Author: Hank Nuwer

Here is the link to the class blog

excerpt:

Here is the link

Excerpt

In an interview, the parents of one of the younger boys said they’ve made it a point to attend court, despite how difficult it was to relive the events that left their son and his best friend bruised both physically and emotionally.

“It is something I will remember for the rest of my life,” one of the boys wrote in a victim impact statement provided to the court.

The mother said both boys are now doing “really, really well” and have, as best friends, supported each other throughout the past year. So too have the boys’ families supported one another – and that’s been fortunate for more than one reason.

“(Our families have) been very close throughout this process and we’re both on the same page, right from Day 1, which was very helpful because there are many, many parents and students that still feel that there’s no issue here,” the father said. “And that’s where the courts vindicated the process that we went through. It’s been a difficult year, but hopefully a message has been made.”

The parents said they’ve been told numerous times that what happened to the boys isn’t a big deal.

“The reality is when you hear the story of what happened to our boys, as a parent I don’t know how you could not do something,” the mother said. “How can you possibly let that go by? So we just felt the need as parents that we had to do something. And I think that we’ve taught our kids through this whole process that when something does happen to you that it’s important to do the right thing – even though it can be extremely difficult and that you’re feeling that you’re going upstream and everybody’s going the other way. You still have to do what you believe in and we really feel like we’ve hopefully done that.”

The parents wanted to make it clear that they were never out for revenge against the teens who paddled the boys.

“There were really no winners through this whole process,” the father said. “We weren’t in it to ‘get’ anyone. It was more making sure the message got out, a precedent is set going forward, and we do hope that these young people become productive, good citizens.”

The parents said they’re pleased with the way the matter was handled by the police, the courts and Regina Public Schools – and that, at least, has given the families some relief.

Here is the story link

Thanks to interviewer Sophie. She asked great questions.

By Sophie Harris

SH: More and more kids are being bul­lied at North. Could these behav­iors trans­late into more dan­ger­ous things along the road, like hazing?

HN: The idea of high school behav­iors being repli­cated in col­lege wor­ries me. In high school, actions are not always pun­ished and admin­is­tra­tors try and take things into their own hands. In one of my books, “The Haz­ing Reader,” a vic­tim of a haz­ing crime who almost died came from Bloom­ing­ton North. He was at the Uni­ver­sity of North Carolina.

SH: How many books have you writ­ten? What are they about?

HN:  I’ve writ­ten 25 books, and four are about haz­ing. I have a fifth book com­ing out in a few months. I started writ­ing about haz­ing for the Human Behav­ior mag­a­zine, a national mag­a­zine study­ing behav­ior and psy­chol­ogy. When writ­ing about it, I won­dered why the bystanders just walked by. I did inter­views with lots of experts, and it seemed that haz­ers never did their haz­ing rit­u­als one-on-one. Now it’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, with cyber­bul­ly­ing. Cyber­bul­ly­ing is tech­ni­cally one-on-one, through phones and face­book, but it’s got the group men­tal­ity of haz­ing because peo­ple share it with their friends.

SH: Why is it so impor­tant that we put a stop to bul­ly­ing, both in high school and college?

HN:  Hazing’s main dan­ger is alco­hol. 82% of hazing-related deaths are caused by alco­hol. Cyber­bul­ly­ing can be very dan­ger­ous because its main goal is to exclude. Preda­tors want to find your weak­ness, your inse­cu­rity, and harp on your ori­en­ta­tion or ‘lack of cool­ness,’ and ham­mer that home. There was a haz­ing case where the haz­ers wanted a pledge to drink from a bot­tle and put a gun to his head. But what they didn’t know what that this boy’s father killed him­self that way.

SH: How can bul­ly­ing in high school lead to haz­ing in college?

HN:  Bul­ly­ing in high school makes a per­son jaded. Bul­ly­ing is haz­ing. If they’ve got­ten away with bul­ly­ing in high school, it makes them think they can get away with it in col­lege. It gets out of hand. At the high school level, haz­ing is worse than ever. Haz­ing began in about the 1980’s. At the col­lege level there is much more aware­ness, and col­leges are crack­ing down on it. For the first time since 1970, in 2010 there were no haz­ing related deaths in America.

SH: What is the best advice you could give to some­one being bul­lied or hazed?

HN:  Find peo­ple that object to it, just as you do. Band together with them. Find an admin­is­tra­tor that will lis­ten, and inform your par­ents, no mat­ter how embar­rass­ing the sit­u­a­tion is. Speak out! Take notes by the hour. By the minute. Don’t exag­ger­ate, don’t make any­thing up, and don’t break the law your­self. Some peo­ple fell that they can’t step in on haz­ing if it’s not in their group. That’s not true. You can. Things can get so out of con­trol. Adults can act in a stu­pid way, and they can be really bad exam­ples for high school stu­dents. Some­times, in high school, prin­ci­pals and admin­is­tra­tors are really bad at try­ing to con­tain it.

SH: How can you see bul­ly­ing and haz­ing stop­ping, or at least lessening?

HN:  It must be taught in a no-nonsense way from kinder­garten, or even ear­lier, on. Par­ents must get involved. Adults need to act like adults. It’s some kind of soci­etal prob­lem when adults don’t take respon­si­bil­ity and obey the law. There was once a case at an Indi­ana high school near Shel­byville. There was a sit­u­a­tion, but the school admin­is­tra­tors never let it go to the police. The police never fol­lowed up on the facts. If the facts are cor­rect, kids could end up with felonies on their records. When noth­ing hap­pens, it is uncon­scionable. School admin­is­tra­tors are not the police. They should not act like police. They need to call the police, and if noth­ing hap­pens then, par­ents should band together and demand justice.

SH: Is it hard to write about hazing?

HN:  Yes, it’s still not easy, talk­ing about the loss of a human life. I can’t tell you how many girl­friends and par­ents I’ve talked to after deaths. I can’t tell you how many 911 tapes I’ve heard. For most haz­ers, a death is either a wake up call, or they whine and blame it on the victim.

This story today reminded me of the long list of camps with past hazing issues. I’m sure the good camps far outweigh the bad, but why not be diligent in selecting a camp?

Here are helpful tips.

And some from my old column.

Excerpt Pittsburgh Post Gazette

According to the suit, the Cedar Bridge Military Academy Summer Camp in Toms River, N.J., was advertised as a “private, faith-based” camp whose mission was to “foster a love of Corps, country and God by providing a vehicle for the application of leadership, strengthening character, teaching responsibility, improving self-discipline, developing an understanding of the role of our military in today’s society, and building informed and productive citizens.”

But the plaintiff, who is identified only as “M.S.,” claims that when he attended the camp in 2007 at age 12, he was subjected to relentless hazing that “exceeded all possible bounds of human decency.”

During his two-week stay at the camp, the suit says, M.S. was made to eat his own vomit, threatened with having to clean up human feces with his hands, was nicknamed “Puke Bucket” by staff and called that name by other campers and made to listen to sexually explicit stories told by camp employees and counselors.

Plaintiffs attorney Edward S. Shensky first sued Cedar Bridge and its owner, Steven Baryla, who was later indicted on charges of possessing child pornography and pleaded guilty in federal court in New Jersey. He is in prison awaiting sentencing and faces a mandatory minimum term of five years in prison, court records show.

News accounts said the criminal charges against Mr. Baryla led to the closing of the Cedar Bridge Military Academy camp.

In an amended suit, Mr. Shensky later added the Boy Scouts of America and its local chapter, the York-Adams Council, as defendants.