Campus Reacts to PVA&M Student's Death

HOUSTON - On campuses across the country, for better than a century, it's been a well understood, if not well liked fact - some types of membership demand both a pledge and a price.

For 20-year-old Donnie Wade, it appears that price was too high.
The Prairie View A&M sophomore died Tuesday after collapsing during an exercise session that may have been demanded by the fraternity he aspired to join.

"We are not sure whether it was voluntary or whether it was coerced," says Tyrone Valentine, an investigator with the Hempstead Police Department.

What is known is that on a Hempstead High School athletic field a single, full-fledged member of Phi Beta Sigma was with a number of pledges who were exercising.

After feinting, Wade was driven thirty miles to North Cypress Medical Center.

Investigators say surveillance video will either confirm or disprove reports that Wade was dumped and deserted there by his brothers.

"I think that's just horrible, because if that is supposed to be your line brother, why would you just leave him there?," says Prairie View Sophomore Kendra Hayes.

Hayes however has a hard time calling what happened to Wade "hazing."

"Personally, I think it was working out, working out gone wrong," she adds.

That's not the way Donnie Wade's dad sees it. The Dallas pastor claims his son was beaten with wooden paddles in the past and just days before his death was clearly frightened.

"I have never seen my son like that before. He was scared to death," says Donnie Wade, Sr.

Hempstead PD's Valentine says all students who were with Wade shortly before his death are co-operating with the inquiry.

Wade's classmate Roland DeJean says those who make an adult decision to endure the abuses of pledgeship should bear some responsibility, because walking away is always an option.

"It's no secret what goes on in the initiation trying to get into a fraternity," says DeJean who chose not join a fraternity.

What some may find puzzling is that Donnie Wade chose to endure three separate pledgeships - one at Stephen F. Austin University and two more after transferring to Prairie View.

Investigators are eagerly awaiting autopsy results which they hope will help determine whether hazing played a role in Wade's death.

Waller County prosecutors will decide whether the facts merit criminal charges against individuals or action against the Prairie View chapter of Phi Beta Sigma.