One thing I'll make sure to teach my kids, now 9 and 5, is that Groucho Marx's old saying, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member," is actually right, if hazing is involved. This ritual form of physical and psychological abuse - too often resulting in death or injury to recruits for school sports teams, marching bands and of course campus fraternities - continues seeping from the college level to high schools.

I've been run ragged by a high school soccer coach, and think there's nothing wrong with tough physical conditioning, long hours of practice, and encouraging mental toughness and discipline among student athletes or musicians. But nobody should have to buy in to shaming, degradation and humiliation as part of the bargain.

Hazing is a sickening phenomenon, rooted in the need of group members to codify their elite status through the "survival" ordeal. Anti-hazing laws seem to me a largely feel-good response, unless they stipulate stiffer sentences for hazing-related crimes such as assault, manslaughter and reckless endangerment, upon conviction.

Here's some of what's been happening lately.

Six women field hockey players at Frostburg State College in Maryland pled guilty in a case stemming from some really disgusting hazing......

.....that left an 18-year-old hospitalized with a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal limit.....On Dec. 3, the victims were urged to drink so much beer and liquor that one was hospitalized with a 0.365 percent blood-alcohol level, court documents showed. The freshmen were also pelted with flour, ice and eggs, and made to sit in their own vomit and urine, according to court documents.

Sanger Unified School District in Fresno County, California last week was ordered to pay $100,000 to a hazing victim and her family. A girls soccer team coach reportedly faciliated the hazing incident, in which a 14-year-old freshman team member on a road trip was dragged down a motel hallway and tied up briefly with duct tape by her teammates.

A story published today in the Fort Worth Telegram, headlined "Wrestling Coach Surrenders To Police," lays out the details of one especially awful, and very recent hazing "party" involving a high school wrestling team and a coach who may well deserve complete banishment from the teaching profession, if charges prove true.

FLOWER MOUND - At Flower Mound High School, the wrestling team has been a source of pride. Since coach Charles Michael Zascavage arrived in 2003, the 70-plus member team achieved a district title and placed third in the state. But activities at an Aug. 27 pool party to kick off a new season and build team spirit have shattered that image.

Zascavage surrendered to police Thursday after an arrest warrant accused him of hazing. Warrants for 18 team members have also been issued, with accusations ranging from hazing to aggravated sexual assault...Police believe the team hazed its new members during a four-hour pool party at a home in...Flower Mound. At least five boys were hit, kicked in the groin, slapped repeatedly and thrown in the pool while onlookers, including Zascavage, could see the violence from the balcony of the home, according to police documents.

Team members -- as many as four at a time -- would grab one of the younger boys and hold him up while other boys slapped him repeatedly with their hands, said Mary Alice McLarty, a Dallas attorney representing two of the victims who were not sexually assaulted. As the party continued, the hazing escalated, she said. At least five boys, three younger than 14, were slapped, punched and kicked in the groin, the attorney, relatives and police documents said. Police say one boy was sexually assaulted. "It got very violent and disgusting," McLarty said. "The biggest injuries are them being afraid and scared."

At one point, the coach spoke to one of the boys who said he felt like he was being choked. Zascavage did nothing to stop the attacks, police documents stated.

At Scottsdale Arizona's Coronado High School, the band director has quit and 10 band members have been disciplined after a nasty road-trip hazing incident.

According to e-mails to and from band director Leslie Rich, the ringleaders lured the victims out of their rooms, overpowered them, then duct-taped their wrists and ankles.One victim had an apple taped to his mouth with boxer shorts over his head. Another student was taped to a broom and a vacuum cleaner and hooded with boxer shorts.

Dick Durbin was not heard to compare the perpretrators to Nazis.

Last year, a member of the Florida A&M University marching band member who'd been paddled so hard during a 2001 hazing session that he suffered kidney damage, was awarded $1.8 million. It wasn't the first such incident at the university, either.

Read the real-life story about fraternity hazing in "Goat: A Memoir." Author Brad Land captures the whole sick experience, which included the death of another pledge, from the recruit's perspective.

TECHNORATI TAGS: HAZING

TO COMMENT: The regular "comment" feature is not in operation. E-mail comments to address under "Contact" on main page masthead, and I'll add them, here.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 16, 2005 05:29 PM