EDITOR’S NOTE: This article mentions explicit scenes of violence, threats, and hazing. Readers are advised to proceed with caution.
In 2022, De La Salle University (DLSU) replaced the Non-Fraternity Contract (NFC) with the Non-Violence Contract (NVC), lifting restrictions on fraternity and sorority memberships. Students are free to join any organization as long as they abstain from all forms of violence. Despite this policy shift, a handful of students continue to participate in fraternities such as De La Salle University’s Tau Gamma Phi chapter, wherein a rivalry with Alpha Phi Omega ensues and violent hazing processes arise.
Shifting from NFC to NVC
Since 1995, students have been required to sign the NFC, prohibiting them from being affiliated with fraternities or sororities under the threat of expulsion, as stated in Section 6.2 of the contract. However, ID 122 students were greeted with the NVC, allowing them to join these organizations as long as their activities do not result in physical or psychological harm. However, questions regarding the NVC have surfaced following the hazing case of Jose Bautista III, an ID 122 student, in February 2023. The incident was linked to the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity, prompting a formal hearing and case conference by the Student Discipline Formation Office (SDFO) that same year. Former SDFO Director Ma. Dinah Espartero-Asiatico RPsy stated in an email interview that all cases undergo due process and that resolutions, in any case, are kept highly confidential.
More concerns over the contracts emerged when a leaked, but now deleted, document detailing Tau Gamma Phi’s initiation processes appeared online last October 7, 2024. The document exposed the harrowing ordeal that neophytes endure—belt whippings, beatings, iron branding, public humiliation, forced consumption, and 80 full paddle swings. Throughout the process, inductees are quizzed on the fraternity’s history. Mercado*, a neophyte recruited by a schoolmate belonging to his community chapter, was asked to review the document before being swiftly inducted into the brotherhood. “The slapping depends on how many letters you have in your code name in the frat. Public humiliation is true. The paddles are true…codes and conduct, tenets, and founding members are the basis for the number of paddle hits you receive during initiation rites,” he recalls, adding that the severity of the ordeal varies by chapter.
A long-standing tradition of violence
“I was about to die,” Velasco* opens regarding his final initiation rites into Tau Gamma Phi last 2023.
The fourth-year student was intentionally kept in the dark about the fraternity’s initiation process. He initially believed he would be taken to an unknown location in Quezon City. Instead, he was transported by his brod, a colloquial term for a fraternity fellow, to an undisclosed house in Laguna.
Velasco remembered the ordeal vividly: “When I entered that house in Laguna, it was full of [expletive] cocaine.” He also mentions the presence of firearms.
“I received 60 full swings,” he revisits. Apart from the physical abuse, Velasco recounts that he was paddled for every incorrect answer about the fraternity’s history. Given only three weeks to memorize the fraternity’s history, tenets, and codes of conduct, each mistake would result in one swing of the paddle. Still, he notes that he did not experience public humiliation, which other neophytes endured for months.
At one point, Velasco had to grip a paddle while being beaten. “While I held onto the paddle, they swung at me, they kicked me, [and] they punched me,” he continues. “I failed that one because I wasn’t supposed to let it go no matter what. I had to repeat.”
Velasco rues over the moment things took a dangerous turn: “I only received an extra three [paddles] because…I started seeing white light; I couldn’t hear…that’s when they all started panicking.”
It took around an hour and a half for him to recover. The fraternity members also applied candle wax and chili peppers to his skin. “They started biting my fingers, and then they started…to rotate [me], tug [me]…the purpose of it was for the blood to flow back to my brain,” he laments.
Velasco’s recruiter informed him that they wanted to remove the stigma of fraternities being violent and full of “drug addicts,” insisting that they no longer hazed neophytes. He confirms the leaked document’s accuracy, particularly one of the tasks done to successfully recruit a neophyte. The student explains that there is only a two-week time frame for the recruitment process. If unsuccessful, one would receive disciplinary action from his senior brods consisting of being paddled and physically assaulted.
The student comments that the NVC is not effective. “A lot of fights happened during my time, the last one being in Green Court [Parking],” he shares. During his time in the fraternity, Velasco was tasked to be an informant to his brods. Photos of Lasallian students from rival fraternities would be sent to him. Territorial disputes among fraternities were also prominent. Green Court—along with Food and Booze—were under Tau Gamma Phi, while rival fraternity Alpha Phi Omega occupied Beach.
Velasco is unaware of how the rivalry between Tau Gamma Phi and Alpha Phi Omega began. However, tensions reached a boiling point for both fraternities during the 2010 Philippine Bar Exam’s salubong festivities when Anthony Leal Nepomuceno, a member of Alpha Phi Omega, hurled an MK-2 fragmentation grenade. The police suspected that Nepomuceno was targeting members of Tau Gamma Phi as they were participating in their bar operations. This incident would now be remembered as the 2010 Philippine Bar Exam Bombing.
A fratman’s exit
Velasco has since severed ties with the fraternity. “That’s really my privilege because I wasn’t really deep into [it]…but if I was, they would hunt me down,” he admits. When fraternity members started coercing him into attending meetings, he knew that refusal would have resulted in being paddled. Velasco used the very own tenets of the fraternity against it, wherein academics or careers must be prioritized. Fearing for his and his loved ones’ safety, he cited his academic responsibilities as the reason for not meeting their demands.
“They would have this mindset that you have to do something about it. You want to enter here with us. You have to enter our world. You wanted to find a way,” Velasco stresses.
Meanwhile, Mercado was threatened with death threats, should he leave the fraternity—a grim reality many Tau Gamma Phi members face. “True brotherhood doesn’t require hurting someone just so you can call them your brother. Whatever this fraternity has under [its] tenets is a lie.” Mercado recalls the fraternity’s second tenet, Primum Nil Nocere, which means “do no harm.”
The stories of Mercado’s process and Velasco’s affiliation lead to the confirmation of Tau Gamma Phi’s violent and abhorrent predicament to be a brother. The existence of Lasallians under the fraternity’s chapter also calls into question the purpose and effectiveness of the NVC.
ERRATUM: February 17, 2025
An earlier version of the article incorrectly identified Ma. Dinah Espartero-Asiatico RPsy as the former director of the Student Discipline and Formation Office. The publication apologizes for the oversight.
This article was published in The LaSallian‘s January 2025 issue. To read more, visit bit.ly/TLSJanuary2025.
