Author: Hank Nuwer

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excerpt:
LOS LUNAS, N.M. (KRQE) – Two of three former Valencia High School football players accused of sexually hazing a younger teammate have now been charged with rape.

Jake Sanchez and Jeremy Carroll were each charged in Children’s Court with two counts of second-degree rape and two counts of conspiracy to commit rape.

Editor: The alleged victim was their teammate.

Supposedly a tradition, the ingestion of soy sauce made the UVA pledge foam at the mouth and played havoc with his chemical balance, according to hospital authorities.

“Court documents show the 19-year-old Zeta Psi pledge was taken to the emergency room after he started seizing, the newspaper reported. At the emergency room, the teen also started foaming at the mouth. He was taken to the intensive care unit and released four days later.”

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And an except

No charges have yet been filed since Los Lunas Schools announced in November that four seniors had been suspended from the Valencia High football team after an alleged hazing incident. However, the allegations did set a number of changes into motion, including a hazing awareness campaign.

The district is now having athletes and others watch a 20-minute DVD that explains different types of hazing, and why such conduct is destructive. “Break the Tradition or Break the Law” is a product of Allegro Media and the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.

New Mexico is among six states that still do not have any specific anti-hazing legislation on the books. The others are Alaska, Montana, South Dakota, Hawaii and Wyoming. Hazing cases that have been prosecuted in New Mexico, including one involving Robertson High football players, have been based on charges of other crimes on the books, such as assault.

The “Break the Tradition” video features testimonials from students, athletic directors, a retired Wisconsin superintendent, and parents. An interview with parents of a hazing victim who met with tragedy uses powerful emotions to convince viewers hazing can have grave consequences.

A narrator defines hazing early in the 20-minute video:

“Hazing is an activity expected of someone joining a group, an activity that humiliates, degrades, abuses or endangers a person, regardless of the willingness of all parties to participate.”

High-school-age students narrate descriptions of the three hazing types: subtle, harassment, violent.

Hank Nuwer is a professor at Indiana’s Franklin College and an author on the subject of hazing since the 1970s. He got a master’s degree from New Mexico Highlands University in the early 1970s, and since Robertson is practically next door to NMHU, the hazing saga there hit home for Nuwer.

He’s listed under the acknowledgement credits at the end of “Break the Tradition.”

“The basic argument in states that don’t have hazing laws is that other laws already cover it,” said Nuwer. “I don’t buy that. Not if you see how the nation has a history of hazing at high schools and colleges, and how it can escalate from small stuff to something fatal.”

Nuwer points out the reluctance of government agencies to prosecute hazing cases, sometimes with a potential sexual-offender registration or label at stake. If there were a hazing law in these states, then specific, less-stigmatizing charges could be filed.

Nuwer said an important target audience of anti-hazing media are the bystanders — not hazing perpetrators or victims, but those who witness it and don’t discourage or report it. “Some of the kids, victims or perpetrators, you’re not going to reach them with a video,” said Nuwer. “It’s the bystanders that we need to reach — the ones who can take action to prevent hazing.” Nuwer said he’s learned a great deal about the Robertson case, which has resulted in massive faculty changes at RHS and several plea-bargain sentences. He said he hasn’t read much about the Valencia High case yet.

He said universities have started to get the message about hazing, as there has been at least one hazing-related college death each year since 1970. Fraternities and sororities, some of the biggest hazing culprits in the past, now have active roles in the solution.

However, high schools have been slower to get the message, Nuwer said.

“We haven’t done a good job, nationwide, in educating the educators,” Nuwer said. “Too often, school personnel are trying to investigate and clear all the faculty themselves, instead of getting the real police involved.”

One educator who spoke during the video said hazing awareness is partly about communication.

“In a high percentage of hazing cases across the country, coaches were actually aware that those hazing activities were occurring,” says Lee Green, a professor of business and sport law at a Kansas university. “It’s incumbent upon athletic directors to monitor coaches very carefully. There’s the assumption that 99.9 percent of coaches are great people, but there’s that 1-in-100 coach, old-school, doesn’t really feel like there’s anything wrong with these inappropriate activities, doesn’t fracture the entire school athletic community.”

Nuwer said the education aspect of hazing awareness doesn’t focus on weeding out so-called bad apples, or destructive, dysfunctional students before crimes can be committed by them. He said it’s more about discouraging the behavior.

“It’s not about the character of any one kid,” said Nuwer. “We have no problem punishing kids for a gang-member initiation. We need to see hazing itself as a problem — not the kids.”

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According to party goers interviewed by the paper, there was an atmosphere of  ‘forced and heavy drinking’ at the Park street address.

A student recalled a member of the Pundits forcing attendees to kiss each other and that another Pundit forced a male friend’s face onto another’s penis.

The gender of the alleged victim of sexual assault is not clear, nor is the gender make up of the party.

One student who spoke to the paper said: ‘The biggest problem, and what was dis-inhibiting people, was that they were force-feeding people alcohol and they couldn’t say no because of the power dynamic.’

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And small section:

SAN JOSE, Calif. — San Jose State University has suspended it’s highly ranked club hockey team amid questions about drinking and hazing. The team’s game Friday night against San Diego State University was postponed as university officials started an investigation into the 25-member team “We received a telephone call from a parent who was very concerned about behavior among team members and we understand this behavior involves drinking,” university spokeswoman Pat Harris said.The school would not comment on the specifics but a source told KTVU’s Lloyd LaCuesta that there was video of a rookie, under age player, drinking alcohol out of a skating boot. In another incident, some team members drank alcohol on a flight from an out-of-town game.The team and parents held a closed door meeting Friday night. Afterward only the coach would speak, but he wasn’t saying much about allegations.”I’m confident the players will be exonerated from any of the allegations,” Coach Ron Glasow said.