What precisely occurred on the Brunswick Excessive soccer crew’s in a single day retreat in August at Thomas Level Seashore has not been defined publicly.
What is understood is that the varsity superintendent has taken critically the allegations that older gamers hazed youthful gamers. Each the varsity division and the Brunswick Police Division have carried out investigations. Coaches have been positioned on depart. College students have been booted from the crew.
However whereas the varsity division’s investigation has been accomplished and a few disciplinary motion has been taken, the total results of the alleged hazing may not be recognized for years.
“There’s at all times ripple results,” stated Elizabeth Allan, a College of Maine professor and founding father of the analysis group StopHazing. “You’re coping with the people concerned, each the individuals who really feel they have been on the receiving ends and those that deliberate the actions, their households and associates.
“Then there’s the crew itself, the way it impacts the belief throughout the crew, and it has ripple results past that as a result of, in fact, all the opposite college students are watching and studying,” Allan added. “It may be a possibility to essentially shift the norms. And that is determined by how the parents in management roles select to reply.”
Hazing in American faculties is frequent. At its worst it may be extraordinarily harmful, even deadly. Different instances it could be barely acknowledged. However in each type, hazing boils right down to these holding energy in a gaggle requiring somebody becoming a member of or taking part in a gaggle to have interaction in an exercise that humiliates, degrades, abuses or endangers them, no matter an individual’s willingness to take part.
Most states, together with Maine, have academic requirements that require faculties to have insurance policies that forbid hazing. Nonetheless, 47 p.c of school freshmen report they have been hazed in highschool, in line with Allan’s 2009 analysis, which continues to be thought-about the definitive examine on highschool hazing.
Elliot Hopkins is the director of sports activities sanctioning and scholar providers on the Nationwide Federation of State Excessive College Associations, the nationwide governing physique of highschool sports activities. Over the previous 28 years he has delivered over 300 public shows aimed toward getting faculty communities to find out about hazing, its results, and methods to counteract it. He stated he has been concerned as knowledgeable useful resource in about 1,000 hazing-related lawsuits – a sobering statistic in itself – and appeared as an skilled witness in 20 trials.
Hopkins stated as soon as the preliminary investigation is carried out and penalties are laid out, there’s sometimes a quiet grace interval.
“This can die down for a couple of yr after which what occurs, legal professionals begin lining up,” he stated.
‘ZERO-TOLERANCE’ POLICY
Phil Potenziano, the Brunswick faculties superintendent, stated he turned conscious of doable hazing, bullying or assault on the retreat round Sept. 8 and commenced an inner investigation. He notified soccer mother and father on Sept. 16 and made it clear Brunswick had a “zero-tolerance” coverage when it got here to acts of hazing, bullying or assault.
Every week later, Potenziano canceled the crew’s homecoming recreation and positioned head coach Dan Cooper and assistant coach Greg Nadeau on nondisciplinary administrative depart from their teaching duties.
The Brunswick Excessive soccer crew was allowed to renew practices final week, however with out two coaches positioned on depart and a few gamers kicked off the crew for the remainder of the season. Ben McCanna/Employees Photographer
Whereas the crew was allowed to renew practices on Tuesday and play a recreation at Skowhegan on Friday evening, Cooper and Nadeau stay on depart, and an unspecified variety of gamers have been faraway from the crew for the rest of the season. Taking part in with out a number of of their traditional starters, Brunswick misplaced 61-14.
Potenziano stated Friday night in an electronic mail to the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram that he had obtained the investigation report from the varsity division’s authorized counsel, and would want time to evaluation it totally. He added that he had not made any resolution concerning the long run standing of the 2 coaches.
Brunswick has been some of the profitable highschool soccer applications within the state over the previous decade. Cooper, now in his seventeenth yr as head coach, earned his a centesimal profession win within the 2019 season en path to the Dragons capturing the Class B North championship for a second straight season and the fifth time in six years, together with an undefeated state championship run in 2016.
This was speculated to be a season of celebration for Cooper and his household. His sons Dalton and Wes are each seniors and starters on the crew. Cooper was additionally trying ahead to Oct. 15, when Brunswick is scheduled to host perennial Class An influence Bonny Eagle, coached by his cousin Kevin Cooper.
Dan Cooper stated he was not prepared to remark concerning the scenario but apart from to say, “It’s been a nightmare.”
‘IT’S ABOMINABLE’
On a quiet Thursday afternoon, the shoppers at eating places, espresso outlets and boutiques on Brunswick’s downtown Maine Avenue had solely passing information of the alleged hazing incident. Some have been unaware of it altogether. However whether or not they have been Brunswick residents, buyers or workers from a close-by city or vacationers from Alabama, Kansas Metropolis and North Carolina, all agreed on one key level: any type of hazing is improper.
“It doesn’t matter if there isn’t any bodily hurt. It’s that it’s older children doing it to youthful children. It’s abominable,” stated Melissa Kimball, a resident of neighboring Topsham who works at one in every of Maine Avenue’s retail shops. “I’m asking myself, do they nonetheless do this within the twenty first century? And the place are the grown-ups? The place are the adults who’re speculated to be managing these things?”
“My boys had a really constructive expertise with Brunswick soccer and I’m very unhappy to listen to that this occurred,” says Laura Lienert of Brunswick. Ben McCanna/Employees Photographer
Laura Lienert of Brunswick stated her two sons Augie and Mitchell Lienert each performed 4 years of highschool soccer at Brunswick, graduating in 2018 and 2020, respectively.
“I’ll say my boys had a really constructive expertise with Brunswick soccer and I’m very unhappy to listen to that this occurred,” she stated. “It’s by no means OK for anybody to really feel like one thing like that’s taking place to them, however with that being stated, my boys had an amazing expertise.”
Lienert emphasised that neither she nor her sons have been ever conscious of hazing exercise related to the soccer crew.
Katie Peacock, 21, additionally attended Brunswick Excessive College and stated she was shocked by the hazing allegations. “That’s by no means occurred that I’ve heard of once I was there,” she stated.
Bau Graves of Harpswell: “I feel folks ought to deal with one another with decency and respect and hazing doesn’t qualify. Any kind of hazing.” Ben McCanna/Employees Photographer
Bau Graves, 69, of Harpswell stated he has little interest in highschool sports activities, or sports activities basically. However hazing, as an act, is at all times demeaning.
“I feel folks ought to deal with one another with decency and respect and hazing doesn’t qualify. Any kind of hazing,” Graves stated. “So long as I’ve been conscious of hazing, it has at all times appeared like a horrible factor to me.”
Stephen Beaulieu, 27, of Harpswell stated the idea {that a} hazing ritual will increase crew camaraderie is flawed. Hazers may suppose they’re pushing gamers to “get their finest video games and their finest efficiency,” he stated, “when in actuality it simply takes a toll on their psychological well being and it simply brings them down.”
PHYSICAL INJURIES, EVEN DEATHS
Throughout the nation, younger folks have suffered vital bodily accidents, been sexually assaulted and even died because of hazing.
Rumors have abounded about what occurred throughout the alleged hazing incident involving the Brunswick soccer crew. And there’s video proof, in line with Brunswick Police Chief Scott Stewart, which means the incident could have unfold throughout the school-age neighborhood through social media.
Earlier than feedback have been scrubbed from the Brunswick Soccer Fb web page, which isn’t run by the varsity, a number of followers scoffed on the seriousness.
“I heard one factor and if that’s all that occurred then that is being blown WAY out of proportion,” stated one submit. One other submit famous that the homecoming soccer recreation shouldn’t have been canceled due to the actions of “just a few unhealthy apples.” One commenter stated the entire crew discovered the incident humorous and when she heard what occurred, she agreed.
However simply because gamers could have laughed doesn’t imply the alleged hazing incident induced no hurt, stated Hopkins of the Nationwide Federation of State Excessive College Associations.
“It may appear innocent to you however the child who’s going by it’s petrified,” Hopkins stated. “We discuss three totally different teams in hazing. The perpetrator, the sufferer, and the bystander. And there’s two sorts of bystanders. The energetic bystander who’s (cheering them on) and the passive one who’s up in opposition to a wall and considering, ‘Thank God it’s not me once more, or not me this time.’ And that group will nearly definitely chuckle solely as a result of they’re simply glad it’s not them.”
Hank Nuwer, an unbiased journalist and former school professor, has tracked hazing deaths. In keeping with Nuwer, there was not less than one hazing demise related to a college, membership or group within the U.S. yearly from 1959 to 2019, with extra recorded in 2021. Since 2000, Nuwer has recorded 99 hazing deaths.
Allan, the UMaine professor, stated there isn’t any correct information on what number of hazing incidents occur yearly as a result of faculties and faculties usually are not required to report incidents.
“We all know what makes it to newspapers, and the universities and universities that I work with and those who select to be clear,” she stated, “however at this level it’s not constantly completed, so we don’t actually have the information.”
Hopkins stated in his expertise the vast majority of hazing incidents which are found reveal an institutional sample of hazing – an “underlying present,” as he put it.
Hopkins stated it typically begins with seemingly small actions that share a core idea of the older, established members of a gaggle forcing youthful members to do one thing to show they’re worthy of being a part of a crew.
“It may very well be freshmen have to wash all of the music devices in a band, or the ladies’ soccer freshmen have to hold the water bottles,” Hopkins stated. “Then it will get escalated.”
Hopkins means that any faculty that has had a hazing incident must do a radical evaluation of all of its groups and golf equipment. “If they’ve one group that does it, they’re going to speak to different children. ‘That is what we do to our freshmen.’ They might have an underlying tradition there that they should nip within the bud.”
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