- A long-standing online rumor says Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (formerly Meghan Markle), once hazed her Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority sisters at Northwestern University by gluing their eyelids shut with superglue.
- The rumor is unfounded. No evidence — court records, newspaper articles or witness testimony — supports the claim. Searches indicate the rumor potentially originated in a Quora post.
- Some people sharing the claim alleged Northwestern University, Kappa Kappa Gamma and her former sorority sisters distanced themselves from Meghan following the announcements of her engagement to Prince Harry and their 2018 wedding. Articles from Northwestern, a Facebook post from the sorority and TV interviews with her sorority sisters prove that part of the claim is false.
- Snopes reached out to obtain comment from Northwestern, Meghan and one of her former professors. We will update this story if we receive further details.
Since at least 2020, online users have alleged Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, once hazed her college sorority sisters by gluing their eyelids shut with superglue. One Snopes reader emailed to ask, "Did Meghan Markle glue the eyelids shut of a girl in college during a sorority hazing incident?"
The rumor referenced the time spent by Meghan, formerly Meghan Markle, as a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at Northwestern University — where she graduated in 2003.
In short, Snopes found no proof to substantiate this claim. We sought any records that might help to verify the matter, including court documents, newspaper articles or witness testimony, and found none. As explained later in this article, some users promoted the evidence-free story with false allegations. For all these reasons, we have not added a fact-check rating to this unfounded claim.
We contacted Northwestern to ask about the hazing story. We also emailed representatives for Meghan, her brand As Ever and her Archewell organization, and will update this report if we receive further details.
Inaccurate search results, AI errors
As a research starting point, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo displayed numerous results about the alleged hazing incident. Those results included blog articles, Quora (archived) question-and-answer threads (archived) and Reddit (archived) posts (archived).
The Bing search results page displayed an inaccurate AI-generated summary about the rumor, primarily citing a prominently positioned, tabloid-style article from Air Glee, a blog that appears to consist entirely of AI slop. That article, published in 2023, was illustrated with an image from January 2016 showing political commentators Mark Halperin and John Heilemann — neither of whom authored the report or was mentioned in it. That same article also showed up at or near the top of results for other search engines and featured a forward-thinking, dramatically written conclusion closely resembling the way stories composed using AI tools typically end (e.g., "Only time will tell").
Air Glee contained more than a few red flags of untrustworthiness, including a generic-appearing WordPress layout, a nonworking "Contact us" link, and a lack of author and owner names, as well as a poorly-written "About us" page reading in part, "Let us help you relax with our well curated regular updates."
Another top result in lookups of the search engines was an article on hellotinhay, a website displaying some of the same AI red flags as Air Glee. That story, published in 2025, claimed Meghan's half sister, Samantha Markle, "allegedly revealed details of a 1998 sorority scandal from Meghan's college days at Northwestern." Meghan didn't enroll at the university until 1999.
Finding the oldest record of the rumor
The aforementioned lookups via prominent search engines, as well as searches of social media platforms, located some users referencing (archived) an X post (archived) from Dec. 1, 2020 — potentially the oldest post promoting the rumor.
The post contained three screenshots of text telling the story of the supposed hazing incident. According to the X (at the time, Twitter) user, that text originated from a Quora answer. A search of Quora for the same answer failed to find any record of such a post, suggesting either a user or a Quora employee deleted the content.
(@CamiSotto4/X)
The first screenshot presented the unfounded rumor as follows:
At twenty, Rachel Meghan Markle took part in an unspeakable 'hazing' incident. She used Superglue, not eyelash glue, to glue shut the eyelids of two first-year sorority pledges. What kind of f****** moron does that?? Only someone who's "insanely smart", right?! Or - would it be someone who has malice and envy in her heart??
The outcome of this 'hazing' incident was that two young women were almost permanently blinded and so traumatized that they could not bear to even be in the same room as this malicious criminal. Northwestern held a full inquiry into this incident. Meghan's father used his lottery money to buy her legal representation that was able to get her records sealed - which is why Northwestern is completely silent on the subject of Rachel Meghan Markle - and place a gag order on Northwestern. But the parents of the other two girls were not without resources either. Because of the trauma their daughters had endured, not only was Rachel Meghan Markle expelled from the sorority - whose chapter was placed under probation - she was placed on a four-year hiatus from Northwestern and forbidden to come onto any of its campuses or related facilities until the two young women had graduated. Rachel Meghan Markle, who should have graduated in 1999, did not get to graduate until 2003.
The author of the Quora text correctly cited Meghan's birth name as Rachel Meghan Markle, but the verifiable facts ended there. Publicly available data proves the claim that Northwestern was "completely silent" about Meghan was false.
In November 2017, Northwestern published a news release to report Meghan's engagement to Prince Harry, featuring congratulations from the Northwestern Alumni Association, information about her 2014 visit to the campus to promote her role on the TV show "Suits," and then-theater department chair Harvey Young's memories of teaching her about works by Black playwrights. Meghan, who is biracial, was born on Aug. 4, 1981, to Doria Ragland, who is Black, and Thomas Markle, who is white. (The story of Thomas Markle winning $750,000 in the California State Lottery in 1990 originated with an article from the Daily Mail tabloid.)
Around the time of Harry and Meghan's engagement, Meghan's former sorority sisters appeared in TV interviews, speaking fondly of their college years spent with her. The Kappa Kappa Gamma Facebook page posted (archived) a message to the couple saying, "best wishes for a lifetime of happiness!"
One year prior to the engagement, The Daily Northwestern reported news of Meghan dating Harry. That article featured an interview with Young, who said at the time that Meghan had been an unfair target of social media abuse, and that, "It's unfortunate that a person simply living their life, being in a relationship … can end up the target of internet trolls and harassment simply because they're famous."
We contacted Young for comment about the hazing rumor and will update this article if we receive further details.
Additional research notes
On Dec. 6, 2020, a YouTube account published a video about the Dec. 1 X post (archived). At the 2:42 mark in the clip, the user described Meghan's alleged involvement in the hazing as "purely speculation." That same user also falsely claimed "the sorority wanted no part in celebrating her wedding," as well as that Northwestern University didn't promote the matter.
A video shared on Facebook and YouTube in 2022 displayed the caption, "SHOCK! Meghan Kicked Out Of Sorority Because She Superglued Fellow Students' Eyelids Together." The clip promoted the familiar, unfounded allegations against Meghan and included a visual of a man in the lower right portion of the screen, holding a tablet and wearing a headset. His lip movements did not match the audible vocals. The scripting and vocals resembled modern-day AI slop.
In April 2022, Patricia McBride-Demetriou, owner of the PDina YouTube channel, interviewed Thomas Markle. People magazine described him as Meghan's estranged father, previously reporting he did not attend Meghan's wedding. At the 8:42 mark in the video, McBride-Demetriou asked, "Now, there was also a story about when Meghan was in college. She… they said she glued some girl's eyelids together. Is that true?"
Thomas Markle answered: "That one, that one, I don't know anything about that." She responds, "Ok. Maybe it's a rumor. I don't know where that came from."
One Quora user alleged (archived) British author Tom Bower wrote about the rumored hazing incident in his 2022 book, "Revenge: Meghan, Harry, and the War Between the Windsors." Searches of Bower's work on Google Books found no mention of the subject.
A December 2025 TikTok video (archived) showed the caption, "Eyelash Glue Swapped for Super Glue_! Amy Schumer Claims Reason Meghan Expelled From Northwestern." The clip featured an inauthentic depiction of comedian Amy Schumer with deepfake AI visuals and vocals talking about the alleged act of hazing, followed by AI-generated narration and fake images showing Meghan and other women squirting glue into other women's eyes. News media outlets worldwide would have published the inauthentic images — all depicting security camera-style camera angles — had they been real.
For further reading, we previously reported the truth of whether Meghan appears in a photo taken on a yacht alongside the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend Karyna Shuliak.
Sources:
Chappell, Bill. "Jeffrey Epstein Files: Tracing the Legal Cases That Led to Sex-Trafficking Charges." NPR, 25 July 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/07/25/nx-s1-5478620/jeffrey-epstein-crimes-timeline-legal-case. Law.
Exstrum, Olivia, and Stavros Agorakis. "Prince Harry Is Dating Northwestern Alumna." The Daily Northwestern, 10 Nov. 2016, https://dailynorthwestern.com/2016/11/09/ae/prince-harry-is-dating-northwestern-alumna/.
Henni, Janine. "Meghan Markle Recalls Her Mom Doria Being Called the N-Word and Being Mistaken for Her Nanny." People.com, 8 Dec. 2022, https://people.com/royals/meghan-markle-doria-ragland-mom-called-n-word-netflix-series/.
InaYang, and Ina Yang. "Alumna Brings New Season of 'Suits' to Campus." The Daily Northwestern, 19 Feb. 2014, https://dailynorthwestern.com/2014/02/18/campus/alumna-brings-new-season-of-suits-to-campus/.
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"Meghan Markle: Sorority Sister on the Royal Wedding and Prince Harry." YouTube, PalmBeachPost, 11 May 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbHwmzd_bsU.
"Meghan Markle's Northwestern Sorority Releases Throwback Portrait." NBC Chicago, 27 Nov. 2017, https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/meghan-markle-northwestern-sorority-portrait/28904/.
"Meghan Markle's 'Sister' Speaks Ahead Of Royal Wedding." YouTube, CBS Chicago, 20 Apr. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsnYEN9rjEc.
Perry, Simon. "'Sad' Meghan Markle Issues Statement: 'My Father Will Not Be Attending Our Wedding.'" People.com, 17 May 2018, https://people.com/royals/meghan-markle-statement-father-not-attending-royal-wedding/.
Petit, Stephanie. "Meghan Markle's Dad Thomas Markle, 81, Reveals Relationship with Nurse, 46, After Leg Amputation." People.com, 30 Mar. 2026, https://people.com/meghan-markle-father-thomas-markle-reveals-relationship-nurse-after-leg-amputation-11937455.
Samuelson, Kristin. "From Wildcat to Royalty." Northwestern University, Northwestern Now, 28 Nov. 2017, https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/november/from-wildcat-to-royalty.
"Thomas Markle In Conversation with PDina: PART 1." YouTube, PDina, 24 Apr. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvxKraJFacw.
"We Are Pleased to Learn of Meghan Markle's Engagement to Prince Harry and..." Facebook, Kappa Kappa Gamma, 28 Nov. 2017, https://www.facebook.com/kappakappagamma/.
