RICHMOND, Va. --Adam Oakes’ family, Love Like Adam Foundation, and VCU are hosting a daylong summit on Tuesday aimed at hazing prevention.
Dr. Courtney White said she works in memory of Adam.
“He was more like my little brother than he really was my cousin,” White recalled. “He died alone without us. I mean, that's really hard to live with, too.”
The keynote session of the Virginia Hazing Prevention Summit focuses on Oakes, who was a 19-year-old freshman at VCU when he died on Feb. 27, 2021, due to an alcohol-related hazing incident at an off-campus fraternity event.
Subsequently, VCU permanently banned the fraternity as a registered student organization.
“They will watch Adams video from WETA, which has body cam footage, the point of view of the boys involved in hazing,” White explained. “We went into the civil and we got these text messages that show that Adam was targeted. That they were making fun of his size that they got him a bigger bottle for bigger boy.”
White said they about 100 participants have signed up including K-12 leaders who she will help connect with university and college professionals.
Other sessions include: bystander behavior at diverse universities, four key strategies to combat hazing and hazardous drinking, and team building to prevent hazing among student-athletes.
White said they will use Adam’s case as a study to help law enforcement better investigate similar hazing incidents. The goal: to prevent the another unnecessary hazing death.
The foundation hopes to spread their message and Adam's story to school campuses across the country.
"I like to think, this may be in my head, but that he's seeing all of this and that he sees the hard work – and that he's cheering us from wherever he might be. That is my hope. That he knows that when he passed, his legacy and his memory did not," White stated.
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