CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Serious hazing complaints on another Virginia college campus have more fraternities in hot water.
The University of Virginia has shut down one of the oldest fraternity chapters at the school, Pi Kappa Alpha, for what the university called “serious hazing behavior” in a statement to WUSA9.
While details of what allegedly happened have yet to be released, Pi Kappa Alpha national headquarters confirmed the hazing on the organization’s YouTube page.
“This action was taken following the confirmed, abhorrent and detestable hazing activities by individuals,” Pi Kappa Alpha Executive Vice President Justin Buck said in the video posted to the fraternity's YouTube page. “Men, we must do better. We must uphold our values of friendship love and truth.”
Pi Kappa Alpha said the termination of its UVA charter will last for at least four years. Meanwhile, UVA said it has suspended activities at three other fraternities -- Kappa Sigma, Theta Chi and Sigma Alpha Mu -- pending hazing investigations in those houses.
In February, the Washington Post reported a student pledging a fraternity at Kappa Sigma fell backward down a long flight of stairs after a night of drinking in the chapter house and was knocked unconscious, according to a parent of a student who had witnessed the incident.
Through an open records request, WUSA9 obtained a report made to the University of Virginia’s hazing hotline about a hazing incident at Kappa Sigma that same night, but the details were blacked out by the school due to privacy laws.
The injured student ended up in the hospital according to the parent who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of possible retribution.
“They’re thinking, I don’t want my kid to be ostracized,” said Susie Bruce, director of UVA’s Gordie Center, which a has national mission to end substance abuse and hazing among high school and college students. “And there’s a lot of humiliation on hazing. I mean that’s probably the biggest factor. It’s embarrassing. It’s shaming. It’s humiliating.”
In a January complaint obtained by WUSA9, a hazing prevention speaker called the UVA hazing hotline to report that an audience member who identified herself as the mother of a UVA student, said her son experienced hazing in his fraternity in the spring of 2023. The report stated the alleged hazing at the St. Elmo Hall fraternity was textbook hazing and included “physical assault” and pledges “forced to consume substances” involved in “uncomfortable parts on the body.”
But that mom told the third party she was uncomfortable reporting the hazing herself for fear of retaliation.
In a February call to the universities hazing hotline, an “anonymous parent” reported her son had told her about hazing at his fraternity that included a pledge being forced to exercise a lot and another being forced to consume 5,000 calories a day; pledges being told to get in a car and sit with their head between their legs so they could not see where they were being taken, then driven by older fraternity members to the middle of the woods and told to get back to campus on their own; pledges being put in a circle with other new members and forced to pass around a bottle of liquor and drink it until the bottle was empty; and the anonymous parent reported her son was forced to eat five habanero peppers by older members, at which point he vomited.
The anonymous parent said the hazing had “changed” her son and that “brainwashing is happening.” The anonymous parent said while her son was originally angered and annoyed by the hazing, he was now “complacent about the behavior and had just accepted this is what he had to do.”
But, when asked to provide the name of the fraternity so investigators could stop the hazing, the mom refused to share the name of the fraternity.
Bruce said the first step is changing the acceptance some students and parents feel towards hazing.
“Some of the things that we do, and this is part of Adam's Law, is providing mandatory education in person for all potential new members,” Bruce said.
Adam’s Law is named for Adam Oakes, who was a freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond in 2021, when forced drinking by brothers in the Delta Chi fraternity house led to the 19-year old’s fatal alcohol overdose.
It was Adam’s first night as a pledge. His father, Eric Oakes, said the party was a hazing ritual for new pledges hoping to join the fraternity. Six members of the fraternity were found guilty of or pleaded guilty to misdemeanor hazing or providing alcohol to a minor. None of them received jail time.
“No it really doesn’t,” Oakes said when asked if the pain of losing his only child, gets any easier. “And especially when you hear stories of other universities having the same issue or similar problems.”
Adam's Law mandates hazing awareness training for all college students in Virginia. And now, new legislation signed into law in 2024, will do the same at all Virginia high schools.
“That is the first hurdle for us is to try and educate the younger folks,” Eric Oakes said.
Eric Oakes said there is no making sense of what happened to his son.
“When you send your child to go to college for an education, it’s not like you're sending them to Iraq,” he said. “The last thing you think of is he's going to come back to you dead.”
There is only making sure it doesn’t happen to another family.
“There has to be some reason,” Eric Oakes said as he stood in the middle of his son’s bedroom, which remains just as he left it when he went off to college. “There has to be some change for the next kid.”
Eric Oakes and his wife now host hazing prevention seminars at colleges and universities, including one at VCU in February. According to a 2008 study, the most recent available, more than half of all college students say they have experienced hazing.
The details of the hazing incidents at Pi Kappa Alpha, which resulted in the fraternity being shut down, are expected to be posted to the University of Virginia’s hazing website in May.
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