(From left to right) Eric Oakes, Courtney White and Rachel Tully, assistant dean of students at VCU, participate in a Q&A with reporters following the 2024 Virginia Hazing Prevention Summit. Oakes’ son Adam Oakes, who was also White’s cousin, died from alcohol poisoning after a frat party at VCU in 2021. (Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)
Eric Oakes’ voice cracked for a moment when he reflected on the Virginia Hazing Prevention Summit he’d helped host at Virginia Commonwealth University Tuesday. Three years after the death of his son, Adam Oakes, the pain lingers but so does inspiration.
“It was great seeing everybody collaborate and come together,” Oakes told reporters following a day-long gathering on VCU’s campus June 4. “I know Adam’s was the extreme of hazing, but there’s so much physical and mental damage done by hazing. It needs to be eradicated.”
Oakes was a college freshman when he died of alcohol poisoning after a fraternity party hazing event in 2021. While hazing can be broad, it usually entails people seeking to join institutions performing expected actions that can sometimes be dangerous to them — such as drinking excessive amounts of alcohol.
Adam Oakes, 19, died of alcohol poisoining after a VCU fraternity event. (NBC12)
Members of his family went on to create the Love Like Adam Foundation and visit colleges in multiple states to give seminars. The Virginia Hazing Prevention Summit in partnership with VCU was their largest endeavor to date and the first of its kind in Virginia.
The summit included representatives from various universities, brainstorming sessions and presentations, with groups including the Hazing Prevention Network participating. The family of Stone Foltz also attended. Foltz, a Bowling Green State University sophomore, died from hazing-related alcohol poisoning days after Oakes had.
Oakes’ cousin Courtney White had been working on her doctorate degree when the tragedy struck and focused her dissertation on hazing prevention. She points to decades of other research about hazing in high school and collegiate levels when advocating for law changes at the state capitol and when organizing events like the Hazing Prevention Summit.
“This is real. It’s prevalent,” White said. “I’m hoping with the summit we can really get that message out — but then also tap into all the expertise that’s already in and around our state.”
The messages resonated with Dirron Allen, associate president of student life at James Madison University.
“We are now talking about this in light of a tragedy, but we are in spaces to think deeply,” he told reporters after the event Tuesday evening.
Rachel Tully, the assistant dean of students at VCU, noted how strategies to mitigate hazing will look different for each institution but that there are tools to learn from each other.
A portion of the gathering included brainstorming meetups for various student and athletics groups to strategize and interact with each other.
For universities, part of hazing prevention is already mandated by state law.
Passed in 2022, “Adam’s Law,” requires people joining student organizations at Virginia colleges and universities to undergo hazing prevention training and for the universities to post reports of hazing misconduct online.
A new law, set to take effect next month, will also build on those efforts by bringing anti-hazing education into high schools.
(From left to right) Eric Oakes, Linda Oakes, and Courtney White stand outside of the University Commons at Virginia Commonwealth University after co-hosting the Virginia Hazing Prevention Summit on June 4, 2024.
It will require Virginia’s Board of Education to develop standards and curriculum guidelines for anti-hazing prevention in public schools.
The instruction will include examples of hazing and its dangers along with the consequences of alcohol intoxication and laws surrounding hazing — such as bystander intervention.
In the meantime, the inaugural Hazing Prevention Summit will continue to incubate strategies. White said that other universities have expressed interest in hosting the event in the future.
At one point during the day, White recalled stepping aside to view the crowd at the summit. Seeing people gathered with a common goal was “overwhelming,” she said.
“It’s always my goal that more people know about him so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” White said. “I hope people can stop seeing us as a grieving family and start seeing us as a catalyst for change.”
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