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 thought is that the college superintendent has taken critically the allegations that older gamers hazed youthful gamers. Each the college 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 college division’s investigation has been accomplished and a few disciplinary motion has been taken, the total results of the alleged hazing may not be identified for years.
“There’s all the time 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 pals.
“Then there’s the crew itself, the way it impacts the belief inside 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 actually shift the norms. And that depends upon how the oldsters in management roles select to reply.”
Hazing in American colleges is widespread. 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 bunch requiring somebody becoming a member of or taking part in a bunch to interact 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 instructional requirements that require colleges 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 of the definitive research 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 displays geared toward getting faculty communities to study hazing, its results, and methods to counteract it. He stated he has been concerned as an expert useful resource in about 1,000 hazing-related lawsuits – a sobering statistic in itself – and appeared as an professional witness in 20 trials.
Hopkins stated as soon as the preliminary investigation is carried out and penalties are laid out, there’s usually a quiet grace interval.
“This may 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 colleges superintendent, stated he grew to become conscious of potential hazing, bullying or assault on the retreat round Sept. 8 and started 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 night time, 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 regular 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 college division’s authorized counsel, and would wish time to overview it completely. He added that he had not made any determination concerning the longer term standing of the 2 coaches.
Brunswick has been one of the vital 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 wanting 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 keen to remark in regards to the state of affairs but apart from to say, “It’s been a nightmare.”
‘IT’S ABOMINABLE’
On a quiet Thursday afternoon, the purchasers at eating places, espresso retailers 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, customers 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 fallacious.
“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 try 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 optimistic 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 optimistic 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 occurring to them, however with that being stated, my boys had an incredible 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 stunned 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 typically. However hazing, as an act, is all the time 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 all the time 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 would possibly 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 on account of hazing.
Rumors have abounded about what came about in the course of the alleged hazing incident involving the Brunswick soccer crew. And there’s video proof, in line with Brunswick Police Chief Scott Stewart, that means the incident could have unfold throughout the school-age neighborhood by way of social media.
Earlier than feedback have been scrubbed from the Brunswick Soccer Fb web page, which isn’t run by the college, 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 “a number of dangerous 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 precipitated 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 via it’s petrified,” Hopkins stated. “We speak about three completely different teams in hazing. The perpetrator, the sufferer, and the bystander. And there’s two kinds of bystanders. The lively bystander who’s (cheering them on) and the passive one who’s up towards a wall and considering, ‘Thank God it’s not me once more, or not me this time.’ And that group will virtually actually snort 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 faculty, 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 a correct information on what number of hazing incidents occur yearly as a result of schools and colleges will not be required to report incidents.
“We all know what makes it to newspapers, and the universities and universities that I work with and people who select to be clear,” she stated, “however at this level it’s not constantly carried out, so we don’t actually have the info.”
Hopkins stated in his expertise nearly all 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 bunch forcing youthful members to do one thing to show they’re worthy of being a part of a crew.
“It might be freshmen have to wash all of the music devices in a band, or the women’ 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 an intensive overview 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 may have an underlying tradition there that they should nip within the bud.”
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