Sanda Dia, a 20-year-old Black student at the Catholic University of Leuven, died in 2018 after members of an elite fraternity forced him to drink fish oil, swallow goldfish and stand in an ice-filled trench.
Brussels, Belgium – On the morning of Tuesday, December 4, 2018, 20-year-old Sanda Dia was dressed in a white robe, selling roses on a cobbled street in the historic centre of Leuven, a quaint student city that is home to Belgium’s largest and oldest university, looming Gothic architecture and lively squares. A photograph shows the Black third-year civil engineering student smiling widely, standing alongside a potential customer.
Along with two other students, Sanda had begun the first task of a scripted two-day initiation ritual or “baptism” to join a student fraternity at the prestigious research university, KU Leuven.
His oldest childhood friend, Ferre Vervoort, saw the photos of Sanda selling roses on social media. “I was just hoping he would have fun. In the pictures, it looked like he was laughing and having fun,” he says. “But I didn’t see any pictures of the second day when he went to dig his hole.”