Author: Hank Nuwer

Great interview, Dez Bryant.

Great story, too, by Randy McIlwain.

Excerpt:

[Dez Bryant] is just as emphatic about hazing now.

“I think if you want to win, you got to leave that hazing out of the door,” he said. “It can’t be in your locker room.”

Despite his refusals to be hazed, Bryant ultimately was the victim of an expensive trick. His effort to take a few teammates to dinner turned into what became practically a team dinner — and a tab of $55,000 at a Dallas steakhouse.

“It’s just my opinion, I think, that kind of stuff is uncalled for, you know,” he said. “There’s really no need for it.”

…..If you want to bring the best out of a young player, hazing is not the way, Bryant said.

“You don’t want them to be feeling that this is not a place for them, and that’s something that I think I got over to our rookies,” he said. “I treated them as if they were here five years. I think that’s what you need; you want to put that confidence in them early.”

Bryant credited the Cowboys organization with doing a great job with maintaining a balance of old-fashioned rookie treatment but drawing the line at any professional hazing. At the end of the day, the current No. 88 says there’s simply no place for hazing if the goal is winning.

“Every team’s No. 1 goal is how you reach that Super Bowl, and I think you can’t focus on that with that kind of behavior in the locker room,” he said.

Excerpt:

But Doug Fierberg, an attorney for Griffin’s parents, told jurors that Aaron and Siracusa planned and oversaw a pledge program that involved “significant hazing,” including basement rituals in which pledges donned “play clothes” and were pressured to consume various foods and beverages, including milk, until they vomited.

In a text message to a friend a day or two before he died, Griffin said he was “going mentally insane” because of the pledge process, according to Fierberg.

“I’m going to get way too drunk tonight,” Griffin allegedly wrote in another text on the day of the party.

At the time, according to former UD official Matthew Lenno, the Delta Lambda chapter was prohibited from having parties or engaging in other social activities. It had been charged two months earlier with violating rules regarding fraternities, including rules regarding alcohol, and agreed to pay a $3,000 fine. Lenno, now director of fraternity and sorority life at Towson University in Maryland, previously held several jobs working with students at UD, where he regularly lectured fraternity leaders and pledges about hazing and alcohol use.

Lenno said fraternity pledges often face peer pressure to drink, and that “big-little” night is one of three “deadly nights” where fraternity members are likely to drink heavily. The others are induction, or bid night, and initiation night.

In addition to being introduced to his big brother, Griffin was told on the night he died that their “family drink” was Southern Comfort, said Fierberg.

“Take that whole bottle to your face, Pass out. Make a memory,” Aaron had advised pledges, according to Fierberg.

Fierberg said Griffin started drinking around 9:30 p.m. By midnight, he was among half a dozen pledges taken upstairs at a frat house to recover from drunken stupors. Griffin was propped on his side with pillows, unable to talk or move, with a trash can near his head in case he vomited.

Almost three hours later, Fierberg said, Griffin’s new big brother, Michael Bassett, received a text message: “Your little (brother) is foaming at the mouth.”

But a 911 call was not made until almost 10 minutes later, shortly before 3 a.m.

Susan Owens, an emergency room physician employed by George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C, testified that Griffin likely would have survived with no permanent injuries had the 911 call been made by 1:30 a.m.

Here is today’s NPR Podcast

Excerpt:

(CNN) — A Massachusetts teen accused of raping a fellow student at a summer sports camp pleaded not guilty Tuesday.

The young man, 17, is one of three high school junior varsity soccer players who authorities allege entered a cabin occupied by freshman students and assaulted three victims at a camp in western Massachusetts.

At Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutors said the three went into the freshman cabin searching for victims, using a broomstick to assault them.

In November of 2015, the young man was exonerated by testimony of the victims that he had no part in the hazing and in fact, tried to stop it.

Here is the link to the Wyoming Valley High School story

Excerpt: Wyoming Valley West School District officials confirm that an investigation is underway into an alleged hazing incident at the high school. It involves the water polo team and allegedly took place about two and a half weeks ago in a locker room at the  high school in Plymouth. The long time swim coach Frank Tribendus was suspended for two weeks as a result of the incident for allegedly not providing proper supervision inside the locker room. Superintendent of schools Chuck Supon told Eyewitness News, “I can confirm that it involved male members of the water polo team and involved horseplay that may have gone to far.  It is a situation where maybe three or four kids think it was funny and one doesn’t think it was so funny and then we have an issue.” Supon added, “These are great kids and I think it may have been something that just went too far.” Supon said he could not say too much since it was a personnel mater and that the investigation was ongoing by the school resource officer who works for Plymouth Police. Coach Tribendus returned to the swim team Thursday but told this reporter he would not make any comment since it was a personnel mater referring me to Superintendent Supon. Supon added, “I can tell you no stone went unturned it was a very tedious few days as we interviewed students, adults and the coaching staff.”    Supon says the coach was suspended for not providing proper supervision of the locker room. Supon said, “It was the coach who brought this to the attention of the administration in the first place. As a result of the incident the district has placed new guidelines and rules into  place regarding future locker room supervision.