This article refers to the documentary. For the campus housing facility, see Fraternity house.

Frat House is a documentary film exploring the darker side of fraternity

Fraternities and sororities

Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...

 life. The film was directed by Todd Phillips

Todd Phillips

Todd Phillips is an American screenwriter and film director. He is best known for directing the comedy films Road Trip, Old School, The Hangover, and Due Date.-Early life:...

 and Andrew Gurland, and largely filmed at Allentown, Pennsylvania

Allentown, Pennsylvania

Allentown is a city located in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is Pennsylvania's third most populous city, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the 215th largest city in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is currently...

's Muhlenberg College

Muhlenberg College

Muhlenberg College is a private liberal arts college located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1848, Muhlenberg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and is named for Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America.- History...

; the majority of the film was shot in the house of the Alpha Tau Omega

Alpha Tau Omega

Alpha Tau Omega is a secret American leadership and social fraternity.The Fraternity has more than 250 active and inactive chapters, more than 200,000 initiates, and over 7,000 active undergraduate members. The 200,000th member was initiated in early 2009...

 fraternity, which has since been banned from Muhlenberg. The opening fraternity, that drove the filmmakers out of the college and the town, is the Beta Chi fraternity on the State University of New York College at Oneonta campus in Oneonta New York. Beta Chi is an unrecognized fraternity in Oneonta, and was kicked off the Oneonta campus after reports of severe hazing. It continues to operate as a rogue, unrecognized chapter in the town to this day. Other unrecognized fraternities from SUNY Oneonta shown in the film include Sigma Alpha Mu

Sigma Alpha Mu

Sigma Alpha Mu , also known as "Sammy", is a college fraternity founded at the City College of New York in 1909. Originally only for Jewish men, Sigma Alpha Mu remained so until 1953, when members from all backgrounds were accepted. Originally headquartered in New York, Sigma Alpha Mu has...

, also known as "Sammy", and Tau Kappa Epsilon

Tau Kappa Epsilon

Tau Kappa Epsilon is a college fraternity founded on January 10, 1899 at Illinois Wesleyan University with chapters in the United States, and Canada, and affiliation with a German fraternity system known as the Corps of the Weinheimer Senioren Convent...

, which was recognized in the spring of 2007 but shortly thereafter lost their recognition from the campus. Frat House won two Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

 awards in 1998, but has been attacked for containing sequences that were staged for the cameras.

Frat House was originally intended to be shown on the HBO

Home Box Office

HBO, short for Home Box Office, is an American premium cable television network, owned by Time Warner. , HBO's programming reaches 28.2 million subscribers in the United States, making it the second largest premium network in America . In addition to its U.S...

 TV channel, but was never aired after receiving allegations that much of the final portion of the film was staged. The sequences concerned involved 'hazing

Hazing

Hazing is a term used to describe various ritual and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group....

', in which aspiring members of the fraternity (known as 'pledges') are seen undergoing humiliating initiation rites. The allegation is that the pledges who appear on screen were in fact already members of the fraternity: the fraternity chapter was paid $1500 to film the events, and several members were paid $50 each to pretend to be pledges and re-enact things that were rumored to happen during fraternity pledging rituals. The filmmakers signed non-binding forms stating that the school and fraternity names would not be used, and that the events did not reflect the behavior of the fraternity. The deceit was noticed because the film was shot in the Spring, but Muhlenberg College did not rush during the Spring.

Phillips and Garland claim their film is completely accurate, but they have not refuted the claim that pledging did not happen during the Spring at Muhlenberg College. While not admitting to have done it himself, Phillips argues that staging re-enactments of true events is a technique used by well-known documentarians such as Nick Broomfield

Nick Broomfield

Nicholas "Nick" Broomfield is an English documentary film-maker. He is the son of Maurice Broomfield, a photographer.Broomfield works with a minimal crew, recording sound himself and using one or two camera operators...

 and Michael Moore

Michael Moore

Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...

.
Alpha Tau Omega is now trying to obtain their house back (where most of the hazing was filmed) on Muhlenberg College's campus despite their horrific history.

External links

• "Are Those Two Fools At It Again?", Cahiers du Cinemart (article on the controversy)