The calls, texts and emails have been pouring in.

Since news broke in late February that a 20-year-old student at Southern University died in what police called “a fraternity hazing incident,” messages and voicemails continue to fill the inbox of filmmaker Byron Hurt. 

Hurt heard from some of these same people three years ago, when he produced Hazing, a documentary on fraternities and sororities that physically abuse prospective members and faced criticism for asserting that the “silence” around the issue “is an act of betrayal.”

Now, Hurt said, the messages that he receives strike a far different tone. 

“‘You were right. You were right. You were right,’” Hurt, himself a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, recalled hearing from others in the group. “‘Keep doing what you’re doing. Keep standing on the truth.’ I’ve had many text messages and phone calls like that.”

What happened at Southern University is the latest in a series of high-profile cases in recent years, incidents that have reverberated throughout the network of Black Greek-letter organizations known as the Divine Nine.

It has prompted a measure of soul-searching about the treatment of prospective members, reignited debates about hazing, and forced some members to question the future of a practice that, for some, has been a key part of the initiation process for generations.

In the incident at Southern, police said that a student from suburban New Orleans, Caleb Wilson, was punched repeatedly during a meeting between members of the university’s chapter of Omega Psi Phi and a group of prospective members, or pledges. His death was ruled a homicide in September.

During the meeting, authorities said, three members of the fraternity took turns punching the pledges in the chest while wearing boxing gloves. Officials said that Wilson collapsed after being punched several times, and later died at a hospital.

Wilson’s death rocked the community at the historically Black university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the junior mechanical engineering major was also a member of the school’s prominent marching band, known as the Human Jukebox.

Nearly seven months later, the East Baton Rouge Parish coroner ruled Wilson’s death a homicide caused by a rare condition that occurs when blunt force trauma disrupts the heart signals and stops it from beating, according to The Advocate .

After his death was ruled a homicide on Sept. 29, Wilson’s family filed a lawsuit against the university, fraternity, and several people. 

“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 family said 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.”

In March, Baton Rouge police have arrested three men — Isaiah Earl Smith, 28, Kyle McKinley Thurman, 25 and Caleb McCray, 23 — on felony hazing charges in connection with Wilson’s death. McCray was also charged with manslaughter. 

The Baton Rouge Police Department did not respond to requests for comment on updates regarding those charged.  

The three men are all Southern University students, according to a school spokesperson.

Authorities allege in arrest affidavits that Smith, Thurman, and McCray met Wilson and eight other pledges at a local warehouse on Feb. 26. Police said that Wilson was unresponsive by the time he was dropped off at a local emergency room. His clothes had been changed, and authorities said the hospital staff had been told that he had been hit in the chest while playing basketball at a park.  

“It is with profound sorrow that we extend our condolences on the passing of Caleb Wilson,” said the national chapter of Omega Psi Phi fraternity in a statement on its website. “His loss is deeply felt, and our hearts go out to his family, friends, and all who were touched by him.” 

The fraternity declined to comment further on Wilson’s death, citing an ongoing investigation.

A Southern University spokesperson confirmed that the adviser for the Omega Psi Phi fraternity chapter, Safiyy Abdel Ra’oof, was placed on suspension on Feb. 28. The spokesperson did not confirm if Ra’oof’s suspension was related to the hazing investigation.

Hazing is hardly unique to Black Greek-letter organizations, or even to fraternities and sororities. The abuse of pledges happens in marching bands, athletic teams, and other clubs, according to the advocacy group Stop Hazing. There was at least one hazing death each year in the U.S. between 1959 and 2021, according to journalist Hank Nuwer’s database.

Hurt’s documentary grapples with the physical nature of some hazing rituals in Black Greek-letter organizations and other culturally-based groups. The film recalls the highly publicized case of Robert Champion, a Florida A&M University drum major who died in 2011 after being beaten by his bandmates. 

That violence evokes the early days of higher education in the U.S., an era in which “freshmen were viewed as not good enough to be on campus,” said Walter Kimbrough, interim president of Talladega College and a longtime member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. “So they had to prove themselves.”

“It’s like the Protestant work ethic gone wrong,” said Kimbrough, who has been an expert witness in dozens of court cases involving hazing, including one that looked into Champion’s death. “Where anything worth having is worth working for, but the challenge is a lot of people place more value, in terms of earning, on the physical aspect.”

Hurt said not all chapters within Black fraternities and sororities physically abuse their pledges. But his 2022 documentary calls out a prevailing misconception — that members who endured abuse during the pledge process are somehow more deserving of respect by other members of the group.

In Hazing, Hurt — who graduated from Northeastern University in 1993 — recalls a grueling eight-week pledge. At its worst, he said he was hit up to 100 times in one night by a paddle bearing the Greek letters of his fraternity. 

The documentary also features interviews with the family members of several hazing victims, including Kristin High, who drowned in 2002 alongside another prospective member, Kenitha Saafir, while trying to join Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and George Desdunes, who was left for dead in 2011 after drinking excessively while pledging the predominantly white Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at Cornell University.

Much of the online discourse around Wilson’s death has centered on members of the Divine Nine confronting pervasive attitudes around openly discussing hazing in Black Greek-letter organizations. Preston Mitchum, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant and policy strategist, addressed the issue in a video posted recently to social media.

“People are worried right now because they saw someone be killed,” Mitchum, a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, said in the video. “People are angry, and they are trying to figure out what happened. We understand that hazing is an issue, and it’s illegal in all of our organizations.”

Mitchum said in a phone interview that he thinks people are silent because they are reluctant to discuss their organizations with outsiders. 

“If we’re discussing hazing, that means we’re discussing people who want to be initiated and eventually become members of our organizations,” Mitchum said. “This is not the same thing as discussing rites of passage. This is not the same thing as discussing our secrets.”

“Hazing is not a part of any of our organizations’ history,” Mitchum said. “It is something that people have decided to do after the fact so they can feel good about themselves, so they can assert power over individuals.”

He added: “There are people who are more upset that some of us decided to speak more than we are upset about hazing, and that is a problem.”

Hurt’s documentary also features commentary from Stacey Patton, author of Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America. Patton said that violent rituals — in the context of historically Black groups — evoke “a long history of pain and brutality, and dehumanization of Black bodies.”

“There’s this internalized belief that pain makes us stronger, to tell these stories that we’ve survived, and go back and reminisce on it, to laugh about it, to say we got through this,” Patton said in the film. “It’s a form of trauma bonding.”

Hurt said there’s a lot at stake in the fight against hazing. 

“For people who endure hazing, who survive hazing, they have to deal with the emotional and physical trauma that remains once they complete their process,” he said. “On the extreme side of that are people who lose their lives, like Caleb Wilson — that’s the extreme outcome that nobody wants, and that is the thing that gets people to have these conversations.”

Staff writer Alecia Taylor contributed to this report.

This story has been updated.