Unheard: True Crime in Their Own Words - They Left Him Alone to Die: The Fraternity Hazing Death of Adam Oakes

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

This episode tells the heartbreaking story of Adam Oakes, a 19-year-old Virginia Commonwealth University student who died during a fraternity hazing ritual.Adam was excited about college. He was outgoing, compassionate, and the kind of person people naturally gravitated toward. But like so many freshmen, he also wanted to belong. That desire to fit in led him to accept an invitation to attend what he believed was part of a fraternity pledging process.That night, Adam was taken to an off-campus house where pledges were pressured to drink extreme amounts of alcohol as part of a hazing ritual. At some point, Adam consumed a fatal amount. Instead of getting him immediate help, members of the fraternity left him alone in a bedroom. By the time anyone checked on him the next morning, Adam was dead.His death shocked the community and exposed a hazing culture that often operates in secrecy, protected by silence and loyalty to the organization over the safety of the students involved.In this powerful conversation, Adam’s father, Eric Oakes, walks through who Adam was, what happened that night, and the devastating moment his family learned their son was gone. But Eric also talks about what came next. Rather than retreating into grief, he chose to fight for change.Eric founded the Love Like Adam Foundation, which works to educate students and families about hazing and push for stronger laws to hold organizations accountable. His advocacy helped lead to Adam’s Law in Virginia, legislation designed to strengthen hazing penalties and increase transparency around fraternity misconduct.This is not just a story about one tragedy. It’s a story about a culture that still exists on many campuses, and a warning that every parent sending a child to college needs to hear.Adam’s story is devastating. But Eric’s mission is simple: make sure no other family has to live through it.To learn more about Eric’s work, visit the Love Like Adam Foundation. (https://lovelikeadam.com)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Unheard, True Crime in Their Own Words. Today I'm joined by a father whose loss has sparked a movement to protect countless young lives. Eric Oakes lost his son Adam to a fraternity hazing ritual at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2021. Adam was only 19 years old and his story was later featured in the documentary Death of a Pledge. Out of the unimaginable grief, Eric and his family created the Love Like Adam Foundation, an organization dedicated to ending hazing and honoring Adam's legacy with compassion and action. Eric has not only carried his son's story into schools, courtrooms, and legislatures.

He's also become a good friend of mine, someone whose strength and determination I deeply admire. And I want to say this. When I talk about Eric to others, I always say the same thing. Eric is one of the kindest, most big-hearted people I have ever met. He's the type of person that if you have a problem with him,

we automatically know that you're the problem, not him. That said, Eric, thank you so much for being here and allowing me to share Adam's story. Wow, awesome introduction. And thank you so much, Justin. Thank you for having me on. Of course. So real quick, before we get into it,

I want people to know that we'll put links to death of a pledge and the love like Adam Foundation as well as your social links in the show notes for people to follow. And I'm going to encourage them to do that. Eric, so as you know, I know your story. I've heard it before and we're sharing it with a new audience. This is about true crime in their own words and these stories in your own words. So I'm just going to hand it over to you to kind of share about, you know,

who Adam was and then what happened that horrific night and then everything since. So however you want to start it. Okay, great. Thank you again for having me. Adam was larger than life. He was a great kid. My wife and I had been trying to have kids for 10, 15 years and we weren't so successful until Adam came along. So it was a true gift from God. He was a sweet-natured person. He was very easy to get along with. He had lots of good friends and, you know, just a really big heart. After his passing, we didn't really meet his friends until after his passing to get to know them the way we do, you know, know them now.

And they say a lot of the same things that we felt. Like when he walked into a room, you were happy to see him. You know, it brightened you up. A lot of times when he'd go over to friends' houses, he'd sit down with the parents and talk to them before he'd go to the kid's room. And the parents were telling us that after he passed. And they were just like, no other kid did that. And even my friends, when they said they had a conversation with them,

they said, it's weird because my 18-year-old child, doesn't talk to me like that, doesn't communicate the way, you know, Adam communicated with, with us. And I mean, he was just truly a joy to have. And he was our only child. And there are other stories where, again, after he passed, we heard about these. This just to tell you what kind of a good nature person, he was, there was a girl at his high school sitting in the hallway crying. And all the people were walking by kind of gawking at her, making fun, laughing. But Adam sat down next to her, Adam sat down next to her and tried to figure out what was going on with her. And his friend that was with him said, you're going to be late to school, you know,

the class. So we got to hurry up. And he said, go on, I need to talk to her. I need to find out what's going on. And later that girl came to us and told us what it was, was her parents were splitting up. She had just broken up with a boyfriend and her parents were splitting up. And she said, Adams said something to the effect like, come on, this, you know, if it was meant to be, it was meant to be. They're going to split up regardless of, you know, nothing because of you. But just think of this, you get two Christmases, birthdays, you know, you can pit each other, each of them against you to get the new iPhone or, you know, you just, you just had that kind of soft-spoken, you know, humor and, you know,

he's just a good person, all around good person. He, when he was 16 years old, he needed to, I don't know, he played basketball. Even though he was a bigger kid, he always, he always, he needed to, I don't know, he played basketball. He always like to play like house league basketball and play with his friends and he always got on the team with his friends and he wanted to try and give back to the community so he and another friend coached a basketball team and they were 13 14 year olds and at first the league commissioner was kind of like i don't know i've had bad experiences with teenagers coaching you know they say they want to do it and then they don't do all the things and i say i even had a conversation with the commissioner And I said, you're going to understand, this kid's responsible.

He will do, if he says he's going to do it, you know. And he's like, well, if not, then you're going to do it. And I'm like, no, I don't want to coach kids' team like that. But Adam did it. And even some of them even came to his funeral, some of the kids on the team. That's how much of an impact he had on them, you know. And they were sad. They didn't understand what happened either.

that a lot of us feel that way. But yeah, so he's just a good person and he made Linda and I better people. A lot of times if we made a joke or we thought something was funny, he'd be the adult in the room.

He'd be the one saying, that's not really funny, you shouldn't laugh at that or you shouldn't make fun. You know, that's not... And we're kind of like who's the adult here right and uh yeah so so and and and in a lot of other ways he made us you know better people too um he kind of held us to a higher standard in a lot of ways um so leading up to um the time when he passed you have to remember it was covid um so a lot of the schools i mean he didn't

have a senior year where, you know, you go to homecoming and you, you know, you go to, you have the spring sports and you have a graduation even. They had a Zoom graduation where Linda and I were the only people that were allowed to go. And so there was a lot of things that were happening around that time that were very strange. It was a weird period of time, even in American history. So we were really surprised that Virginia Commonwealth was having students attend and live on campus. And they were making us or making the freshmen do that.

We didn't have a choice. You couldn't live off campus and you had to live on campus. So we took Adam down to college. and he quickly met people, and he had a few friends that were down there that were childhood friends that kind of made the decision why choose Virginia Commonwealth

over other universities that he got accepted to. So another big thing about VCU was it's only two hours away by car, and there was a train that goes right into Alexandria from Rist. Richmond. And so he would ride the train up, you know, once or twice a month, and we would pick him up from the local stop. So also, my father had stage four cancer and stage four COPD, which nowadays, I mean, those two, the combination of the two are a death below. So we were trying to prepare for my father's passing, which he passed 30 days after Adam.

But never were we thinking, you know, Adam's life was in jeopardy at all. So I guess maybe after about two or three months, Adam had met somebody in his freshman year. And he lived in the neighborhood where we grew up, and he was going to VCU. And he was an older sophomore or junior. I can't remember. But he had pledged into Delta Chi fraternity, which was the VCU chapter. And he was kind of talking to not just Adam, but also his friends about potentially pledging their fraternity over. other fraternities that they were, you know, checking out as well. But all three of them decided to do

to pledge with Delta Chi. And so I guess just skipping to the night of what happened. But leading up to this, I need to explain, I was of the belief probably more than 50 percent that You know, if somebody, you can't make somebody drink something. Okay, that was, that's the, that's the thought or the mindset. You know, well, they didn't make him drink. You didn't even physically force him to drink. So what we've learned about that night is Adam didn't know he was an underground pledge. He didn't know that what was going to happen that night.

The only time he had a chance to say no was when he was standing around 40 members that were clapping their hands yelling chug, chug, chug. So once he drank that first drink, it was seven or eight shots that was in a solo cup. So once that was consumed, from there on, you know, you're not making normal decisions. you're not, you know, you're so inebriated. It's, it hits you really quick, too, with the hard liquor. And if you're not an experienced drinker, or if you're not, you don't have high tolerance, I mean, that, that right there alone is going to hurt you. Prior to that, Adam was not a drinker, correct?

No, he wasn't. I mean, he would drink, if he went out with his friends, he would drink these things called white claw. Yeah, that's not. Yeah. And so he didn't like beer. Um, uh, as far as hard liquor goes. Um, I mean, I'm sure he tried it before, but I don't think that that's definitely not something that, that he was drinking. Yeah. I think the point that I want to make is that, you know, he wasn't like this heavy or habitual drinker. It was, you know, white claws are, are fairly alcohol, you know, really. And, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, And I wanted to point that out because having a solo cup, those red solo cups filled with liquor, that's significant.

And I just wanted to kind of paint that picture for everybody and to let people know, like, you know, Adam was not an experienced drinker. This was not something that he was doing on a regular basis. So I just wanted the people to know that. Absolutely correct. And so what happened was he got a text around 8 o'clock that somebody, was coming to pick them up from the dorms. The Delta Chi fraternity was already having their new member orientation or Big Little is what they call it, Big Little night. And since Adam's Great Point Average wasn't at a certain level, they said, VCU said that he couldn't join that fraternity,

but nobody told him that. And then the Delta Chi chapter of VCU decided to take him as a an underground pledge. What that means is you're still going through the motions of being a pledge. You're just not officially a pledge in the eyes of the university and of the fraternity. But once you get your grade point average up, hopefully in the next month or two, they'll then automatically make you a member because you've already gone through that pledge process, It's underground. So, and it happens quite a bit.

And they treat them differently. And what I mean by that is Adam didn't get a hazing prevention webinar. He didn't get any materials about, you know, hazing and how to identify it. So he had no education whatsoever about what could potentially happen. He wasn't there with all the other members at the time because he was an underground pledge. So they picked up Adam and two other boys that night around 8.30. They made them put their heads down and they drove all around the city of Richmond so they didn't know where they were. They pulled up at the house.

It's kind of a row house down in. It's an off-campus rented home by one of the members, and actually two or three members live there. So what they do is they go off-campus so they don't get in trouble on their on-campus housing, where a lot of the problems don't occur on-campus housing because they can get in a lot of trouble that way. The university can then hold them accountable, whereas when they're off-campus, it's more of a lot of, gray area and it's harder to prove and because they don't have jurisdiction there. Okay, so once Adam and the other two boys arrived, they were whisked up into the house and up to the top floor where they waited in a bedroom for, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 minutes

to hear their names called. Once their names were called, Adam's name was called, obviously. He went down and there's four. 40 members standing around cheering and rooting him on. And then they matched him up with Andrew White, who was his big brother. Andrew had made a drink in a solo cup. And somebody witnessed and said that it was strong. It was not cut with any Coke or anything. It was Coca-Cola, that is.

I mean, it was a strong drink. So pure alcohol. And their drink was Jack Daniels. And every family has a drink. Some might be Maker's Mark, some might be Jim Beam, but Adam's family, which is his big brother, it was Jack Daniels. So anyway, Andrew had poured a bunch of alcohol

in the Red Solo Cup, he hoisted it up in a ceremony and took a drink, and then he gave the rest to Adam to drink. And that's why I say there was, you know, seven, eight shots in that solo cup. And that's when everybody was standing around saying chug, chug, chug, and then at that point, Adam was sober, and he could have said, no. But, I mean, the peer pressure that's on you and the abuse you're going to get. it, you know, for the next months. I mean, it's just, it just doesn't happen.

Can I interject here? Absolutely. I'll share a personal story with you in the audience, although I think you've heard this for me before. So when I was in college at Georgia Southern University, I pledged a fraternity T-T, talk Kappa Epsilon. And we had a house off campus as well. and basically kind of what you're saying,

and just for people to understand, because a lot of people have the gift of hindsight or the ability to sit back and listen and say, well, he could have done this, he could have done that. Well, first of all, when you're young, particularly a young male, because we're stupid, right? We don't make the best decisions. Our full frontal cortex is not fully developed,

but at the same time, you're away from home. You don't have any friends there. It's a new environment. think Adam might have had one or two friends that went to school with him, but they were also pledging the fraternity, correct? Correct. So Adam's wanting to fit in, and I get what that's like, because when I went to Georgia Southern University, I had taken a year off after high school, so I didn't know anybody that I was aware of that was down there. I did run into friends from high school later, but that's either here nor there. So I got introduced by somebody to Tick,

pledged, hey, you should rush, you should, you know, you should rush, you should pledge, you should do this. And I did. And when you go through the hazing stuff, now we didn't. do what, you know, to the degree that that what Adam went through, thankfully. But there was a big little night that we had as well where you learn who your big brother is and you go through all of this and you do drink and you have to drink because like Eric said, these people are standing around you. The peer pressure is, I can't even describe how, how tense it is. Like you, you don't have an option really to leave. Even if you think you do, you just unless you have the utmost confidence in the world,

which most kids aren't going to have that, you don't have really the ability to do it. Plus, you, at those ages, you're also immortal. You know, in those ages, the possibility of dying is so far from you. So, you know, I remember having to drink to a point that was horrific. I remember the same thing where they put you in a car and they drive you around.

They have bags over our heads and drive you or so you don't know where you're going. I remember sitting in the backseat of this car, trying to feel where we were going. going to kind of have an idea. And then they did that again for when we had what was called a hell night. And that's where they took us out to these woods. And they just basically berate and abuse you. In fact, every single person except for me and one other, they made almost every pledge

cry. Me, I was not going to let them do that. And there was another guy who wasn't going to let them do. In fact, I laughed at them about it, which was a mistake. Don't do that. But what I'm trying to see, the point of saying all of this is that when you're sitting here listening to this, if you've never been. through this experience firsthand, you don't really know.

And on top of that, you end up wanting it because they preach brotherhood. And they're like, you know, this is a family you're going to have for life. These are the best friends. These friends are going to be with you for, does all this sound familiar? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The friends that you're going to have for the rest of your life, they're going to be with you through thick and thin.

They're going to, you know, they're going to always have your back. And you're like, man, I really want this. I want this true brotherhood. I want this camaraderie. And, you know, Eric's, I'm sorry, out of the. was coming in there as an only child. I was not technically an only child, but the difference from my brother and I is almost seven years. So, you know, we weren't close growing up. And so you wanted that brotherhood that you maybe didn't experience. And so you really get

sold on this idea. Now, for me, it got to a point that once I was in the fraternity, I learned quickly, like within two semesters that the brotherhood line was bullshit. Exactly. And it was basically, here's what they wanted. There were some people that they liked. And and then there were some people they wanted because they would make sure that they would pay their dues on time. Unfortunately, I'm ashamed, but whatever it is what it is to admit it, they looked at me as the second one, that, hey, this guy's, you know, his dad's covering his fraternity dues, he'll pay for it. We know they got it. We don't necessarily want him here or whatever the case is. And so when I quit myself and some other members, the Preteness, who's the president of the fraternity, ended up like black, like taking a sharpie and myself and others blacking our names off of the historical rosters.

I found that out later. the guy's name was Jason Ross who did that. And my point is to all of this is not to like share my, my experience with the fraternity, like it's part of the story, but it's for you guys to understand just the level of, I don't know, manipulation and that they kind of do to get these young guys in who just want a sense of being and a sense of self. So I didn't mean to cut you off the body.

No, you're fine. You're fine. You're absolutely correct. I mean, all of it is BS. It's just, yeah, unfortunately, Linda and I both didn't go to college, so we didn't know what to expect or what to warn him of or, and we had seen other stories of children being hazed to death. And we thought these universities and colleges and got it under control. And little did we know. I mean, it's gotten ten times worse over the past few years.

So, and I'm talking about, you know, 2020, 2021, 2021, you know, those years. So, so once Adam consumed, you know, that Red Solo Cup, they went through and, excuse me, sorry about that. Once he drank the Solo Cup, they broke off into groups. And at that point in time, a bottle was handed to ask. Adam and it was a large bottle. It wasn't one of the pints, which all the other members were getting.

But for some reason, bigger kid, bigger bottle, is in Andrew's words. So they gave him a handle of whiskey to drink. And they kind of watched over him to make sure he drank it, even though they say they watch over him to make sure he drank it. was okay. You know what it is. They watch over him to make sure he drank it all. If I may, Eric, and I'll just call, I'll call it what it is. It was flat out bullying. He was,

he was the bigger kid. And so they were going to treat him differently because he wasn't necessary. He didn't necessarily look like their ideal of what they wanted. And so they decided to, because I know you're going to share it later because when you share, when you share the text messages. Yeah. It's flat out what is. And it's, it's, it's, it's, vile and disgusting. So let's let me let's just call it what it was. They were they were singling him out and bullying him and and and making an example of him. Absolutely. They targeted him from day one. You know and and like you said, I don't think they cared if he had money if he did they most of them were all behind in their dues we found out later. So yeah, perhaps for getting a bunch of

kids in there that will pay their dues. That's a big. deal but yeah so so throughout the night there's all kinds of different stories from where out and he threw up on the back steps and and then came back in and if that was true the alcohol would have you know exited his body but the way it works it's not like like beer there's such a small portion of alcohol in the beer that hard liquor, it's a much higher concentration. So it gets into your bloodstream almost immediately. So really the only way to alleviate it is through maybe a charcoal, which is administered at the hospital or an EMT could do it, where they can absorb the alcohol from your body.

But throwing it up, you know, for beer, I mean, that might be okay, but not for hard liquor. it's already absorbing into your system. So then, of course, there's different stories. You know, what happened that night. The long and short is probably around 3 a.m. So this started at 9 a.m. and by, or assuming 9 p.m., sorry, it started at 9 p.m., and by midnight he was passed out. because there were stories of a few people helping him inside

and where he collapsed on the floor and they put him on his side to make sure he doesn't throw up and swallow his vomit. And then they had people watching him. So on around 3 a.m., his big brother left. He claims that he FaceTime with somebody and showed him, you know, Adam and he's resting and he'll be okay until the morning I need to go home.

So your big brother's supposed to watch after you the whole night, you know, to make sure that you're okay. And the president was there the whole night and was sober, but Adam's big brother wasn't sober and you're supposed to be sober so you can cognitively watch over the, you know, the little. So anyway, he, And VCU is a huge teaching health school and teaching school. And none of these people were nurses or studying to be doctors or anything like that.

So none of them had any experience with what to do when somebody passes out from alcohol or has had too much alcohol to drink. And the reason I say that is because Adam had every single sign. of alcohol poisoning and not one of them picked up the phone and called 911 to get him help and some sad things the whole night is sad but maybe a block from there is a small fire station so if they had an EMT on call or on staff that night which it was a Friday night they probably did somebody could have been there within five minutes, but nobody made the call. So the medical examiner around 3 a.m. thinks that's when he passed, and that happens to be

exactly when Andrew left. And, you know, Andrew said that he heard him snoring, and Adam didn't snore, even though he was a big kid, he didn't snore. And he, we believe that that's when he started to struggle to breathe. There's a gurgling sound that happens when you're dying. And they misinterpreted that as a snore, or they knew what it was and were too afraid to get into trouble and took off. I don't know. I'll never know the truth to that. So it was around noon the next day, Saturday. We received a bang on our door. And I remember looking through my ring doorbell and seeing three officers. And Linda was asleep. And I let them in. And they said, you and your wife need to be here for this news. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I had texted Adam earlier that

morning asking him if he was okay and to give me a call because I wanted to, we knew he was pledging and we knew he was getting introduced as a new member that night, but we didn't know any of the other antics that were going to go on. And he did text me around 815, getting ready to go up in the house so he couldn't really communicate over the phone anymore after that point. And then I asked Linda, because I texted him back saying, what house? What are you talking about? And then Linda reminded me that it was, you know, they were having the announcement of the new members. And so once I got Linda, the police that said there's no easy way to say this, Adam.

dead. And it just, you know, to talk about change in your whole world. I mean, it was like a freight train slamming us, and you had just everything that you do in life is centered around the health and well-being of your children and their happiness. And we just totally wanted to give Adam the love and affection that we didn't get as kids or we felt we didn't get as kids. And, and And we said we would never do that, you know, to our children. So, yeah, I mean, we smothered him with love, and our whole family did that. And, yeah, so we're grateful to have them for the 19 years that we had them. But then we're also pissed because, you know, somebody took them away that weren't responsible people.

And so at that point, I mean, everything in our lives changed. We were getting mixed information from some of the people that were there, what exactly happened and their interpretation of what happened. So my niece immediately, Courtney White, she was amazing. She went on a full-fledged investigation mode, and she contacted all of the different Adam's friends, and from there got phone numbers to the other pledges. And then she knew some of the pledges

because they were from where she used to teach elementary school. They were like one of her students from elementary school, and they were honest and open, And they told us because they're pledges. They haven't, you know, gone through to the brotherhood side yet. But the brothers all clamped up and they weren't giving any information out to us, the police, to anybody. But the pledges, because, you know, it could have been them that night, you know, that it happened to. And they were kind of like, yeah, we weren't hazed.

And then when you laid out the whole picture of what happened, they were like, wow, Yeah, I guess I was hazed. I didn't really realize it. How many times you don't realize it? Yeah, you don't know. Because you never been taught. Exactly. Exactly. And so all the things that we're talking about now are things where we were like, we need to have reform. And we need to start at the state level. And then we can go to the federal level. Before we get into that market, because what you've done is pretty astounding. And they definitely hear this. There's one part of the story that I want to address to. So for people who follow me on social media,

on a more regular basis than I would like to have, you will see me talk about a crime that was committed or, you know, some perpetrator who they shouldn't have been out of jail in the first place. Right. They had a judge that went lenient on them or they did something or took a plea or whatever the case. cases, Delta Chi at VCU was not supposed to be there, correct? Yeah, so what happened with Delta Chi is they had been previously investigated by the school and found that they were guilty of hazing their pledges years ago.

They were found that they were providing alcohol to underage. minors they were found that they were getting into conflicts with other fraternities fights and they set a homeless guy's couch on fire they were just doing really nasty things in the neighborhood and in the community and all of those yeah great great guys to join Adam didn't know any of this he had no idea none One of them had any idea that these guys were doing this. And then the part that we found when we foiled these documents, they had been also convicted of four sexual assaults

and one rape allegation. So, I mean, right there, just in our findings, we found at least nine different offenses where they were found guilty. But when we foiled the documents, we got 2,000 pages of it. materials where this had been going on for years and they had the same advisor year after year after year you know and and all they would do is say sick month suspension

or this and this now when the last in 2019 when they were founded for hazing providing alcohol alcohol to underage you know minors they suspended them for four years. And they said, this is 2019. They said, you know, you can't conduct for four years and then you can come back afterwards and petition. So what did they do? After one year, they hired a lawyer. And the lawyer came down in 2020, in the fall of 2020, and argued that this was a harsh ruling. And they were successful in reducing it. And they were successful in reducing it. And to one year, kind served kind of thing, you know, because they didn't, from 2019 to 2020, they didn't have a fraternity on campus. So they were back, and when Adam went to school at

2020 in the fall of 2020, they were back at it, and they were having the same advisor was there. and they said that we're going to recolonize. And so they got rid of all of the old members, and they started with new members. And they redid the leadership, because we were trying to find some leadership org chart. So we had some understanding, and we petitioned BCU for that.

And VCU said they never gave it to us. And then, of course, we asked Delta Kai, and they were like, we didn't have it. Somebody had to have an org chart, right? Somebody had to know. Somebody knew who the preteness was, the vice preteness and so on and so forth. Exactly. I mean, yeah, you can't not have that.

You can't not know the pecking order. It's something very important that they drill into you, almost like the Greek alphabet. You know, they drill it into you, that you know the hierarchy. Right. And so VCU said in their wisdom, we're going to go ahead and accept this as a one-year suspension, time served and you're back at it. You'll be on probation, so just don't, don't get in any trouble and don't break the rules. And then we found out that in fall of 2020, they were investigated for hazing, but it was not founded. I don't know if the fraternity did their own little investigation and found that they weren't, the national, did their own investigation.

and found that it wasn't substantiated. So Adams class was 2021 in January of 2021. So you're talking about only a few months later, they're still at it doing the same things that they were doing years before. And so, and we found all these things out by foying the documents, Freedom of Information Act. But technically you could walk in,

could walk in and ask for documents, but probably not gonna get them. You know, if you're a lawyer, and you tell them that you've got a case that you're building and you need to have that information because it is part of the Freedom of Information Act, then they'll give it to you. And they'll take you serious, you know,

and if you have to, you have to get a court order. But those are the three steps. And so when we went through this, That's where we found all these things out. And then we find that the president of the university, he was on all of those emails. The nationals were on those emails. The advisors were on those emails.

So people were going, oh, remember them. I didn't get them. What do you talk about? You know, you're on the email. So if you chose not to read it or you're not. Yeah. And so it's almost like, I didn't know that is against the law to do something.

You know, it's not a, a defense anymore. Ignorance is never an excuse for legal activity. Yeah. So, yeah, so all these things are building. And what happened to Adam, I mean, they

have all these safety nets in place. You have the education, you know, that you do the webinar. and then you have other things, you know, to catch them. You know, maybe the advisor to be there that night, you know, a 40-year-old adult wouldn't let something like that happen, number one or number two, he would be smart enough, hopefully, to call for help for that person.

And then other safety nets that were in place, the nationals saying like we didn't, and the school also saying we didn't accept Adam because of his grades. So all these things, there's always a work around, you know, that people create. And all of them are illegal and they're not, they're not, you know, by the rules and such.

But they've created such an organization that, you know, the kids are only, almost smarter than the nationals and the universities, what they're doing in a lot of these places. Well, they know how to properly cover their tracks. You know, that's part of the benefit or curse of them coming up in the digital age. Yeah. Yeah, without a doubt. Smarter than us when it comes to technology. That's just the bottom line. So after the investigation's done, we got a better understanding of what happened. And we presented it to the city of Richmond Police.

And they, well, let me back up a second. So the day after Adam passed, my niece, who had pretty much outlined all this information to us was like, what are we going to do? And I said, you think, I think the media needs, I think we need to utilize the strength of the media. And she's like, well, what media? And I said, ABC, NBC, CBS, CBS, Fox, all of them.

Let's use them at our, you know, let's control the story rather than have the universities and the fraternities and everything control the story because we need to tell everybody what happened to Adam and make sure that it doesn't get swept under the rug because Richmond's not a solid. a big city. It's kind of a small, a small city. And VCU is a multi-billion dollar university with two teaching hospitals. And I mean, they're huge. They employ over 20,000 people. I mean,

they are the heart and soul of that city. And, you know, they're not going to upset them for little, the Oaks family, you know, little Adam or whatever. So, um, We just felt like we were going to get swept under the rug. And so immediately my niece, again, she's the rock star. She reached out to all the organizations, the local in D.C., and she sent an email, the same email to all of them, and with a picture of Adam and just describing what happened. And within hours, we had people wanting to cover our story.

And I mean, Linda and I were such a mess that we couldn't even speak five words without bawling. And that's the kind of vulnerability that gets people fired up and gets them into action. And unfortunately, I hate to put it this way because we've, you know, I've covered my fair share. When you see people emotional and vulnerable, it makes for good TV, it makes for good ratings, which unfortunately are unfortunate, double-edged sword, because it can feel a little exploitive.

But at the same time, it gets the awareness out there because it's getting people to watch it. Yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah. And I mean, little did I know. I guess we're in the D.C. area. So we live in Northern Virginia, which is minutes from D.C. And Adam went to VCU in Richmond, which is about two hours south of D.C.

But they covered it in both markets. And the politicians in D.C. started to, you know, they started to notice because, you know, they started to notice because, you know, they watched the local news for lots of reasons, but a lot of their their employees also, you know, watch, watch the news and they hear local stories. So after meeting with the Richmond Police, they did their investigation, and it was probably about nine months later, when they finally brought charges against 11, they indicted 11 young men, and most of them were providing alcohol to a minor, and then a few of them also had providing alcohol and hazing of a person, hazing someone to death, all of which are only

misdemeanors in the state of Virginia. And there's only 14 states that have, that maybe 15 now, that have hazing as a felony. So if you haze someone to death or to bodily injury, there's only 15 states where it's a felony. And so there's 35 states where it's a misdemeanor. And we were just not happy with that at all. Because once you hear the story of what happened, you know, you then you get really angry because, you know, they broke all the rules and they totally didn't get help to somebody that needed it. There's no accountability for them. There's no, you know, whereas somebody lost their life and there should be somebody held accountable in some way, shape, or form.

and it's basically a slap on the wrist. Exactly, exactly. And so after the charges were brought, you then go through the whole process. And it was brought to our attention that their misdemeanors and the max that they'll receive, none of them had priors. So they're all, you know, this is their first offenses.

and quite frankly, the city of Richmond is not putting young, affluent, white men in jail for hazing somebody. And that's what we were told. And I believe that if we had taken it to court and we would gone through a lengthy trial, yeah, I don't believe we would have gotten justice that way, meaning in our minds going to jail is justice. period for what you've done. And all of them needed to go to jail, some longer than others, of course. So once the indictments were brought in, the 11 were all picked up at the same time, and they were all in there for the Labor Day weekend.

So it was three days in jail. And then maybe it wasn't Labor Day. I'm sorry. Monday was when they adjourned. So they were in there for three days. and on the third day was when they did the arraignments. And we were at every single arraignment. We went to every...

You would think, like, you know, you have 11 that are charged to the same crime. You would just go ahead and have, you know, one hearing, one case, one... But, no, they had 11 separate ones. And... And they had, like, six different judges and six different courtroom. So we're bouncing from courtroom to courtroom. You know, in any event, they, yeah, so once they, once they, they spent three nights and lock up there in the city of Richmond jail, which is not really a place you want to be, I think it started to realize, they started to realize the magnitude of what their actions, you know, and what happened with their actions.

And so I guess the best way for me to describe it is that we could have taken them to trial and we could have pushed it. But then, I don't know, the thought came about restorative justice. Restorative justice is something I saw that is happening. a lot in California and it's where obviously it's not really meant for where somebody harms someone and causes their death. But Linda and I really needed some closure with knowing what happened and what Adam's final moments were like and how he was treated. And so we proceeded with we proceeded with the restorative justice.

And I know my niece was totally against it. And I don't blame her. But you have to understand, Linda and I needed some answers. We had lots of questions. So in the restorative justice process, there's a member of the court, and then there's two community members on one table, and they kind of facilitate or mediate the meeting.

the defendant is there and the family members are there or the person that's been affected where they get to find out. It's usually, it's not really good for domestic, you know, cases either. It's probably better for if somebody, you know, robbed a grocery store or something, they stole food or they, you know, and you put the two together and it's like, you know, your actions, you know. But in any event, we needed to confront them, and we had lawyers on both sides, and they were, you know, not wanting either side to talk to each other. But in the restorative justice position, you could actually ask any question. And so we asked our questions, and we set them up.

We only had three of them, the big brother, the president, and the pledge master. And we did one after the other, and we did them in a certain order, because we set them up. we knew, we already knew kind of what happened, but we wanted to see starting how truthful some people were going to be. And at the very beginning, when people started to lie, you know, we immediately called them out on it. And they were like, oh, crap, they know about, you know, what happened. They really know what happened. And so they knew that they had to tell the truth at that point. So once we completed the restorative justice process,

the next step was the education portion of it, where we teamed up with Ten Live Studio and Dan Cotulo to create Death of a Pledge, Badamoke story. And the idea of the movie was... to, I mean, if it's a grieving family speaking to you, you have compassion for them and you feel bad for what they're going through. But in this instance, we had the Hazers go up

and the president, the big brother, and the Pledgemaster, and I'll speak about what happened that night and how it impacted them. And because who can communicate with young people better than young people, and try and encourage them to change the way that they're doing things or to change the culture that's been created, come up with new traditions. And I don't know, that was the thought behind it.

And our local PBS station, WETA and D.C. picked it up and they have been broadcasting it for us. and the state of Virginia has put it on their platform on their intranet so all the schools can show it as part of their hazing prevention education process. And, I mean, it's got hundreds of thousands of views. So we think that it's definitely helping. It's very powerful and very moving. And like I said, the beginning of this, for people who want to see, definitely. of a pledge, the Adam Oak story. We'll link it in the show notes.

It's not even 30 minutes, is it? It's 22 minutes, 22 minutes. It's pretty short, and I promise you, these are 22 minutes of your life that you will spend very wisely. You watch this. Yeah, thank you. So in the plea agreements, there was, you know, the normal stuff where you do the community service, you're on probation for a year. and then you do the video, and then the restorative justice for three of them. And then the last thing was to get them to actually go to universities with us and our foundation

and speak and answer questions from the audience after our presentation. So some work court ordered to do five presentations and some work ordered to do 10. And so it's very powerful, you know, to hear the students themselves. And a lot of them are Greek life members. Just like, what were you thinking? You know, why did you treat him that way? And, you know, I mean, they don't hold back. And meanwhile, we're still in civil litigation with them.

So, you know, we've got to watch what we say to them as well. So after those are done, we actually had Dan there filming with us at the first few that we did. And it's very, very powerful. And I don't know. I think if we had larger audiences, I'm not sure if they would come back and speak for large events with us. Their sense of civil litigation was all completed then, I think. And out of the three of them, once their commitment was fulfilled, they just, they were out. But you had one of them for a while that stayed and continued, even after his commitment had expired.

The president showed up for one additional, but then I told him, we have the text messages. And then I never saw him or heard from him again. But I haven't been doing a lot of reaching out to them, if you know what I mean. I mean, Courtney, my niece is the one that schedules everything. So what happened is, yeah, we were going around to different colleges in Virginia, mainly, even though we've gone to different, we've gone to University of Tennessee, University of South Carolina. So we've been around a bunch of different states, mainly the,

the states that have asked us to come and present have been in Virginia. And so when we were in University of Richmond, I had to warn him because Courtney had some slides that were showing up the text messages. And after that, I never saw him again. So just to let you know about the text messages, two weeks before the event, there were members talking about, is the fat kid going to be there?

Or the obese kid, is the obese kid going to be there? And then there was a response where, yeah, fatty will be there. And then maybe a few days before, there was a message saying, who's got what's little. When I get through with Faddy, he's going to be in the Hall of Fame. And then another person said something, you know, like they're already sweating, you know,

worrying about what's happening, meaning probably they're asking questions, like, what's going to happen that night? What do you guys, you know? And they keep that all on the down low and the hush-hush, and they're not going to tell any of the pledges what that night's going to be like. No one would show up.

Right, right, exactly. And what happened too was like Adam's roommate at VCU, he pledged a different fraternity and it was more physical. Like they made him run two miles in, I don't know, under 15 minutes or something. And Adam being the big kid, he was really afraid that they were going to make him try and do something physical. you know, some kind of exercise thing, which he wouldn't be able to accomplish. And so then the day of the event,

the text messages read something like, I bought the handles, I got the alcohol, where are we going to dump these fools when they're drunk and passed out? And then the day of, somebody had texted who's watching Fatty and somebody else had said

oh a pig roast is coming early and then somebody responded that he's on his side you know and so obviously they knew he was in trouble I mean why would you have to put somebody on their side

or you know if somebody's passed out It's just so cruel. It really is. And you just got to wonder because who's raising these kids, you know? And I stop reading comments pretty early on because people are like, oh, it's your fault because, you know, you didn't teach him. I mean, who tells their kid, don't drink the entire bottle of alcohol in one sitting,

it's going to kill you? You don't think you need to, I mean, I don't think that's something that crosses people's mind. but you know the one thing about the internet um there's a lot of really stupid people with opinions you know i i i often say that the biggest problem with the internet is that anybody can have a voice and a lot of them shouldn't and so you know it's you know some of the people that that i know and i talk to and the loss that they've gone through and people will still blame them even if it's not so you just have to realize that these people aren't worth your time and i know that it's sometimes hard to respond to some of them.

Yeah. They put them in their place, but these are just, you know, these are the, those are the people who are raising those kids. Right. The keyboard cowboys. Yeah, they're always looking to blame someone else. Yeah. No accountability.

Yeah, we're blaming the victim. Yeah. Victim blaming, victim's victim, or blaming the victim's family. Basically, anything but putting the accountability, on themselves for what they did. At the end of the day, the decisions that were made by these boys, these, you know, young men had consequences,

and they were never held accountable for their consequences. So does it mean that they're going to go back out and do that again? No, but what it does in those cases like that, it's like, oh, well, you know, we, we killed somebody by our actions, you know, it wasn't, which I think should be manslaughter at the very least, right? And then obviously it's protected by, you know, the hazing and things like that, you know, they, they file it under that. But they're like, okay, well, we did this and we got a slap on the wrist, which I think

then gives you some confidence in yourself, like, oh, well, if this happens in the judicial system again, I'm going to be fine. Like, if I do something, like, I get into an accident, I drink and drive, I do this, you know, and I'm not saying that they're going to do that. That's not, you know, there's not something that's going to put it from point A to point B, but it allows for negligence to continue because there's no repercussions or ramifications from your actions. And I think that that's what's very frustrating. Like at the end of the day, yes, this happened for hazing.

And but at the same time, it was their actions that caused this. Therefore, there should be something greater, you know, even if it's not like, look, not intentional, not like you did first degree murder or, you know, capital murder. But, you know, manslaughter with a, you know, manslaughter with a, you know, with a, I mean, shit, a year in jail would be, would be something. Anyways, I'm frustrated for you and I'm frustrated in these situations like that, because that's, like you said, that's not justice for Adam. You never got justice. Well, just, just to grow your frustration even more, we went in front of the Virginia Assembly,

the general assembly in 2022. And we were, our family was really pushing. for it to be a felony to hate someone in the state of Virginia and bodily injured, you know, major bodily injury. And we were voted down and it actually made it to conference and then one of the people that voted yes for it changed his vote to no and sided with the other no vote. And I believe it had, I believe truly that the person voted yes, just so he could be called a conference. And he is a defense lawyer.

And some of his cases are hazers. So some of his, some of his, you know, defendants are people that haze other people. and he would be if he voted yes for it he would be contradicting you know everything he's saying in court so the Senate Judiciary Committee voted it down in conference yeah so the next year we we tried to go back but we didn't have the right mix of members in the Senate that we felt that we could pass it. The House passed it 100 to zero. Everyone passed it.

But the Senate in Virginia didn't. So we're talking about going back. We need to have a better strategy maybe. So that was one thing. But the real big thing that we passed was Adams Law. And our family was real supportive of that because we just sat back and thought of all the things that Adam didn't have that he needed desperately before he decided to join and which fraternity did he want to join. And so that was a proper education. And with that proper education, it's not just, you know, like a webinar or, or, um,

you know, like a PowerPoint slide that you go through. It has to be in person. It has to be taught by the school. And that has made huge strides. The next thing is we wanted to have like an amnesty. So if one of the members had come forward and called 911 or even texted 911 that night saying there's a kid here, you needs help, even though you were part of the hazing process, you would have full immunity from the law. And you wouldn't get expelled from school because you'll get expelled from school if you're found hazing somebody. You did the wrong thing.

Yeah. For doing the right thing, you get rewarded. You don't, you know, there's no civil, no criminal, no school punishments. So that was a big thing. Then the next part was the websites. The schools have to start posting founded instances of hazing and which for, for, sorority, sorority, club, or athletics, because it happens lots in athletics. So that's a big thing, too, because full transparency, where people can go up and find

information about their organization that they're going to join. And then the last part was research and reporting. So all the schools have to fend. their findings to a third-party clearinghouse that would actually keep records and data of which athletics, which fraternities, which sororities are having issues. So those were the big four pillars of Adams Law in the state of Virginia. there had been a bill that the Dversely family had been fighting for for 15 years, a federal bill. And they had to make a lot of changes to get that passed.

But that was a huge accomplishment this year too. So there were six states that didn't have any kind of hazing, I guess, What's the word I'm looking for? They didn't have any hazing claims or charges. What's the word I'm looking for? I don't know. I'm flanking. No, it's like.

Somebody will know and they'll be like, this is the word, and they'll drop them. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's like they didn't have any. There's no crimes. There's no hazing crimes on the books in six states. So now this actually gave a definition to what a hazing crime would be. And the states, the students at least are covered through the federal bill where they're required to get an education.

And it's required that school reports, the information to, and it's part of the Cleary Act. So the Cleary Act has got another arm, so to speak, because hazing is going to be also included with that. So that's really big. So their annual report to Congress, they have to document how many hazing incidents they've had on campus. And so we then were behind and supported another bill, which entered the state of Virginia, which was hazing prevention education for ninth or 10th grade students, all in the public in private. That's great.

Yeah, and so it's mandatory. And not only did we make it mandatory, we had a caveat in there where it says that it's part of the standard of learning. So when it's part of the SOLs, that there's going to be questions, you know, at the end of the quarter on their, or their yearly SOLs about hazing prevention. What are the school else? Or standard of learning. Standard of learning, yeah.

So the SOLs, that's how they gauge the students. in Virginia, that they're on the proper levels of reading arithmetic and English. Let me ask this. Is there a way, and this is something I haven't asked you before, is there a way, I don't know if you've worked on this,

where if other states, well, like I'm in Tennessee, for example, if Tennessee wanted that to be part of, like, their curriculum, like, how would somebody go around about getting, this in front of the right people. Absolutely great question. You definitely have to... My suggestion is

you work with your local state senator and House representative delegate and approach a very influential member of the Board of Education that's the Education Committee

of their state and then partner with them to create a bill that would mirror similar to what we did in Virginia. And I mean, you could absolutely take our bill and, you know. Yeah, exactly. And have other states done this yet? Do you know of? No, I know North Carolina just passed a robust bill, which has a lot of, a lot of good things in it. But, But I think education wasn't one of them for the high school level. Sadly, Ohio, it didn't even make it to the floor to get to a vote. Yeah. It seems like such a no-brainer because it's one of those things to help protect kids.

And I know that technically most of them are over 18, so they're not legally kids, but they're kids. Right. But this actually goes younger. It goes to 14, 15 year olds. Which is great because it's, yeah. And so I guess in that regard, it does protect children. But that's kind of the point. Like, you know, so hey, when you get to college,

I mean, you're going to remember things like that. You know, like when you sit in those assemblies, those are the things that people remember is those types of presentations. And I know this. And here's something else that I want to say. And I know we're getting a little close to time on this. But we are the. only country. So like I said, when I was in, I was in, and I didn't know this when I, until I met you,

I didn't know this, you and Dan. Like when I was a teak, talk out of Epsilon, they're like, we're, we're an international fraternity. International typically means they have one in Canada. Right. That's how they get the international thing. And even in Canada, fraternities aren't as, and I don't know what the rules are there. I'm sure they're stricter than who they are here. But yeah, but even in Canada, fraternities aren't as prevalent. We are the only country in the world, in the world, where fraternities, this Greek life thing is overly prevalent. And one thing that I tend to really like about the conversations that we get to have,

because we've done this on YouTube, we've done this, you know, on TikTok. And pretty much every time you and I've had a discussion or we've had Dan on to have a discussion about hazing, We always have at least one or two people that says, I appreciate you sharing this with me. There's no way my child's getting ready to go to college. There's no way they're joining fraternity. And I think that that's really the mindset that we need to get to. There are other extracurriculars.

Like, you know, looking back now, you know, you don't know this as a kid. And, you know, kind of like you, neither of my, well, my dad went to college, but it was very, my dad was born in the 40s. So it was very different, you know, when he went to college in like the 60s. But my mom never went to college. So there was nobody there to warn that or say, hey, you know, there's other extracurriculars. There's these other groups on campus that you can join. Guess what?

There's no hazing with those. And these are people who will be real friends with common interest. So I think that these conversations are so important from that regard because, I mean, you know, I hate to say it this way. But if your kid doesn't get the fraternity or sorority experience for that matter, they're not missing out on the real college experience. You know, in fact, you're, you know, I hate to say it this way. you could very well be saving their lives, you know, as males and as females, you know, one thing that you may or may not know for girls that are in sororities, most of the time, at least in my college, and I'm assuming this is the same at most.

Usually that there, when you have a fraternity, there's a sister sorority that goes with them. And so like, you know, you have an event and always, I forget which one ours was, but all of these sororities, this sorority works in conjunction with yours for events and parties. And as you said with VCU and a lot of fraternities, especially when you're dealing with, with the bigger ones. You have the issue of roofies. You have the issue of sexual assault and rape and things like that. And, you know, they, how many stories have we heard where this happens and they film it?

And it's everywhere now. And these girls, their lives are ruined. And so, again, these are kids. They're having fun. It's, they're the, we're invincible. This is never going to happen to me. But so we as parents have to be the ones to say, hey, look, here's the situation here. here's why I'm not. Or hey, here's the things that you need to know. Be smart about your

decisions because this could happen. And, and, you know, you're a living proof of that. And, and, you know, again, I was in a fraternity, Eric, and I've learned more about fraternities from you than having been in one. So, so I really think that that this is something that, this is such an important conversation that people need to have. And if you have kids in that age group and, you know, have that conversation. And just because you might have been in a fraternity and didn't have that experience. You know, I was in one, I survived, didn't have the same experience. Doesn't mean that your child won't. You know, being, you know, getting through something, surviving something, having it not happened to you is not indicative of how it works for every single

person. The big thing we tell parents and so we created the Love Like Adam Foundation and we have different arms of the foundation. One is the education portion where we train. law enforcement about how to investigate a crime scene from a fraternity-related world. We also educate teachers. We go and perform continuing education classes for teachers on the law. And we created a curriculum so you can teach it in your ninth or tenth grade. grade. So all these states can use our curriculum rather than reinventing it. You know, and people going, well, we'll have to create, you know, new curriculum based on, you don't. You

just rebrand it for your state and go under your state laws. And it's all the thing. Which you're happening. Which you have to anyways. Right, right. And so you can break it down by school district of your state or you can just make it mandatory for the entire state. But then as a And as a legislator, you get to say, like, look what, look what I accomplished. We brought this to Tennessee. And you know what? Take the W on that, you know? Absolutely.

You know, people, that's one thing. It's a bipartisan issue. I don't think anybody's going to have any issue with you trying to save kids. And it doesn't hurt anything. It's just another layer of protection. People are still going to join fraternities. They're still going to do it. But it holds another level of accountability.

It adds another level of safety to prevent these types of events from happening. because nobody should be sending their child off to school and expect them. And I mean this in every sense, not just college, but in every sense. You shouldn't be sending your kid to school and having to worry if they're going to be coming back alive. You just shouldn't. Parents should not have, that should not be something that we deal with. Yeah. And the big thing that we always, you know, talk about is, you know, for the student to do their research,

not only on the internet, you know, trying to figure out about the history of this. particular chapter but also ask around campus ask some of the other students what they've heard about them or what they know about them and if you're getting a bad vibe don't job don't don't join you know and then as parents too you can go on now on the website and you can look at at least in very soon it's going to be in every every state but in Virginia you can go on and look and see a whole history a whole report year after year and for 10 years in Virginia, that they have to post it.

So those things are great. And our foundation, we do the live in-person presentations where my niece and I come out and we talk about what happened. We show the death of a pledge. And we also interact with the students afterwards with a question and answer period, where we're able to open up a little bit more now that the civil litigations completed.

But we talk about the processes. We talk about our, you know, going to the General Assembly as a family. I'm trying to get some help for kids because the world's changing. And like you said early on, the technology is, you know, they're taping it. And then everybody's trying to one up each other, putting it on YouTube or Facebook live or something and then people are seeing it and they see the abuse and they try and one up them. And that's not good. That's not the kind of.

And even the fraternities, when I talk to the nationals, they don't want that either. They really don't. They're fed up with it. I think a lot of them really are so big, they have no idea how to rein it in. Well, the thing that becomes challenging with that because, you know, we've had these conversations before and on different platforms. and we've invited members of, you know, like Delta Chi to come in and they don't. So, so, you know, if they, if, how can I word this?

If that's how they truly feel, action speak louder than words, it would behoove them to get on a phone call with parents like you, you know, you and so many other parents who are in the situation that you're in and have a conversation, a real conversation. conversation like, hey, what can we do? Let's work together to stop this. This is what we saw. This is what our research has brought us to. It doesn't take them very much. And then they just implement guidelines because, you know, pretty much every time this happens, you know, I know, basically what I've learned is that they're self-insured. So they kind of cap it off at a million dollars. They pay you a million dollars to shut you up. And that's it. And that's, you know, money's not going to bring your kid back, number one. And number two, money's not going to them paying that out and just having that as part of their like, well, we know we're going to do that.

let's set this money aside for whenever this happens. That's not, that's not creating change. That's not creating impact where what they do is you just, you know, like in a situation like yours, the advisor the first time something happened should have been out. Should have been out. You know, the type of situations where they were forced off campus, for the things that they were forced off campus for they should have had the full four years and now are they are they completely gone off that campus now like permanently they're completely gone now yeah so so they can't come back which is which is good but you know there needs to be accountability for these things because you know how many you know girls have had their life ruined your life you know has been completely impacted by what happened you know to a point that you know it'll never be the same again and it's it's it's that's worth more than a million dollars.

And I would say that most families would probably rather have changed so this doesn't have to happen to another kid than just being, hey, here's your check, buy. We'll see you later until the next one happens. Right. Yeah, we definitely had a large number of suggestions that demands that we wanted them to change. And they agreed to a few of them.

But, yeah. I mean, it's not the meaningful ones that I wanted to see happen. And, you know, it's only to help them at this point. It's not for me to, you know, hang my hat on, hey, I made them get rid of pledging, you know. Well, they don't, they don't call it pledging anymore. It's new member orientation. Yeah, that's the way around it. Let's just regret.

Right. And now it's get rid of that all together. It's like you go to a job and you do a job interview, you know, for an hour, maybe two hours. and you're hired or not. But then you're going to be sitting with somebody for 40 hours a week. Whereas this, you know, to become a member of a fraternity in a specific chapter, you go through 28, 35 days of pledging process, whatever you want to call it, and a member orientation.

They want to have fun with the, that's because they want to abuse them. Right, they want to abuse them. And that's not right. And people are like, oh, no, we don't want to. It's basically that's what it is. You know, and let's call it. And it's bullying and it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, putting you in a car, driving you around so you don't know where you are, taking out to the middle, in my case, taking out to the middle of the woods. We used to have this thing called protect the fire.

Okay. I'm going to tell you something that I learned from protect the fire. Um, if you take two five hour energies, you do not get 10 hours of energy. That's my takeaway from, from, from, from this. But basically, you would have to go out all night. It didn't matter if you had classes the next day. And throughout the night, you and your pledged brothers were sitting around this fire, and you had to keep the fire going all night.

You took watch. And throughout the night, the brothers would come out and try to put the fire out. And I forget what the lesson was or the punishment was if you let the fire go out. But they would come out like with a hose and they would soak you. They would soak your sleeping bag. They would soak every. And it's like, it's the dumbest shit. The night that I took the two, five-hour energies, they were like, you know,

we're going to give you guys a night off. And I was like, thank you. now I'm wired, but it is what it is. It's just, that's not, you know, and so it's just, I don't know. It needs to change. It's, it's not an impactful way. And it's, it's, I get that you're like, these are people that, okay, well, this is fun for you. And then you do it.

So the cycle continues, you're like, oh, well, I got this done. It was fun. You know, now I get to have the fun. I get a little payback. You do it to the new members and the cycle continues, whereas, and nobody wants to bach the system, right? And what I say about one-upping is, you know, you had that done to you, but the next person that comes along will do something even more, you know, heinous. And then it just keeps spiking up. And people just, you know, now it's to the point where it's, it's your child's life is in danger.

And for what, joining a fraternity? That's ridiculous. Yeah, it's it's, it's dumb and it's reckless on their parts. Right. Not the child, not the child's because they're trying, but, you know, for the fraternity, who's supposed to have some responsibility here to not pressure kids into dangerous activities. I mean, that's the bottom line. So we have about four-ish minutes left.

I want to give you time, number one, to say anything else that you want to say, but also promote the foundation as well, your socials, anything else that you want people to know, anything else that they can do. floor is yours. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. So, yeah, so one of the big things is when we define bullying versus hazing, bullying is to exclude somebody from a group and you do things to, you know, that are really mean and nasty to keep them away from becoming part of your inner circle. Whereas hazing is you're actually abusing a person to become part of your group. almost like an indoctrination into a member as a member.

So they're both, they're both bad, they're both identical, but ones to include, ones to, you know, exclude. Okay, so yeah, definitely our foundation, we're so proud of the work that we're doing. We just had that law passed in Virginia. My niece has been going and training different school districts on the curriculum, how to use it, where to find it, you know, within their intranet. And so this is the first year that it's being introduced into the state of Virginia,

public and private schools. And since it's going to be part of the SOLs, we're also hopefully going to be included in writing the language for the questions that go on to the SOL as well, which is huge. There was another bill that we helped pass. We endorsed. It wasn't our bill, but it was if anybody has, and a university has come and said,

we have been hazed, that the university will find mental health help for that person. Yeah. So, and it's mandatory. It's sad to ensure that these institutions do the right thing. You have to make it a law. Because I'm not a big law person, you know, but I guess I am now. But, you know.

You live in a reactive versus proactive society. Yeah. So we were real happy to support that bill, and we're happy that the General Assembly in Virginia passed that. Yeah. I mean, we're just, we're here, we're available over the internet, www.wetoplovelikeadam.com. You can get education information there.

We're always responsive to people. So if you send us an email, Eric at lovelikeadam.com, or Courtney at lovelikeadam.com, we'll, you know, within a couple of days, we'll reply to you. We're on Facebook, Love Like Adam, and we're on TikTok, Love Like Adam. We're still trying to get our members increased on that. So we have more followers. We're also on Instagram, Love Like Adam, and our Twitter, Love Like Adam.

Do I follow you on Instagram? I think so. I'm not sure. I'll look when we're done. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I do. I'm pretty sure I do. Well, Eric, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. I know that, you know, to come on and I know that you've shared it a few times,

but every time you do, you have to relive that perfect day. So I appreciate you. You know, sharing it with me and giving me that privilege. Well, thank you so much for being a friend and, you know, for the work that you're doing and bringing out awareness is key. And I think, yeah, it's about time that it stops. And we put it into it because it's ridiculous. People are getting hurt and they're not even to mention the mental anguish on people.

Absolutely. And I'm going to say. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll say this one step further, I'll just be very direct. Don't let your kids join Greek life. Just don't. This was going on when I was in school more years ago than I want to admit. it. And I know it was going on well before that because you see, you know, movies like,

what, Animal House and you see, you know, the fraternity pledging thing has been an issue for a long time. It doesn't get better. It gets worse. And just because there are rules doesn't mean that it doesn't stop. They still do it. You're just not aware of it unless they get caught. Because a lot of times during the fraternity pledging, you are told to keep it a secret. And most people, kids aren't going to say, hey, mom, dad, this is what happened to because then most parents can be like, what the hell you're not doing that anymore. So it doesn't get out there. So just have these, you know, the conversation is don't join Greek life. But if you, you're still insistent, your kid's insistent, and this is the route's going to go, then have important talks with them to keep them safe because their life

literally could depend on it. Absolutely. It could be a conversation that you have with them that saves their life. Absolutely. So, well, again, thank you so much, Eric. And for everybody else, we will see you guys next time on Unheard. Have a great day. Views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the individual speaking and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. Unheard is intended to provide a platform for personal stories and lived experiences, not to establish facts, determine guilt, innocence, or provide legal, medical, or professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to conduct their own research and form their own conclusions. Thank you for listening to Unheard.