Hank Nuwer, Author; Hazing Deaths Database

Link
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-school-hazing-suit-19aug19,0,3026455.story

abstract:

chicagotribune.com
Paralyzed teen’s parents sue Chicago school over alleged hazing
Swimming pool injury happened during 2007 water polo practice in St. Ignatius College Prep, lawsuit says
By Kristen Mack
TRIBUNE REPORTER

The family of a former St. Ignatius College Prep student sued the school Monday for negligence over an alleged hazing incident that left him quadriplegic 2 ½ years ago.

Christopher Connolly, then a 15-year-old freshman, suffered the injuries when he struck his head on the bottom of the school swimming pool while practicing with the junior-varsity water polo team in February 2007.

The lawsuit alleged an assistant coach told some classmates to throw snowballs at “Flounder,” a derogatory nickname he had given Connolly. As he tried to avoid being hit by “a barrage” of snowballs, kickboards, buoys and other pool equipment, Connolly was instructed by another coach to “get in” the pool, the suit said.

Connolly “was forced to dive into the swimming pool,” hitting the pool bottom and fracturing his vertebrae, according to the suit and his attorney, Steven Greenberger.

Greenberger said the injury has devastated the family.

The suit, filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, seeks undisclosed monetary damages from St. Ignatius. The coaches were not named as defendants.

The school, 1076 W. Roosevelt Rd. in Chicago, didn’t not return a call seeking comment on the lawsuit.

”It’s not just a monetary thing. It’s the physical and emotional expense,” said Connolly’s mother, Helen, 60, who filed the suit with her husband, Dennis. “He can’t be left alone. I hope I can live long enough to take care of him.”

Connolly, now 17, uses a wheelchair and needs help getting dressed, bathing and picking things off the floor. Connolly has regained some use of his arms and hands with “extensive and intensive therapy,” Greenberger said.

After nearly four months in the hospital, Connolly returned to St. Ignatius in fall 2007 for his sophomore year. He later transferred to Walter Payton College Prep High School, where he will return for his senior year next month. He is a member of the National Honor Society and is thinking about where he will go to college next year.

”I’m not ruling anything out at this point,” he said.
d. in Chicago, didn’t not return a call seeking comment on the lawsuit.

”It’s not just a monetary thing. It’s the physical and emotional expense,” said Connolly’s mother, Helen, 60, who filed the suit with her husband, Dennis. “He can’t be left alone. I hope I can live long enough to take care of him.”

Connolly, now 17, uses a wheelchair and needs help getting dressed, bathing and picking things off the floor. Connolly has regained some use of his arms and hands with “extensive and intensive therapy,” Greenberger said.

After nearly four months in the hospital, Connolly returned to St. Ignatius in fall 2007 for his sophomore year. He later transferred to Walter Payton College Prep High School, where he will return for his senior year next month. He is a member of the National Honor Society and is thinking about where he will go to college next year.

”I’m not ruling anything out at this point,” he said.

Teen who took plea deal
learns fate

Updated: Tuesday, 18 Aug 2009, 6:42 AM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 18 Aug 2009, 6:39 AM EDT

* Posted by: Emily Lenihan

WILSON, N.Y. (WIVB) – A former Wilson High School baseball player who took a plea deal in an alleged hazing case, is expected to learn his fate Tuesday.

The 19 year old pleaded guilty last May to child endangerment.

He’s set to be sentenced in Wilson Town Court Tuesday.

Two 17 year olds were acquitted of charges last month.

Charges against coaches William Atlas and Thomas Baia were dropped in July as well.

The three varsity players were accused of hazing two JV players on a bus last year.

The Grand Rapids Press sues Coopersville schools to disclose amount paid to hazing victims
by Nate Reens | The Grand Rapids Press
Friday August 14, 2009, 10:23 AM

COOPERSVILLE — The Coopersville school district illegally entered into a secret settlement keeping the public from knowing how much was paid two victims in a high-profile sports hazing case, a lawsuit filed by The Grand Rapids Press alleges.

Filed Thursday in Ottawa County Circuit Court in Grand Haven, the lawsuit claims the district gave insufficient explanations for rejecting release of financial records resolving a suit by the victims against Coopersville Area Public Schools.

The victims had sought $5 million. The newspaper sought the settlement amount under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

The Press is requesting a judge order the district disclose “any amounts of money paid by the schools, or on their behalf,” in settling the federal civil rights action. The Press also argues the court should declare the nondisclosure a FOIA violation.

The newspaper is suing based on the principle the public has a right to know how its tax money is spent, Press Editor Paul M. Keep said.

The newspaper has not identified the teen victims because of their ages and the abuse suffered.

“The Press specifically did not ask to know who got what, but rather what the taxpayer bill amounted to in the settlement of each of these high-profile cases,” Keep said.

“Our newspaper takes very seriously its role as a watchdog on government, and we believe The Press, just like all citizens of this area, should have the right to this information and that the Coopersville schools made a mistake in denying our Freedom of Information Act request.

“No one likes to file a lawsuit, but we are willing to fight in court if need be to obtain this information for our readers,” he said.

Jim Jamo, the district’s attorney, declined comment.

Jamo, who denied the information request on behalf of the school district, had not seen The Press’ lawsuit, he said.

The Lansing-based attorney rejected the newspaper’s request, citing attorney-client and settlement privileges, confidentiality requirements and a ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker.

Jonker approved the accord last month.

TIMELINE

Coopersville hazing cases

May 2007 — Public learns of junior varsity baseball team hazing in boy’s locker room, leading to four student suspensions amid a police investigation. Team coach resigns.

June 4, 2007 — Four student players expelled for their role in more than a dozen hazing incidents involving two victims.

June 8, 2007 — Four students charged criminally with gross indecency. Later, they are sentenced to six months of probation and community service.

May 2008 — Three expelled students seek readmission. School board rejects the request.

June 2008 — Parents of two victims file federal lawsuit against Coopersville Schools and coaches, and offenders, seeking $5 million.

July 2009 — Judge Robert Jonker approves confidential settlement with the district, citing the victims’ ages and the mediation process as reasons for the confidentiality.

Press attorney James Brady argues the denial cited by Jamo is inadequate on several levels.

The client privilege extends only to legal communications, and state courts have not recognized a “so-called ‘settlement privilege,'” Brady wrote.

The Press also contends public bodies are not permitted to contract away FOIA obligations, as the district did in outsourcing the request to Jamo.

Finally, there has been no ruling on confidentiality provisions by the federal district court or any other Michigan court of similar jurisdiction, Brady argues.

Neither Superintendent Kevin O’Neill nor school board President Lori Rander could be reached for comment Thursday.

The highly-publicized hazing divided the community after it was revealed two Coopersville High School junior varsity baseball players were physically and sexually assaulted in a school locker room. The abuse happened over a four- to six-week period in 2007.

The four offenders were expelled from school. All received juvenile court sentences for inflicting indignities that included grinding fingers or knuckles into a victim’s rectum; putting bare buttocks into the face of a victim; slapping genitals; and inserting a finger into a student’s mouth and pulling hard on the inside of the cheek, court documents showed.

The public records sought by The Press “are essential to vindicating the public’s interest in monitoring the program and the administration of the School by its elected and appointed officials, and the expending of funds,” according to the suit.

“The Press, and the public it serves, will be irreparably injured, absent immediate and full disclosure of the information on this matter of enormous public concern,” Brady wrote.

The Press objected to the nondisclosure agreement in a letter to Jonker before he approved the settlement.

He said the confidentiality — which both sides agreed upon — outweighs the public interest in some situations.

Jonker justified the confidentiality agreement, basing it on “sensitive events,” adolescents in high school settings, and the need to afford protection to vulnerable victims.

In addition to the settlement approved by Jonker, the district and the victims came to terms on “non-economic” agreements aimed at preventing similar hazing problems.

Lawsuit: USU ignored fraternity’s ‘culture of drug and alcohol abuse’
Alcohol death » Family of pledge says discipline by USU was lacking.

By Brian Maffly

The Salt Lake Tribune

Utah State University officials long tolerated “a culture of drug and alcohol abuse” at a fraternity house where a teenage freshman pledge died of alcohol poisoning after an alleged hazing last fall, his family claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Logan’s 1st District Court.

The Sigma Nu fraternity chapter had long been the scene of misconduct, including an alcohol-related suicide by hanging, underage drinking, arson, thefts, vandalism, false fire alarms and assaults, contend lawyers representing the teen’s parents, Jane and George Starks, of Salt Lake City.

“If the university had done its job and monitored this fraternity and used the powers it has to discipline the fraternity and its members, it probably would not have existed when Michael Starks got to USU,” said Charlie Thronson of the Salt Lake City law firm Parsons, Behle and Latimer.

The suit not only accuses fraternity chapters of straying from their chartering principles, but argues that universities have a legal obligation to bring student organizations into line, especially if they encourage students to join.

USU officials expressed sympathy for the Starkses, but denied the school is liable for their son’s fate.

“The safety and well-being of all of our students are a primary concern,” said university spokesman John DeVilbiss. “We take issue, however, regarding the university’s responsibility to students participating in off-campus, non-university activities.”

Sigma Nu Executive Director Brad Beacham declined to comment.

USU’s Greek-letter houses line 800 East, across the street from the Logan campus. While fraternity chapters affiliate with campuses at the pleasure of the institutions, they are chartered by their national organizations, which are responsible for ensuring chapters live up to their ideals of leadership, community service and camaraderie.

But Sigma Nu’s Logan chapter had a seamy underside of ritualistic alcohol abuse and chronic lawlessness, the Starkses allege. The university’s tolerance of the bad behavior, which should have been known to officials, was tantamount to approval.

“It’s permission by inaction,” Thronson said. “They turned a blind eye.”

The allegations are based on Logan city police reports over the 10 years before Starks’ death, as well as on police interviews with fraternity members after the tragedy.

The fraternity brothers got drunk as a group, sometimes to the point of collapse, and performed “baptisms” by pouring liquor on the heads of brothers as they kneeled with their hands bound behind their backs, the suit claims. Lawyers provided photographs, pulled from a Sigma Nu member’s MySpace page, supposedly documenting one such beer-drenched baptism.

“Do you think Mr. and Mrs. Starks would have allowed their son to rush this fraternity if they had known about this? Of course not,” said plaintiff’s co-counsel David Bianchi, a Florida attorney credited with winning the largest wrongful-death verdict in a fraternity hazing case.

The suit seeks unspecified damages from the university and from the state. The Starkses have already reached out-of-court settlements with the national organizations of Sigma Nu and the Chi Omega sorority, whose members “captured” Starks, bound his hands with duct tape, and provided him with vodka at an initiation ritual the night he overdosed. The university suspended the chapters and their national organizations soon shuttered them. The Greek societies’ own rules and USU’s student code strictly prohibit alcohol abuse and hazing.

Logan police concluded Starks was poisoned during an illegal hazing and prosecutors charged 12 USU students and their two Greek chapters with hazing. Prosecutors dismissed all the hazing charges, but five students served jail time for furnishing the vodka or hiding the bottle.

The Starkses’ suit also alleges USU failed to warn incoming students of the dangerous activities at its fraternities. Instead, the university encouraged students to “think Greek” and join sororities and fraternities, which were once an integral part of campus life. In 1941, one-fourth of USU students were Greeks, while today just 1 percent belong to the eight remaining chapters.

bmaffly@sltrib.com
Review Pledge died of alcohol poisoning

Michael Starks, an 18-year-old freshman, was pledging at USU’s Sigma Nu fraternity when he drank a toxic dose of vodka at an off-campus Logan home. He died hours later at the Sigma Nu house.