It was an average Thursday night at the University of Arizona. Living on campus especially my friends and I, like many others, decided to go out to various fraternity parties on campus. My friends and I were always very smart and safe about going out, we had heard horror stories of those that went by themselves or even with another girl.* We had a very strict code of always trying to stay in a group, but of course, this method doesn't always end up working out. The night was going great so far, the girls and I started at one of our friend's fraternity and hung out for about an hour or so. Then one of my friends expressed that she really wanted to go to this other fraternity that we had never been to before (They do have a bad reputation for a lot of incidents occurring at their house). Of course, we did not think anything about this fraternity's reputation at the time and headed that exact way.
Once we got there, one of my friends realized that her phone was acting up and she needed to pop out the SIM card in order for it to reset. This was an issue because she was the one calling the Ubers to and from. She saw a boy that she recognized who lived in the house, and asked him if he could help us out by getting us a clothes pin or sewing needle for the SIM card. He led us back to his room and handed us a sewing needle from a kit. We popped the SIM card in and out, and everything was perfect! We had no suspicious feelings about any of the guys in the house or the rooms at the time.
My girlfriend then asked the guy if she would be able to use the bathroom in his room. Of course, we went in together, as girls do, and took our time using the restroom and fixing up our hair and makeup. When we were ready to leave we noticed that the doors had no handles, only locks. This was not the only alarming part. When we began looking around the bathroom, there were fake fraternity letters painted all over the walls, which we had not noticed before. We began panicking and banging on the doors hoping someone would hear us over the blaring loud EDM music. Someone in the other connecting room to the bathroom started pounding back and yelling, "Shut the **** up!" We looked at each other, slowly starting to become even more scared than before.
With our hearts beating a mile a minute, we kept banging on both doors, yelling for someone to let us out. Luckily, a girl must have walked into one of the two bedrooms, and thankfully opened up the door for us. The guy my friend knew was gone, and there was a room full of people we had never seen before. We thanked the girl for getting us out and warned her about the dangerous bathroom. We rushed back downstairs, found all of our girlfriends and left immediately to go home.
This story continues to bother me even today, because who knows what could have happened if the girl didn't open up the door for us. There were so many questions that arose as we were all going home after this terrifying event. Why was the bathroom door missing handles? Why were there fake fraternity letters sprayed around the bathroom? What was the purpose of this bathroom? We soon became to theorize on what some of these answers may be. Maybe the room was designed for drunk girls to be trapped inside, to later be ambushed. Maybe the fake Greek letters would help the cover story if one of the girls went to the police. One of the girls trapped might use the letters that were painted on the walls to indicate which fraternity she was at (that did obviously not exist), only allowing her to look more intoxicated at the time that she might have been. We don't know any of the answers to these questions, we can only speculate. My friend and I knew that we were dangerously close to something scary happening.
I wrote this piece for other girls out there, not only at U of A, but other universities as well so that they can be much more aware of what could happen. Listen to your instincts, always be aware of every detail possible when going out. Drugging and date rape is a huge issue at the University of Arizona, as well as other universities across the country. As much as the school tries to prevent things like this from happening, there is absolutely no guarantee that events like this won't occur. Since that night, we have told the administration about our experience in hopes that they investigated this bathroom.
To my knowledge, the room no longer exists. However, these same tactics may be used at other fraternities, by other evil people. We have not returned to this fraternity ever again, however, there are still girls coming in every semester that may not know what can and does happen.
*It is important to note that my girlfriend and I, who were trapped, were sober the entire night. This includes when we arrived at the terrifying fraternity.
