa City Press-Citizen.
Upon entering the basement, officers encountered a group of 56 pledges, blindfolded and shirtless, standing in a dark room with food splattered over them. The scene, captured in the video, was unsettling.
“This looks like a hazing situation,” one officer remarked to a man in a baseball cap, who seemed not to be involved as a pledge in the ritual.
Despite repeated instructions from officers to vacate the room, the pledges remained motionless, creating a tense atmosphere captured in the footage.
Officers repeatedly called out for someone in a position of authority, including the “house dad,” as they attempted to manage the situation.
One man dressed in a white hoodie also stood in the basement doorway drinking a beer, and identified himself as “Jose.”
As he hands an ID to one of the officers, Jose, later identified as the 21-year-old Joseph Gaya, tells the officer, “I think it’s fake.”
“Does anyone want to be forthcoming on what’s going on? Anyone? Because you’ve got to see it
from my perspective of, ‘What the f— did I just walk into?’” An officer asked the group of unmoving frat brothers — many of whom were barefoot.
Gaya then crassly responds to the officer, saying the fraternity is holding a “celebration of life.”
At one point, he even wiped off a red splattered substance from a pledge’s neck as an officer was determining if anyone was hurt, and asked the cop if he wanted to “taste it.”
A man who identified himself as the fraternity’s president was separately interviewed on camera and told an officer that the pledges were completing the “lead up to initiation.”
Gaya was arrested and charged the following day with interference of official acts, according to court records obtained by The Post.
A spokesperson for the University of Iowa previously told the Iowa City Press Citizen that he was not a University of Iowa student at the time of the incident.
The charges were dropped after the state motioned to dismiss the case against Gaya, records showed.
The University investigated the incident and ultimately suspended the fraternity for four years, until 2029, the outlet reported.
