Author: Hank Nuwer

All: I know it isn’t hazing but figured parents and administrators and police might be interested in this potentially dangerous game.

Unit 5 Superintendent Gary Niehaus says Kingsley Junior High staff and Normal Police did all they could in response to an incident at the school which led to a student’s death last year.

Jasmine Brooks filed a lawsuit against Unit 5 and the Town of Normal last week on the one-year anniversary of son Donnie Hampton Jr.’s death.

The lawsuit claims Hampton and other students were playing a game called ‘body shots’ where students punch one another – before he collapsed and later died.

“I think Kingsley staff had done everything they could have done. I don’t know what more they could have done,” Niehaus said.

Niehaus says he reviewed a videotape of the incident and said a teacher responded to the bathroom in a ‘short time frame.’

Niehaus says the district has since added more security cameras to Kingsley and other schools throughout the district.

Click here to listen to Scott and Colleen’s interview with Niehaus.

From Amazon.com

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About the Author

David Prantner was born and raised in Bloomington, Minnesota. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature, David and his wife Kati moved to Hong Kong where they both taught english for a year. After that the two moved to Kodiak, Alaska where they have just welcomed the arrival of their new daughter Alyce. Questions for David and his work can be addressed to his e-mail; moose1701@hotmail.com

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excerpt

Every Friday night, a group of Whitman High School swim and dive team members gathers at a friend’s house. Sometimes they play video games, but most nights they eat and watch a movie. It is something the team has been doing for almost 10 years. “When I came to Whitman they were already doing it,” said Geoff Schaefer, now in his ninth season as head coach. “It was definitely a tradition I wanted to continue.”

Schaefer, who said hazing was more the norm in high school when he swam, didn’t want that for his team. “Everyone feels included. We want everyone to be a part of the team,” said Schaefer. That can be difficult when a team is comprised of 70 athletes who are not only competing against each other, but generally spend little time together. With pool time at a premium, the Whitman team only practices twice a week. A majority of the swimmers practice every day, but with club teams. Recognizing the intensity of those workouts, Schaefer lets swimmers miss his practice in lieu of the club practices. Some members of the team may go weeks without practicing with the Whitman team.

That makes the Friday night gatherings all the more important. Without them, the only time the team is together is on the pool deck at meets. Last Friday, a Viking helmet (the team’s mascot) and a box greeted the team at the house of Stephen Rodan, 16, a junior. The box was for donations to cover the cost of dinner from California Tortilla, a team favorite.

Excerpt:

The parliamentary commissioner for the German armed forces confirmed on Tuesday that an army hazing scandal involving young recruits forced to take questionable rites of passage is much more widespread than initally thought.

Rheinhold Robbe this week presented the parliamentary defence committee, the Defence Ministry, and army commanders with 23 letters from soldiers that detail ritual abuse over the last few decades across the different branches of the country’s military.
Initial reports about hazing at the Mittenwald mountain infantry unit in Bavaria emerged in early February after a young man who trained there came forward to describe humiliating rituals during which soldiers were forced to eat raw animal liver until they vomited and nude climbing exercises.

“We can only achieve clarification and improvement for the situation when there’s a start at uncovering what actually happened,” Robbe told broadcaster N24 on Tuesday. “And the goal must be not to just to stop it but prevent it from happening in the future.”

Robbe, who is scheduled to speak to the committee on Wedesday, also acknowledged that the hazing rituals had occurred “everywhere in the Bundeswehr.”

The Bundeswehr has launched an investigation into the Mittenwald matter, which Robbe said had garnered more than 50 additional letters from soldiers who experienced hazing there.

The treatment was supposed to be a rite of passage for soldiers to climb the internal hierarchy within units.

Among other letters describing abuse beyond Mittenwald, one was titled, “Mittenwald is only the tip of the iceberg,” and described how alcohol consumption was “practically ordered” during group social events.

Another letter penned by an enlisted man between 1996 and 1998 at various southern German stations detailed a game called “Jukebox,” during which young soldiers were shut into their footlockers and forced to sing.

Still another soldier who served as a naval officer two decades ago described something he called the “red-arse ritual,” where young recruits had an electric floor polisher applied to their bare backsides until their skin was raw.

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Once again, getting information out of an administrator is difficult, but it can be done. Classic example of a paper that let an andministrator and thus a school and team off the hook. Maybe there was nothing criminal that occurred. But the public cannot tell from this information.