On the night of February 26, inside a flooring-company warehouse some 20 minutes from the Southern University campus in Baton Rouge, La., Caleb Wilson was repeatedly punched in the chest by a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, according to police reports.
After a fourth punch, Wilson collapsed, had a seizure, and lost control of his bodily functions. A group of fraternity members panicked, changed him out of his gray sweatpants, and waited several minutes before driving him to a hospital more than 15 minutes away, where they told medical staff that he had collapsed while playing basketball, according to reports.
Wilson, a 20-year-old sophomore and star trumpet player in the college’s marching band, was a day later pronounced dead.
His parents now allege in a recently filed wrongful-death lawsuit that Southern University administrators were complicit in their son’s death.
Administrators hired inexperienced recent college graduates with conflicted loyalties to oversee and manage its Greek life, the lawsuit states, and failed to report and publish hazing incidents as state and federal laws require in order to protect the reputations of the university and its fraternities. Had members of the fraternity acted more immediately to get Wilson medical help after he collapsed, the lawsuit states, he would not have died.
“Since Caleb’s death, we have discovered the horrifying truth about underground pledging, hazing, and the needless loss of life caused by longstanding and dangerous so-called ‘traditions,’” Wilson’s parents wrote in a statement. “We intend to honor Caleb by doing everything we can to end hazing and to work toward building a culture where love, respect, and accountability replace hazing once and for all.”
The lawsuit lists as defendants the fraternity, Southern University’s Board of Supervisors, two Southern administrators, and 10 Omega Psi Phi fraternity members.
Caleb McCray, the 23-year-old Southern University graduate who allegedly punched Wilson, has been charged with criminal hazing and manslaughter. Kyle Thurman, 25, and Isaiah Smith, 29, were charged with misdemeanor hazing. Trial dates for the three men have not yet been set.
Omega Psi Phi’s national leadership and a Southern University spokesperson did not respond to The Chronicle’s requests for comment about the lawsuit.
But in an interview with The Advocate, Tony Clayton, the chair of Southern’s Board of Supervisors, said that the university shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of Caleb McCray.
“I don’t see how Southern is liable for that,” Clayton said. “I don’t see how you blame Southern for the renegade actions of this kid.”
Judges across the country have been inconsistent in their rulings on whether college administrators are responsible for hazing that ends in death. Some courts have determined that fraternities and sororities have a responsibility to keep pledges safe.
Others have ruled that national fraternities and sororities aren’t involved in day-to-day operations or intake of the local chapters as much as college administrators are. Many judges have concluded that universities take on a duty of care when they repeatedly communicate with fraternities or sororities about hazing rules and discipline, or when they have documented a history of hazing within a specific organization, according to research conducted by Gregory Parks, an anti-hazing advocate and professor of law at Wake Forest University.
Hazing rituals among the largest Black fraternities and sororities, known as the Divine Nine, have grown increasingly violent, experts say.
An effort in 1990 by the organizations to ban the pledge process created an “underground” process where chapters moved pledging off campus, making it more difficult for college administrators to monitor students’ activities.
Since then, at least 11 people have died as a result of hazing while pursuing the Divine Nine organizations, according to a hazing death database. Fatal incidents have involved students dying of heart attacks or exhaustion after weeks of physical beatings, forced consumption of alcohol, and drownings.
“Young people tend to look for rites-of-passage processes, transitions from childhood or youth to adulthood,” Parks said. “And when they are not given them, they create them. That is part of the issue.”
According to the database, more than a third of all reported hazing deaths among Black Greek letter organizations were of students pursuing Omega Psi Phi, a fraternity founded in 1911 at Howard University, which prides itself on scholarship, community service, civil-rights activism, and providing brotherhood for Black men. Today, the fraternity has more than 250,000 members at more than 750 chapters globally.
Southern University has for years struggled to end hazing. Students in the college’s marching band, fraternities, and sororities have been slapped in the back of their necks with wet towels, paddled, extorted for money, and had their arms twisted, according to local news reports.
In the days after Wilson’s death, Southern administrators said the university would conduct its own internal investigation, which it has since not made public, citing privacy laws.
Last spring, Dennis J. Shields, president of the Southern University system, suspended all Greek life on campus, permanently expelled the Omega Psi Phi chapter, and had a crane remove the fraternity’s purple and yellow plot from the university’s yard.
“In all my time in higher education, this has been the thing that’s been the most painful,” Shields said in a previous interview with The Chronicle. “Every student’s death is painful, but this is awful.”
Shields said the university monitors Greek activity on campus, but acknowledged that several of the university’s fraternities and sororities have been sanctioned in the last few years upon discovery of hazing.
“We have to continue to review our own practices,” Shields said. “We have to engage with the wider audience, with the national fraternity leadership, if we’re going to do everything we can to make sure this never happens again.”
Administrators also placed on administrative leave Adagio Coleman, the university’s coordinator of student conduct and an Omega Psi Phi member, and Safiyy Abdel-Ra’oof, the university’s assistant band director and an adviser to the Omega Psi Phi chapter. The university declined to comment on the two men’s current employment status.
The lawsuit alleges that Coleman did not report the Omega Psi Phi chapter’s underground pledging or hazing activities to university leaders or law enforcement, nor did he take steps to investigate allegations of underground pledging.
The university violated a 2019 anti-hazing state law that requires universities to publish all hazing incidents on a university website, the lawsuit alleges.
In April, Wilson’s family paid for a billboard to be placed next to a convention center where thousands of Omega Psi Phi members gathered for a conference. The billboard depicted a checklist of the milestones that Caleb would never see: graduating college, starting a job as a mechanical engineer, a wedding, and having a family. Checked off on the billboard was his funeral and burial.
Last Friday, one day after filing their lawsuit, Wilson’s parents posted a three-minute video in honor of their son.
“No parent should have to bury their child because of senseless and preventable actions,” Urania Wilson said, sitting next to her husband, Corey, in their family’s church. “Hazing is not a tradition. Hazing is not a brotherhood. Hazing is not love.”
