Heciel Nieves Bonilla, News Editor
Molly Manning, Managing Editor
“The medical examiner said if anybody would have called and got Adam help, he would be alive today.”
These are the words of Eric Oakes, the father of Adam Oakes, a VCU student who died before the end of his first year from hazing in the Delta Chi fraternity house in 2021. Feb. 27 marks the five-year anniversary of his death as the university and its students continue hazing prevention efforts.
Adam was pledging the Delta Chi fraternity when he died by alcohol poisoning at an event Feb. 27, 2021. Both the national Delta Chi organization and VCU suspended the fraternity from campus the day after his death, per a previous report by The CT.
After a seven-month-long police investigation, 11 people, including a VCU graduate and non-student, were indicted. His family then released a statement listing things to be learned from the death of their 19-year-old son and the ensuing arrests.
VCU and the Oakes family issued a joint statement in September 2022 following their agreement and settlement payment of $995,000 to the family from VCU and the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The agreement included strengthening the requirements for students’ Greek life eligibility, designating Feb. 27 as an annual hazing prevention day and a day of remembrance of Adam and other alcohol regulation and hazing prevention guidelines.
Adam’s parents founded the Love Like Adam Foundation to support students, families, law enforcement officers and others with hazing prevention education through spreading awareness and information about hazing, as well as providing scholarships for high school students.
Their documentary “Death of a Pledge: The Adam Oakes Story” recalls the night of Adam’s death and includes interviews from his parents and a few Delta Chi members who were involved.
The state of Virginia enacted “Adam’s Law” in 2022. It requires universities to provide hazing prevention training and education to all new, potential or current members of student organizations. It also requires the advisors of student organizations to receive hazing prevention training.
Universities must now maintain and publicly report actual findings of violations of the institution’s code of conduct or law violations pertaining to hazing that are reported, per a previous report by The CT.
Eric Oakes is pleased with the results of Adam’s Law, and said he is happy with the way VCU has implemented it. He noted that hazing remains a problem statewide, and hopes that students will take the expanded education on hazing provided to them and change both their own and their peers’ attitudes toward culture at fraternities and sororities.
“Some students are lining up to be hazed at these fraternities, like it’s a rite of passage, or it’s an honor to be hazed before you get into the organization, and I’m just shaking my head,” Oakes said. “As long as the kids come into the freshman year and into these fraternities with that kind of mindset, it’s really hard.”
To that end, Oakes and his family supported a bill last year to expand hazing education to high schoolers.
“If you talk to most of the kids that have seen our presentations, for example, I know a lot of them are changed,” Oakes said. “And I’m not saying we go out there and we say, ‘don’t join a fraternity’ — I mean, that’s not true at all. We are 100% supportive of you making your own decision, you know? [So] here’s information. Knowledge is power.”
Last September, VCU Student Affairs sent a letter to all students with a notice that “unrecognized groups” were operating on campus.
The letter cautioned students of potential health and safety risks in engaging with unrecognized student groups — Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity was operating under the guise of a group called Rose Club and former members of the Phi Mu Fraternity were operating under The Collective RVA.
VCU also began investigating the unrecognized, undercover Theta Chi fraternity at VCU over hazing incidents last October, according to NBC 12.
Eric Oakes was outraged at the news over unrecognized fraternity recruitment and hazing, and said he contacted VCU President Michael Rao at the time to ask what would happen as a result. He believes the students involved should be expelled and that the university should consider whether that is the kind of student it wants at the school.
“Let’s say some students came up and, you know, they got these biker chains and leather jackets, and it says Hell’s Angels on it,” Oakes said. “Is everybody okay with that?”
Fourth-year music education student Kyle Wheeler is the HR chair of VCU’s chapter of Phi Sigma Epsilon, a co-ed fraternity focused on professional development. He said their events are open to all students, with mostly business and engineering students participating, and that the organization includes hazing education in its onboarding.
“I transferred here from a different university, Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where I don’t know if you’re familiar with the situation, but Caleb Wilson was a victim in [2025] of hazing,” Wheeler said. “Unfortunately he was killed because of it. So I take hazing super seriously.”
Wheeler noted there are other organizations on campus that are more secretive about their recruitment process, and attributed that to a culture of secrecy in which members take pride in a process only certain people understand, even if it’s “not something necessarily wrong.”
Wheeler also said there is less activity in Greek life as a whole at VCU than other universities, including at his previous school and the larger university in that same city, Louisiana State University. In turn, there is a reduced presence of certain negative elements of Greek life such as hazing, and a reduced emphasis on joining secretive organizations.
“I think they push a good amount of diversity here and that you’re, I think, more inclined to join something that’s going to be more beneficial to you,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler does not consider VCU a party school, in which large events often with an abundance of alcohol and drugs are a big part of the experience of campus life and Greek life for many — but if students are looking, he is sure the experience can be found.
“You see it at the big schools or whatever, it looks glamorous and all that. But realistically, what happens in those — what we all know, we just don’t want to admit — is what actually happens in those organizations is not something that you want to happen to you or to anybody that you know,” Wheeler said.
Every semester since 2021, VCU has released a Student Organization Conduct Report on its Division of Student Affairs website. While the site lists fewer violations in spring and fall of 2025 than previous years, reported events continue — and the spring of 2024 saw the most conduct violations thus far.
In August 2025, Phi Kappa Psi was reported over an event in which someone suffered “alcohol-related conditions requiring medical services.” The incident echoed the alcohol poisoning that led to Adam’s death.
Phi Kappa Psi is currently under deferred suspension, during which an organization is “given the opportunity to demonstrate the ability to abide by” the violated policy or face suspension, until the end of 2026.
The fraternity did not respond to a request for comment. No currently suspended fraternity chapters contacted by The CT responded to requests for comment.
Josh Skillman, director for Communications and Marketing at VCU’s Division of Student Affairs, stated the university expects more reports of incidents as students become more aware of how to report hazing.
Skillman noted that VCU abides by both Adam’s Law and the Stop Campus Hazing Act, engages regularly with the Love Like Adam foundation, and joined other universities in the Hazing Prevention Consortium, which he described as a “research-to-practice initiative designed to build an evidence base for hazing prevention.”
“VCU offers a variety of programs designed to increase prevention and awareness related to hazing,” Skillman stated. “While some programs aim to increase understanding of hazing, others strive to increase skills that help decrease the likelihood of hazing (e.g. bystander intervention, ethical leadership, and group cohesion).”
Students can learn about these initiatives at https://hazing.vcu.edu/programs/.