IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) – One person has been arrested and a University of Iowa fraternity chapter has been suspended as authorities investigate a potential hazing incident, university leaders said Friday.

It comes after first responders were called to the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house early Friday morning for a fire alarm, and they found several dozen pledges blindfolded in the basement, according to a release from the university.

One person has been arrested and charged with interference with official acts. That person is not a student and does not live at the house where the incident took place. Their name has not been released at this time. University leaders did not say how they were involved in the incident.

The University of Iowa’s Office of Student Accountability has suspended the operations of Alpha Delta Phi, pending the outcome of the investigation. The fraternity’s national chapter has also suspended the charter until further notice.

The university released a statement saying it is committed to protecting the health and safety of its students and will address any behavior that puts student safety at risk.

The university has also reached out to the students involved in the incident to offer counseling resources.

The investigation into the incident remains ongoing.

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The Iowa Supreme Court is set to decide if the families of four people who worked at the Tyson Foods meatpacking plant in Waterloo and died of COVID-19 in 2020 can move forward with their wrongful death lawsuits against company leaders.

The families of Sedika Buljic, Reberiano Garcia Leno, Jose Ayala and Isidro Fernandez allege they died of complications related to COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 because Tyson executives and supervisors failed to prevent the spread of the virus, lied to workers about the outbreak and ordered sick employees to continue working.

The Black Hawk County District Court dismissed their cases against Tyson last year. A lawyer for the plaintiffs asked the Iowa Supreme Court during oral arguments Thursday to reverse that lower court ruling and let the cases proceed.

Attorney David Yoshimura, representing some of the Waterloo Tyson plant supervisors named in the lawsuits, said these are “straightforward workplace injury claims” that belong in the workers’ compensation system, not in the courts.

“…Which is why the district court dismissed them. Nevertheless, the plaintiff here has engaged in some creative pleading of their own and tried to, through some gamesmanship, keep these claims in the courts,” he said.

But plaintiffs’ attorney G. Bryan Ulmer III said Tyson leaders’ actions satisfy an exception to that law.

He said Tyson executives and supervisors’ fraudulent misrepresentations and gross negligence caused the four employees to die of COVID-19. He said Tyson leaders told employees the virus wasn’t spreading at the plant and told workers with COVID symptoms to keep going to work.

“All the while, supervisors were placing bets on how many positive COVID-19 cases would result from the outbreak,” Ulmer said. “The end result was the largest workplace outbreak of COVID-19 in the entire country.”

The COVID-19 outbreak at the Tyson facility in Waterloo

The Tyson plant in Waterloo was in the spotlight in April of 2020, when local health officials and some state lawmakers were urging the company to temporarily shut down the pork plant to help stop the spread of the virus.

The workers’ families allege that by the beginning of April, Tyson supervisors knew that COVID-19 “was rampantly spreading” at the Waterloo plant. Some were part of a betting pool “to wager how many workers would test positive for COVID-19.” Tyson later fired seven managers who were involved.

The plaintiffs said that Tyson executives and supervisors “forced” sick workers to work at the Waterloo plant unless they got a formal positive COVID test result (which could take several days at that time), refused to provide proper masks and allowed employees to work without masks.

“A box of rags and frayed fabric was provided at the Waterloo facility for workers to use as ‘optional’ face coverings,” the plaintiffs alleged in a court filing.

Tyson had already closed its plant in Columbus Junction because of a COVID-19 outbreak, and, according to the lawsuits, was already taking virus precautions at its plants in China for months.

The Waterloo plant was closed on April 23, 2020, after the virus had been spreading there for weeks.

Local health officials reported in early May 2020 that more than 1,000 employees of the Tyson pork plant had tested positive for COVID-19.

The lawsuits

The families of the four Waterloo workers who died filed two separate lawsuits in the summer of 2020. They were combined for some legal proceedings.

At one point, the cases were sent to the federal court system.

Tyson argued that it was acting under the direction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to prevent a food shortage during the pandemic and that federal courts should hear these cases instead of state courts. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case and sent it back to the state court system.

The Iowa Supreme Court will likely decide by the end of June 2025 whether the cases can move forward.

Tyson Fresh Meats settled lawsuits earlier this year with the estates of three people who worked at its pork plant in Storm Lake and died of COVID-19.

Students in the Decorah school district will have an interesting 2025-26 athletic year.

After the Northeast Iowa Conference dissolves at the conclusion of the current academic and athletic year, Decorah will be left without a home. They will operate as an independent, meaning they will need to schedule games for all sports on their own, according to a report by KCRG.

“I don’t assume that it’s going to be easy to operate as an independent because our schedule is blank and most schools that are in a conference have most of their blanks filled in,” Decorah School Board President Cindy Goodner said. “But we’re starting with nothing so it’s going to be a challenge for next year.”

An appeal to the Department of Education was denied for Decorah to join the Upper Iowa Conference. Iowa law says that every district is entitled to belong to a conference, but the DOE stated the enrollment size of Decorah was more than double the average of those in the Upper Iowa Conference.

Decorah has 435 students in grades 9-12, while the Upper Iowa Conference averages 170 per school in those same grade levels.

The WaMaC was also considered, but the nearest school there, Independence, is 68 miles away. And conference matchups would include travel to schools almost 300 miles away round-trip.

Most schools put their schedules together years in advance, leaving Decorah without many options for 2025-26. The school board stated they are working hard to resolve the matter starting in 2026-27. 

The Decorah football team will not face these same issues, as those scheduled are set by a district and through the Iowa High School Athletic Association. The Vikings reached the state quarterfinals this past fall and went undefeated in the regular season.

Waukon, New Hampton and Crestwood have been allowed to join the Upper Iowa Conference. The Northeast Iowa Conference voted to remove Waverly-Shell Rock two years ago, which left it with just five teams.

The Northeast Iowa Conference is the oldest conference in Iowa, holding events for more than 100 years. Once the baseball and softball seasons come to a conclusion in summer 2025, though, it will no longer exist.

This news come on the heels of several high school varsity basketball programs announcing they will not compete at that level in 2024-25.