HIGH SCHOOL HAZING/Hazings prevalent, but policies, appropriate punishments vague

FOR PUBLICATION SUNDAY AND AFTER

It sounds shocking.

High school athletes touching underclassmen's faces with genitals or bare buttocks.Kids forced to touch others' private parts. Truth or dare.

But high school hazing with sexual overtones isn't unusual.

Hank Nuwer, a professor at Franklin College in Indiana who has been tracking hazing incidents since the 1970s, says he first heard about sexually abusive hazing in a high school setting in 1983. Since then, he said, reports have become commonplace.

"The sexual assaults are pretty much constant since 1995," said Nuwer, a journalism professor whose interest stems from a hazing death at a Nevada university where he went to graduate school. "I hear about one about once a week. There are so many instances of this in small towns now that every principal and every coach ought to be awake to it."

Three football players in Salt Lake City were thrown off the team, expelled from school and charged with felonies for allegedly touching another player's face with genitals in late August and early September.

In Michigan, a 15-year-old pleaded guilty to gross indecency last month, the third of four high school baseball players charged for crimes in connection with a hazing.

In Missouri, a half-dozen high school basketball players have been charged with crimes, and a school district is facing a lawsuit, following an alleged June hazing at a summer basketball camp that plaintiffs say involved sexual abuse.

In Minnesota, an 18-year-old youth pleaded guilty Wednesday to aiding and abetting indecent exposure, a felony, after admitting that he had held a 16-year-old boy down after hockey practice while another player, who was nude, tried touching him in a sexual manner. Teammates allegedly watched. No contact occurred.

Though he lives in Indiana, Nuwer, who documents hazing incidents on a blog, knows about Virden High School in central Illinois, where an incident involving a senior who reportedly touched his genitals to the face of a freshman football player has rocked the town of 3,500 residents. A second player allegedly was jumped after the first, but another player stepped in and stopped it with no sexual contact occurring.

Virden school officials refuse to say exactly what happened, although they don't dispute the gist of the reports that are common knowledge around town. Asked whether a senior had placed his genitals on the face of a freshman who was being held down, School Superintendent Ron Graham said, "I'm not going to address that." Presented with the same scenario, school board president Stephen Furman said, "That's not entirely accurate." He wouldn't elaborate.

One thing is clear: Virden High School wasn't prepared.

Without going into details, head football coach Bruce Paisley has admitted he was surprised after talking to players from previous years about what happened when adults weren't present. The school's hazing policy is exactly nine words long: "Soliciting, encouraging, aiding or engaging in hazing is prohibited."

The policy does not define hazing, nor does it say how administrators should respond. It also doesn't say how kids who are hazed or who witness hazing should come forward in an environment where athletes can feel bound by an unwritten code that says what happens in the locker room stays in the locker room.

By contrast, a model hazing policy published by the National Federation of State High School Associations is two pages long and contains seven sections. Besides defining what hazing is, the policy requires witnesses to alert officials, who are required to take "appropriate action" against anyone who retaliates against a witness or anyone else who assists with a hazing investigation.

In Virden, district officials say they will revise student handbooks and curriculums to address hazing, including spelling out the need for witnesses to report what they've seen.

"District personnel have been alerted to watch for subsequent inappropriate or improper behavior and to deal with it accordingly," the Virden School Board said in a written statement last week.

Three Virden players involved in the Sept. 19 hazing returned to the team and school after missing one game and serving five-day suspensions. A fourth has been thrown off the team and must attend an alternative school until at least January.

The town, where high school football is big and the team is doing well, remains divided.

"Things are maybe a little more stable, but I don't think they're completely calmed down yet," said Virden Police Chief Scott Mayeda. He said his department has taken a report on threats being made in connection with the hazing, but he declined to give details.

"There are still some people who have some serious emotions about this situation, and it may take some time," Mayeda said.

Deciding how to respond to hazing incidents can be difficult, and the difficulty often ratchets up when sexually inappropriate behavior is involved.

"We think there's certainly a prevalence of that type of behavior," said Norman Pollard, dean of students at Alfred University in New York state. "There are some school districts that do absolutely nothing - they view it as boys being boys, the tradition of the team. The other extreme is where there's not only school action, but criminal notification as well."

Pollard recommends erring on the side of calling police.

"Really, the police and the district attorney are the ones that are charged with the responsibility to determine if a crime has occurred and what category of crime it falls under," Pollard said.

Virden school officials called police but did not file a formal complaint or ask for an investigation. Consequently, police have not gotten involved. District officials say it's up to parents to file complaints with law enforcement, which has not happened.

Sheryl Essenburg, a Sangamon County assistant state's attorney who prosecutes sex offenses, said that touching, even if it involves genitals, isn't necessarily a sex offense if there's no intent to arouse or obtain sexual gratification. But it can still be a felony.

"I'm not hearing any sexual intent," Essenburg said. "If their intent was to be disgusting, it's probably not a sex offense. It would, at the very least, be a battery in that it's a touching."

Under Illinois law, batteries that occur in public schools are considered aggravated offenses and therefore felonies, Essenburg said. If no touching is involved, hazing can still be a lesser crime, such as disorderly conduct, which involves behavior that alarms or disturbs someone.

And plenty of students are upset, judging from a 2000 study by Alfred University researchers who found that 48 percent of students surveyed reported being hazed in high school, and more than 70 percent of the hazed students reported negative consequences.

"We found a significant number were certainly emotionally devastated," Pollard said.

"They reported being depressed. They reported being suicidal."

Researchers did not ask specifically about hazing that involved anything sexual, but respondents, who received mailed questionnaires, brought it up on their own.

Reported sexual hazing included overt sex acts, shaving genitals, incidents involving animals and forced nudity in public. Researchers received 1,541 completed surveys, with 31 percent coming from the Midwest.

Hazing is a big issue at Alfred University. Five football players there required medical attention for alcohol poisoning resulting from a 1998 hazing that prompted school officials to forfeit a game, suspend six players from the team and expel one player from school. The incident occurred 20 years after an Alfred student died of hypothermia and alcohol poisoning after being placed in the trunk of a car during a fraternity hazing.

Pollard and Nuwer agree: No form of hazing is OK. While taping players to goal posts or stuffing them in lockers might seem like harmless fun, hazing has a tendency to escalate, they say.

"Once the tradition starts, you can't rely on high school kids to keep it in line," Nuwer said.

Alfred U. researchers found that 13 percent of kids who were hazed wanted revenge, and that doesn't bode well, Pollard said.

"The kids who were hazed the previous year tend to be the hazers the next year," he said. "What they do is ratchet it up a notch, make it a little more degrading, make it a little more dangerous."

Bruce Rushton can be reached at 788-1542 or bruce.rushton@sj-r.com.

BREAKOUT: By the numbers

Hazing is widespread, an Alfred University study found in 2000

-- 48 percent of respondents reported being hazed in high school

-- More than 70 percent of those reported negative consequences

-- 40 percent of students wouldn't report hazing to adults

-- Of those, 36 percent knew no one they could tell, 27 percent said adults wouldn't handle the situation properly, and 24 percent said their peer would make their lives miserable.