Schools maybe show they are finally getting serious about severe bullying?

emax100 · Oct 11, 2014

https://news.yahoo.com/7-charged-high-school-football-hazing-case-024429488--spt.html

Seven students were charged with sex crimes Friday after an investigation into hazing on a high school football team found that they held other children against their will and improperly touched them, prosecutors said.

Three of the students were charged with aggravated sexual assault, criminal restraint, hazing and other crimes for an act of sexual penetration upon one of the children, Middlesex County prosecutor Andrew C. Carey said. The four other students were charged with aggravated criminal sexual contact and other crimes for what happened at Sayreville War Memorial High School, a regional football power whose season was canceled amid the investigation.

Six of the seven students, ranging in age from 15 to 17, were arrested Friday night, and the seventh was being sought, prosecutors said. Those in custody were awaiting a Family Court decision on whether they would be held at a juvenile detention facility or be released to their families. Their names weren't released because of their ages.

Ok, so it is just one school. But the fact that they are taking this action against football stars, who are placed on a proverbial celebrity pedestal starting with high school, is a damn big deal. After all, if they are willing to take this action with athletes who help teams win, then it is much more likely they are gonna take the same kind of action with students who aren't part of an exalted group. Needless to say, a ton of people believe that cancelling the whole season is taking it too far and that this shows we are getting too sensitive and taking zero tolerance too far again. Are we?

cornflake · Oct 11, 2014

This was not bullying.

Also, not for nothing, but football star is relative. This was in Jersey, not Texas. Yes, they had a good team, but it's not really the same thing as a school that produces serious players.

kuwisdelu · Oct 11, 2014

It's good to see serious crimes treated as serious crimes even among athletes.

Though I do think hazing is its own unique form of torture, separate from bullying.

cornflake · Oct 11, 2014

kuwisdelu said:
It's good to see serious crimes treated as serious crimes even among athletes.

Though I do think hazing is its own unique form of torture, separate from bullying.

Hazing isn't always torture. It's traditional in locker rooms all the way through the pros, and is generally of the harmless, dopey kind of activity.

I'm not saying it can't be torturous, obviously. A kid in, actually I believe Jersey, was killed a couple of years ago in a fraternity hazing incident.

J.S.F. · Oct 12, 2014

cornflake said:
Hazing isn't always torture. It's traditional in locker rooms all the way through the pros, and is generally of the harmless, dopey kind of activity.

I'm not saying it can't be torturous, obviously. A kid in, actually I believe Jersey, was killed a couple of years ago in a fraternity hazing incident.

---

Check out this link. It's a couple of years old, but it still bears weight.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/education/edlife/a-hazing-at-cornell.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

There is also a link at Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hazing_deaths_in_the_United_States While neither exhaustive nor exact, it does give an idea of what's been going on.

Hazing, sports teams or not, usually involves drinking...a lot of it. Drugs? Maybe, but booze ain't illegal--yet. Saying "generally" is just that...a generalization.

Vince524 · Oct 12, 2014

While I'm all for schools taking bullying seriously, I don't think of this as bullying. This sounds more like sexual assault and calling it bullying seems to be almost downplaying it.

backslashbaby · Oct 12, 2014

It's definitely downplaying it. Trigger Warning: rape details.

This was a daily gang rape (or attempted) of different freshman players by the same seven guys.

... one parent discussed with the website the "sexual nature" of the rituals he said "happened almost every day in the locker room this fall."Part of the ritual involved forced anal penetration perpetuated by multiple individuals, according to the parent....

http://highschoolsports.nola.com/ne...rsey-football-program-revealed-njcom-reports/

There is an article around that details exactly what would happen, and it's very disturbing.

This article surprised me:
"Sayreville allegations not unique as experts see increase in anal-penetration hazing"

http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2014/10/sayreville_football_hazing_not_unique.html

Allegations that members of the Sayreville High School football team subjected freshman players to anal penetration bear an eerie resemblance to dozens of cases around the country.
In Colorado, the hazing case involved a pencil. In Los Angeles, a broken flag pole. In Iowa, a jump-rope handle. In Missouri, a water bottle. In Vermont, pool cues....

...
“More and more we’re seeing this among male high-school athletes, where this is their mode of hazing: some kind of sexual assault that involves anal penetration,” said Mary Madden, former co-director of National Collaborative for Hazing Research and Prevention at the University of Maine, Orono.
“We don’t know if it’s getting more severe, or whether it’s just getting discovered more often,” she said. A review by Bloomberg News counted over a dozen incidents of high school boys being sodomized with foreign objects by their teammates in 2013 alone.
In Iowa, high school wrestlers punished younger teammates for missing practice or failing to make their weight class by rectal penetration using the handle of a jump rope.
An Illinois soccer player alleged younger members of the team were pinned to the ground, their testicles grabbed, then sodomized with a finger. The Colorado case involved the team manager, who was sodomized with a pencil on the team bus after having been bound with duct tape....

I agree with criminal charges, and yes disbanding any team that witnessed these things and didn't report them.

I'm glad to see so much support shown in the comments (ignoring the vile jokes). Nobody appears to be thinking that the victims consented/were just playing around, so that's interesting compared to how it goes with male-on-female situations.

Karen Junker · Oct 12, 2014

I have always hated hazing of any kind. This is actually criminal behavior and it needs to stop.

If those boys don't have any good boundaries now for what is rape and what isn't, I feel so sorry for the people they have anything to do with in the future.

backslashbaby · Oct 12, 2014

As far as why they are taking it seriously, imho it's because it happened to males, and because it was so damned frequent. I think the school officials could identify with the horror of it in this case/with these victims. They were football players, too, so the victims were held in the same high esteem as the rapists.

Liosse de Velishaf · Oct 12, 2014

This is way more than bullying. They ought to spend serious time in an adult facility, and get major counseling/education on why this sort of behavior is absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances.

blacbird · Oct 12, 2014

In regard to the question posed in the thread title:

I doubt it.

School administrators are about the most cover-yer-ass people I've ever encountered in my life. They'll do whatever is thought necessary to accmplish that goal. Beyond that, they, as a rule, don't give a shit. They're not much different than the Roman Catholic Church has been about dealing with child sexual abuse by priests.

Good teachers love to teach. Bad teachers love to move up in the hierarchy where they don't have to teach anymore, but earn more money.

caw

cornflake · Oct 12, 2014

In regards to people taking it seriously - the town held a candlelight vigil/march tonight for the victims, which is kind of unusual, at least in most of the recent cases of assaults on college and h.s. students.

Story here -

As allegations of sexual assault and hazing within Sayreville's storied high school football program continue to drive a wedge through the borough, hundreds attended a candlelight vigil Sunday evening in hope of starting the healing process.

"We need to come together to support each other, our children, our community and most especially the young men who spoke up," said organizer Maureen Jenkins in an emotional speech...

Sayreville Superintendent Richard Labbe attended the vigil, along with several district and city officials. Earlier in the day, Labbe told NJ Advance Media the high school's football program could be suspended beyond this season.

"Whether we have a football program moving forward is certainly a question in my mind," Labbe said. "Based upon the severity of the charges, I'm not sure. I have to look at the results of the investigation. I have to await more information from the Middlesex County Prosecutor's office."

Celia Cyanide · Oct 13, 2014

backslashbaby said:
As far as why they are taking it seriously, imho it's because it happened to males, and because it was so damned frequent. I think the school officials could identify with the horror of it in this case/with these victims. They were football players, too, so the victims were held in the same high esteem as the rapists.

I agree. I'm glad the school is taking it seriously, but I think it has more to do with who the victims are than anything else?

Karen Junker · Oct 13, 2014

I find it interesting that the reporters called it a 'candlelight vigil' -- I guess it depends on a lot of things, but here, when people held a candlelight vigil for Mike Brown, the news reports called it a 'demonstration' and the people were 'protesters'.

backslashbaby · Oct 13, 2014

I looked up the Colorado case briefly mentioned in what I quoted earlier, and it was far different! I feel so, so bad for that poor boy. That was one incident (rape) against one boy, and the community and school treated him like shit. The accusations were against a powerful person's son.

In this Sayreville case, I notice that even the reporting doesn't sound as doubtful of the victims as usual, like using "alleged victim" or "alleged assault" every single time they use those nouns. They use the word 'reported' or 'reports' as well, for instance. Whatever is causing all the support, I like it.

robjvargas · Oct 13, 2014

I posit the idea that there is a level (so to speak) of activity where labels like hazing and bullying become secondary to the criminal activity that took place. And this case is, to me, a textbook illustration of that.

Sexual assault is sexual assault. And it's accurate to say that this was part of a culture of hazing and bullying. At the same time, the sexual assault takes the crime here to such a level that the source of the activity becomes minor compared to the crime itself. Possibly so much so that it's in danger of minimizing the crime.

This was sexual assault, condoned by the team (possibly the school, based on some of the rumors I've heard on TV reports). Bullying? I suppose. Hazing? Yeah. Both of the latter, however, pale compared to the sexual attacks.

Schools maybe show they are finally getting serious about severe bullying?

emax100

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

kuwisdelu

Revolutionize the World

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

J.S.F.

Red fish, blue fish...

Vince524

Are you gonna finish that bacon?

backslashbaby

*

Karen Junker

Live a little. Write a lot.

backslashbaby

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Liosse de Velishaf

blacbird

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

Celia Cyanide

Joker Groupie

Karen Junker

Live a little. Write a lot.

backslashbaby

*

robjvargas

Schools maybe show they are finally getting serious about severe bullying?

practical experience, FTW

Revolutionize the World

practical experience, FTW

Red fish, blue fish...

Are you gonna finish that bacon?

~~~~*~~~~

Live a little. Write a lot.

~~~~*~~~~

practical experience, FTW

Joker Groupie

Live a little. Write a lot.

~~~~*~~~~

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