No More Hazing: Eradication Through Law and Education
| Jurisdiction | Utah,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 10 No. 9 Pg. 18 |
| Pages | 18 |
| Publication year | 1997 |
David S. Doty, J.
One of the most disturbing trends in the United States is the repeated occurrence of brutal hazings in American schools, colleges, and other public institutions. Despite the fact that hazings often result in injury or death, and almost always provoke acrimonious litigation, they continue unabated as some form of twisted social rite.
Over the past couple of years, several hazing incidents have been reported in locations from Washington State to Washington, D.C.[1] For example, on August 14, 1996, the first day of classes at Lamar High School in Arlington, Texas, eleven junior and senior students took six sophomores to a field away from school grounds and hazed the sophomores by paddling, painting, and urinating on them.[2] The eleven students were transferred for an entire year to another school. Then in December 1996, two first-year women cadets, Kim Messer and Jeanie Mentavlos, left the Citadel after filing complaints that upper-class male cadets hazed them by shoving them with rifles, washing their mouths with cleaning fluid, dabbing nail-polish remover on their clothes, and setting their clothes on fire.[3]
More recently, the Associated Press reported on a July 1997 trial that resulted in a Prince George's County, Maryland jury award of $375,000 to a former University of Maryland student who was severely beaten as part of a fraternity hazing ritual.[4] Joseph Snell sued the black fraternity Omega Psi Phi for injuries he suffered in 1993 when fraternity members beat him with a hammer, horsehair whip, broken chair leg, and a brush. Snell also testified that his fraternity brothers put a space heater next to his face to darken his skin because they believed he was not "black enough" to become part of the fraternity.
Unfortunately, hazings have also persisted in Utah. In August 1996, two Roy High School senior football players were removed from the team for their participation in a summer football camp incident in Carbon County. Several sophomore players accused the seniors of holding them down while one of the seniors sat naked on their faces or the back of their heads.[5]
Shortly thereafter, five Hillcrest High School football players, including a student body officer and the team captains, were expelled for their role in a locker room hazing on August 21, 1996.[6]Although full details of the incident were never released to the public, the Jordan School District's response to a lawsuit filed by the expelled boys provides some information.
According to the district's answer, five students taped two other students to locker room benches and then proceeded to "mummy tape" the faces and bodies of the two victims. Subsequently, "some of the perpetrators forcefully exposed their buttocks and genitals" to the victims and flatulated in their faces. Football helmets were also placed on the victims, and they were flipped and struck with towels. Most seriously, "[a]s the incident progressed, one of the boys panicked and began to cry and begged to be released." The other victim also repeatedly requested to be released. Yet all of the perpetrators walked away and left the victims helplessly taped to the benches.[7]
It should be troublesome to all Utahns that the Hillcrest hazing appeared to be a reprise of a vicious hazing four years ago, in which several football players at Sky View High School taped Brian Seamons, the junior quarterback, to a towel rack, and humiliated him by pushing a girl into the locker room to view him naked.[8]Apparently the more things change, the more they stay the same in some high school football locker rooms.
NEW UTAH LEGISLATION
In response to the continued rash of hazings in Utah, the Utah Legislature passed, and Governor Leavitt signed into law, Senate Bill 150 during the 1997 legislative session. This bill, somewhat misleadingly titled "Conduct Related to School Activities," became a new section of Utah's Education Code, Utah Code Ann. §53A-11-908, and an amended section of the Criminal Code, Utah Code Ann. §76-5-107.5.
The new section of the Education Code contains three important provisions. First, the law codifies existing Tenth Circuit case law, most recently articulated in Seamons v. Snow, 84 F.3d 1226 (10th Cir. 1996), holding that public school students do not have a constitutional right to participate in extracurricular activities. At the same time, however, the law formally recognizes the importance of extracurricular activities to the overall school experience of young people. The Legislature finds that "participation in...
To continue reading
Request your trial