For the next two days, an electronic billboard in New Orleans will honor the memory of Caleb Wilson, the Southern University engineering student who died after a February fraternity hazing ritual in a Baton Rouge warehouse.
The billboard campaign, organized by Wilson's aunt and uncles, will display messages in the city's Central Business District through Saturday.
The timing and placement puts the billboard in proximity to a meeting of thousands of Omega Psi Phi members from multiple Southern states, all convening in New Orleans from Wednesday to Sunday to set priorities and discuss business for the fraternity's Ninth District for the following year.
According to Renata Colbert, Caleb's aunt, the campaign seeks not only to honor her nephew's memory, but to demand change in the wake of his preventable death.
"In honor of our nephew, Caleb Wilson, we created this billboard campaign to demand accountability, raise awareness and ensure that his story is never forgotten," Colbert said in a news release along with three of Wilson's uncles. "Caleb was a brilliant, kind-hearted young man with limitless potential — a gifted musician, a loving family member, and a light in the lives of everyone who knew him. That light was extinguished far too soon because of hazing."
The billboard will switch through multiple displays. One reads "Caleb Wilson. He had a future. Hazing took it away," in large red lettering next to a photo of Wilson on Southern's campus.Â
Below the message are Wilson's birth and death dates: Nov. 1, 2004, to Feb. 27, 2025.
"Caleb was failed. Completely. In the most unthinkable, irreversible way," the billboard says at the bottom.
Another design reads out a list of life milestones that Wilson will now never reach: his 2026 graduation, his first day on the job as a mechanical engineer, his wedding, the start of his family.
It ends with a checkmark next to the only milestone he did reach: his March 15 funeral and burial.
"These billboards are a public declaration of our grief, our love, and our fight for justice. They speak to what Caleb lost — but also what the world lost," Wilson's family wrote in the news release. "We want every student, parent, educator, and community member to understand the real cost of hazing. This is not tradition — it’s trauma. And we will not allow it to continue to go unchecked."
The physical billboard is located at 1000 Poydras St. and will remain active through Saturday.
The 88th annual meeting of Omega Psi Phi's Ninth District gathers fraternity members from Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans — just blocks from the billboard.
In the wake of Wilson's death, politicians and fraternity and sorority leaders have offered measures they believe could prevent another hazing-related death.
Tony Clayton, district attorney for the 18th Judicial District and chairman of Southern University's Board of Supervisors, has proposed putting all recruitment and intake activities at Southern in the hands of the graduate chapters of Greek-letter organizations, not undergrads.
State Rep. Delisha Boyd, D-New Orleans, introduced legislation at the state Capitol this session that would require more stringent anti-hazing education for Louisiana college students. She has dubbed her bill the
The billboard campaign comes a month after  March 15 in Kenner, and one week after for suspected hazing.
