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Deerfield parents object to term hazing

Story update: Illinois

I don’t usually say in hindsight I told you so, but this case is so costly for students and the school alike that I just want to state that the tradition should have been banned by a written policy long ago.  Deerfield stands as a cautionary tale for all school administrators and athletic directors who know that one of these inane traditions continues.  I would have you research the toilet paper incident in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the early 1990s when some Huron girls in a car racing from a toilet papering ended up in a pond and drowned, unable to get out.  I’m with the administration on this one, but I do understand the frustration of parents if this was an annual affair well known to either Deerfield coaches or administrators. If they did NOT know about it, they were not asking the simple questions every administrator and coach and athletic director OUGHT to ask about team “traditions” and so-called team building or bonding. Hank Nuwer

www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-deerfield-hazing-nzone-26-feb26,0,2728591.story
chicagotribune.com
Deerfield parents dispute hazing, fight swimmers’ suspension

By Emily S. Achenbaum

Tribune reporter

February 26, 2009
Click here to find out more!

A parent of a swimmer on Deerfield High School’s boys swim team wants the school to reinstate his son and a dozen other senior swimmers, who were suspended from the team after a hazing complaint, he says.

School officials have declined to discuss the swim team case, citing student privacy, and the reason for the suspensions remains unclear.

All the students involved have appealed, said Marjie Sandlow, a Township High School District 113 Board member, at a board meeting Monday. An independent company has been hired to handle the appeal process, she said.

“I think the bottom line is, we’re interested in student safety, and I think if there has been any kind of a question or practice … in the eyes of our school it was considered hazing,” Sandlow said. “Even a simple hazing can lead to more serious consequences for students today.”

Steve Brew, parent of one of the seniors, said the team held a dinner Feb. 6 honoring the seniors. Annual tradition holds that after the dinner, freshman swimmers toilet-paper seniors’ homes, and seniors attempt to “capture” the freshmen, whom they then drive around town, Brew said.

“It’s essentially a game,” he said. “Some refer to it as team building.”

But someone complained this year and called it hazing, Brew said. Within days, the school district had interviewed every team member and decided to suspend all the seniors from future swim meets, he said.

The incident “completely met the definition of hazing,” said board member Helene Herbstman.

School district spokeswoman Carol Votsmier said only that there had been an “incident,” and that the students involved had been disciplined.

Deerfield Police Deputy Chief Rick Wilk said his department received no complaints about senior night, and as a courtesy, parents let police know in advance that kids would be toilet-papering houses that night, Wilk said. He said the department hasn’t been told of any wrongdoing.

Freelance writer Brian Cox contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

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, 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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