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Carmel High School (Indiana) basketball case botched by prosecutor: my conclusion

Moderator: I have a meeting on hazing at the NCAA today so this is short. My conclusions? a) The prosecutor respectfully should rethink her decisions apart from the politics of Carmel. b) The people of Carmel need to compare the felony settlements given Robertson High School’s Steven Garcia (three felonies for football hazing that slid over into sexual assault) with the lightness of these charges. c) Thetaxpayers  of Carmel need to ask how much the school district paid off as a settlement in the 1998 Carmel hazing scandal. See  the Coopersville (Michigan) FOIA request by the Grand Rapids newspaper for precedent. d) The prosecutor’s handling of the case from beginning until yesterday’s press conference needs to be reviewed by an ethics board. e) The Carmel police department needs an impartial investigator to doublecheck handling of evidence. How and why did this video tape disappear and suddenly reappear. It must be determined there was no evidence tampering.  f) Why did the Carmel school wait so long to release its coaches? g) What role did the bus driver play in the skirmish on the bus that resulted in the victimization of a player? What did the driver see in that large mirror? Those are my conclusions and a question–HN

See the long Indianapolis Star comment for details, particularly the quote attributed to Scott Newman. The article is very long. Click all links.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20100518/LOCAL01/5180333/We-may-never-know-what-happened

By Hank Nuwer

Journalist Hank Nuwer tracks hazing deaths in fraternities and schools. Nuwer is the Alaska author of Hazing: Destroying Young Lives; Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing, High School Hazing, Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader. In April of 2024 and April 2025 , the Alaska Press Club awarded him first place in the Best Columnist division and Best Humorist, second place.

He has written articles or columns on hazing for the Sunday Times of India, Toronto Globe & Mail, Harper's Magazine, Orlando Sentinel, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. His current book is Hazing: Destroying Young Lives from Indiana University Press. He is married to Malgorzata Wroblewska Nuwer of Warsaw, Poland and Fairbanks, Alaska. Nuwer is a former columnist for the Greenville (Ohio)Early Bird and former managing editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in Alaska.
Nuwer was named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists columnist of the year in 2021 for his “After Darke” column in the Early Bird. He also won third place for the column in 2022 from the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He and his wife Gosia, recently of Union City, Ind., have owned 20 acres in Alaska for many years. “The move is a sort-of coming home for us,” said Nuwer. As a journalist, he’s written about the Alaskan Iditarod sled-dog race and other Alaska topics. Read his musings in his blog at Real Alaska Daily--http://realalaskadaily.com and in his weekly column "Far from Randolph" in the Winchester Star-Gazette of Randolph County, Indiana.

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