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Hazing is often winked at as a benign initiation
ritual, but it has a tendency to spiral out of
control, as it did in the horrific events at Long
Island's Mepham High. A 6'2", 245-pound senior
sat on a 145-pound jayvee player while a hulking
junior linebacker pulled down the player's shorts,
dipped a broomstick in Mineral Ice - an ointment
that burns when applied to sensitive skin - and
forcibly sodomized him. They sodomized three
players at least 10 times.
In the pros, last September, three weeks after
the Mepham attacks, New York Yankees rookies were
forced to to parade in flamboyant women's clothing
in front of eager media from around the world.
At the New Orleans Saints' 1998 training camp,
two dozen veterans escalated the usual hazing - in
which rookies were forced to sing college fight
songs and get their heeds shaved - by herding five
players, their heads covered with pillowcases,
through a gantlet of punches, pushes and wallops
with coin-filled bags (results in 13 stitches for
one player.)
During the 1999-2000 season, the University of
Vermont was rocked when a group of hockey players
forced either freshmen and a walk-on goalie to take
part in an "elephant walk" parading around naked
while holding each other's genitals.
How widespread is hazing? According to a
1999 study conducted by Alfred (N.Y.) University,
80% of the NCAA athletes in surveyed said
they had been subjected to some form of hazing at
the college level. Alarmingly, 42% of that group
reported they had also been hazed in high
school.
Girls do it too. Last May in annual powder-puff
football tradition between junior and senior girls
from Glenbrook North High in suburban Chicago of a
video made of the seniors punching, kicking and
smearing a concoction of house paint, fish gut, and
human feces on the juniors, sending five of them to
the hospital.
And, it's not just the initial acts by the
perpetrators. School officials, advisors, teachers,
and students can be as bad, ridiculing the victims
and supporting the perpetrators. In fact, every
principal of every Nassau County public high
school, signed a public letter of support for the
local principal Didden saying they would have
responded the same way under the circumstances.
(Read the SI article - would you
respond - rather basically ignore complaints - the
way the principle did? If not, would you
consider sending your child to any school in Nassau
County, a county whose principals apparently
support a high-tolerance policy for hazing versus a
zero-tolerance policy.)
The disposition won't happen before January 5.
The Judge will choose from one of three options:
probation, placement in a wilderness boot camp, or
residency in a treatment center until no later than
age 21. Because they are being treated as
juveniles, the perpetrators' offenses will not
appear on their adult criminal records.
The victims, of course, received a far harsher
sentence, one that has no specific release date, no
provision to wipe clear their record of those
harrowing five days and their aftermath. Even now
the three young teenage boys endure a seemingly
ceaseless wave of humiliation on top of the one
they absorbed at Camp. Has the school or officials
or coaches or parents done anything to the
perpetrators of these continued attacks? Not to our
knowledge. Has there been any consideration of
teaching about this kind of behavior? Again,
no. Everyone wants to get back to "normal" as
quickly as possible. So, basically, the attacks
gone on and noone seems to care.
Yet in a tragedy defined by cowardly acts - by
bullies torturing small kids, by witnesses failing
to stop or report the violence, but authority
figures shirking responsibility (and by classmates
continuing to harass the victims with no action
taken by school officials once again) - the three
victims soldier on, drawing support from family and
friends, sucking in a deep breath each morning as
they walk through the doors of Mepham High. That's
a lot more courage than they'll see from any
proposed course called "What does it take to be a
courageous person?" The workshop facilitators
should have the three victims teach this one.
Source:
For the complete, 8
1/2 page article, see Sports
Illustrated,
12/22/03
Related Topics: Issues:
Brothers in Harm,
Hazing,
Fraternity,
An Optoin - Strengthening
the Bonds: A Positive Fraternity Pledge
Program for the 21st Century; and Books
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