Lang
9/1/21
An estimated crowd of over 2,000 people turned out for a protest at the Phi Gamma Delta house on Ellis Avenue Tuesday night. Members of the fraternity, also known as FIJI, are accused of drugging and raping a sophomore student in September of 2020, with members allegedly recording and photographing the incident with their phones. A petition on change.org calling for the fraternity to be removed from campus also claims no one in the fraternity said anything to stop the incident, and members were reportedly told to delete any proof. The petition states that a judge told the woman that the case will not be taken to court despite the evidence.
While most of those at Tuesday night’s protest peacefully chanted and held signs, some ran up to the house and broke windows and lights, kicked in the front door, spray-painted the side of the house, and overturned nearby cars. Video of those incidents is circulating around social media. One video includes subjects overturning a car while a protester yells at others to stop recording.
Some in attendance reported seeing some of those involved in the vandalism being arrested by police, but arrest records released by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office Wednesday morning do not include any charges from the FIJI protests.
Online police records show a complaint about criminal mischief at a reported FIJI party house on the 700 block of Iowa Avenue just after 10:45 Tuesday night.
A social media post from the FIJI group posted before Tuesday’s protest said that sexual misconduct is treated with a zero-tolerance policy, and any individuals who demonstrate less than exemplary conduct “have and will be expelled.”
A link to the change.org document is available here: