Why fraternities and sororities should sue their own
The images seemed drawn from a horror film: 56 male pledges assembled in a darkened basement, most shirtless, their bodies smeared with ketchup, mustard, and alcohol, and many are blindfolded.
With body cameras recording, University of Iowa campus police and city first responders (responding to a fire alarm) captured a scene of hazing inside the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house. Since its release in February 2026, the video has circulated widely across social media and news platforms, garnering tens of millions of views.
What seized public attention was not merely the grotesque spectacle, but what it revealed: college students enduring a range of abuses, in secrecy and without meaningful oversight at the hands of fraternity members. When questioned about their safety, the pledges responded with protective silence. The footage offered a rare, stark view of hazing—what Stophazing.org defines as the humiliations, degradations, abuses, and endangering activities that individuals endure regardless of ostensible consent.
Such exposure is unusual. Hazing typically becomes visible only in its aftermath.
In 2025 alone, multiple high-profile incidents surfaced: a Southern University student died after being punched in the chest during an Omega Psi Phi fraternity incident. The University of Georgia investigated Sigma Chi fraternity for hitting pledges and coercing excessive alcohol consumption, as well as Pi Kappa Phi fraternity for burning pledges with cigarettes. Indiana University suspended fraternity social events following reports of extreme alcohol use, various physical and mental abuses, and even a student’s hospitalization. Hazing is not confined to fraternities. Databases such as HazingInfo.org document its persistence across organizational types and genders.
Yet institutional responses have followed a familiar script—suspend the campus chapter, issue a statement disavowing hazing, and proceed with an investigation with varying degrees of transparency.
Meaningful accountability tends to emerge through litigation initiated by victims or their families, prompting organizations and universities to shift into reputational and financial risk management. Even then, responsibility is diffuse, with institutions navigating a crisis while individual actors evade lasting consequences.
Against this backdrop, a recent development marks a dramatic rupture of Greek life collegiate culture. In January 2026, the national Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity sued Rutgers University former chapter members after a 19-year-old student was hospitalized in critical condition following electrocution during a hazing incident. The decision to separate from its own members and then pursue legal action against them fractures Greek life’s longstanding norms.
At first glance, such a move feels disloyal, violating the ethos of fraternity itself. Greek letter organizations are structured around practices of kinship—brotherhood and sisterhood—premised on loyalty and a lifelong bond.
Of course, this framing of familial connection obscures a greater truth in that hazing itself is the deeper betrayal of solidarity. By turning inward and assigning legal culpability to its former members, Alpha Sigma Phi signaled that this ethos will no longer function as a shield for hazing and other abusive conduct.
The implication is significant, as internal discipline, chapter closure, and individual member suspension/termination are not the terminus of accountability, but the beginning. Properly understood, intra-organizational lawsuits need not be paradoxical, contradicting Greek life’s ideals.
Such actions are a test of their seriousness to advance credible mechanisms for accountability within a system where commitments to safety have been symbolic and have failed regulation. The crucial question becomes: is this unprecedented lawsuit a signal of real hazing policing and accountability on the part of a Greek letter organization?
Incorporating civil litigation into a punitive repertoire alongside suspension, expulsion, and criminal prosecution introduces a more robust, multi-pronged approach. There is no single magic wand approach to address hazing. A range of strategies is particularly useful given the inconsistent meting out of sanctions across institutional and legal domains, given the ambiguity surrounding consent in hazing contexts.
At the same time, civil lawsuits are not without ambiguity. They may function as instruments of organizational safeguarding, signaling proactive governance while strategically deflecting liability. By framing hazing as the product of “rogue” individuals, organizations risk obscuring the structural and cultural conditions that enable such behaviors, thereby relocating blame rather than reducing harm.
In 2024, Pi Kappa Alpha’s national organization announced it would bring civil action against several individuals at the University of Virginia including its chapter president, seeking damages for financial and reputational harm—an action that similarly blurs the line between accountability and risk management.
The question, then, is not whether fraternities and sororities should sue their members, but under what conditions will such actions contribute to meaningful change. Lawsuits should be paired with transparent reforms including clear enforcement mechanisms and incentives that reward compliance to anti-hazing rules. Absent these measures, litigation is merely theater.
To address the skeptics in the room, no matter the motives behind such litigation, lawsuits can generate a meaningful deterrent effect. The prospect of personal financial liability and reputational damage introduces a new calculus for potential perpetrators. As such, litigation operates not only as punishment but as a preemptive prescription.
Critics may also argue that escalating penalties will drive hazing further underground. Yet secrecy is already a defining feature of the practice. The Alpha Delta Phi Iowa footage—pledges confined to a darkened basement, hidden from view—illustrates the point starkly. Introducing the threat of civil liability may not eliminate hazing, but it raises its costs in ways that could disrupt the behavior, even at its margins.
Whether other organizations will follow Alpha Sigma Phi’s lead is an open question. Internal resistance is quite likely. Yet the status quo is untenable. If Greek life is to endure within contemporary higher education, it must develop more effective mechanisms of self-governance. Suing one’s own members may not be a comprehensive solution, but it represents a potentially significant intervention in a culture that has long resisted meaningful reform.
Robin R. Means Coleman, PhD, is a Professor of Media Studies and of African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia and a member of the Insight Into Academia Editorial Board.
