A witness has spoken out about finding her friend undressed and distressed inside a locked fraternity bathroom while men outside chanted to take their turn.
Mia Lara, 21, said that she attended an Alpha Epsilon Pi party at the University of Chicago last Sunday with a friend who is not a student at the school and another companion. The group had spotted the event advertised on the fraternity’s Instagram account and decided to go.
Lara said the three of them were dancing in the basement when her friend began kissing a man and then vanished. After searching the house, Lara discovered a cluster of men gathered outside a locked bathroom door, shouting to get inside.
“They were saying this like, ‘When’s it my turn?’ and ‘I want to go in there,'” Lara told the Times.
Lara forced her way into the bathroom and found her friend sitting on the floor, slumped against the wall with her underwear pulled down. A man who is also not a University of Chicago student had his hands on the woman’s wrists. Lara told the Times her friend was yelling, “Make it stop” and “Get me out of here.”
Lara chased the man outside the fraternity house and confronted him about assaulting her friend. He allegedly responded, “She wanted to.”
The University of Chicago said Tuesday it had identified a “person of interest” in the assault and banned that individual from campus. Chicago police have not announced whether an arrest has been made.
The incident marks the second high-profile allegation of sexual violence at an elite university fraternity in recent weeks. Multiple women have accused members of a Cornell University fraternity of drugging and gang-raping them at an off-campus house in Ithaca, New York, with seven men initially charged in connection with those assaults before some charges were dropped and others remain pending.
The Alpha Epsilon Pi chapter at the University of Chicago did not respond to requests for comment about the Sunday party or its social media promotion of the event. The national fraternity organization also did not issue a statement.
Lara’s account adds a disturbing layer to the ongoing scrutiny of Greek life culture at selective American universities, where alcohol-fueled parties with mixed guest lists have repeatedly become settings for reported sexual assaults. The detail of bystanders actively encouraging access to a locked room where a woman was in distress stands out even within that broader pattern.
The Chicago Police Department’s handling of the case remains under observation as advocates for sexual assault survivors monitor whether charges will follow the university’s identification of a person of interest.