By: JOSEPH KELLARD
Boiled down to its essence, Farnham's message encouraged listeners to embrace individualism and independence, or, to use his words, to reject the group mentality, think for oneself and accept responsibility for one's actions.
Farnham knows whereof he speaks. A program director for the national Hazing Prevention & Student Leadership Education group, he was the athletic director at the University of Vermont when a hazing incident forced him to cancel the school's 1999-2000 hockey season.
In contrast to his forum at Oceanside last spring, when he addressed the general student body at OHS and the middle school, last week Farnham spoke to hundreds of football coaches and captains from Nassau County's 56 high schools. Football has been under a microscope since the hazing scandal at Mepham High School became national news a year ago, and the Section 8 Nassau County Athletic Association has since mandated that coaches and athletes attend the forum.
"People in this county have been through a significant emotional experience," Farnham told his attentive audience in the OHS auditorium. "Hazing is cultural; it's deep. It's a phenomenon that we need to work on changing the attitudes and behavior towards. And it's not just in football programs - it's everywhere."
Throughout his presentation, which he punctuated with anecdotes, Farnham stressed to the coaches and athletes that, more than anything, they had to accept responsibility for and understand the significance of their actions. If they failed to take the time for this kind of introspection, which he encouraged by handing out literature with questions on leadership, "you'll find yourself entangled in the thinking process of a group mentality," he stressed.
The philosophically minded Farnham defined hazing as an act against a student trying to join a new group that is humiliating, demeaning or endangers the student's health and safety. Hazing is strictly "a power trip for the abuser," and its passive participant is just as responsible as the perpetrator, he said. "It's about the power you think you have over someone that makes you do something stupid."
Many of his examples illustrated the subtle, incremental ways hazing can result in a serious incident, some of which end in the hospitalization or death of a victim. Farnham distinguished between innocuous practical jokes and those done as a means of initiation or acceptance into a group.
He listed name-calling, such as "freshmeat" for freshmen or "sophmorons" for sophomores, as one of the subtler forms of hazing. Among the more extreme examples was a death by drowning caused by drinking water. As part of a fraternity hazing last year, a Plattsburgh State freshman was forced to drink large quantities of water, and he eventually died.
"You don't earn respect that way," Farnham said. "You earn respect by your performance on the field, not by how many cups of water you can drink in three minutes."
"When kids hear 'hazing,' they think of what happened at Mepham," Russ Cellan, head football coach at Freeport High, told the Herald after the forum. "I don't think they realize how many forms of hazing there are, and how many different ways that affects them."
Among Farnham's more vivid examples of the group mentality included entire teams getting tattoos of their schools' logos, or shaving their heads "to show team unity." "I guarantee you that one or two of those kids didn't want to do that," he added.
But Farnham mainly focused on the subtler instances of hazing that can mount and metamorphose into more extreme acts. While explaining his power point that "Team" stands for "Together Everyone Always Matters," he said that coaches will treat first-year players differently by having them perform undesirable chores from which they exempt older teammates. One such chore is having them clean up a field littered with footballs after a practice.
"Mr. Farnham's talk just reinforces what I've been going over with my kids," said Joe Vito, head coach of Roosevelt High's football program. "For example, on our team we make no differentiation of the classes, and each day we all pick up our equipment. ... That's a little, simple thing that is important, and we've been making a point of that all pre-season."
Before introducing Farnham, Frank Luisi, a coach and teacher at OHS who organized the forum, played a video created by the NFL specifically for Nassau County football players. The tape highlighted inspiring clips of past county students who have starred in the NFL, including Cleveland Browns Hall of Famer Jim Brown, running back Matt Snell of the Super Bowl III champion New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Vinny Testaverde and Miami Dolphins QB - and OHS graduate - Jay Fielder.
Farnham told the players that they could possibly be NFL players, too, and to not throw that opportunity and dream away by doing something stupid. "Nothing I can say can be more powerful than that clip right there," he added. "It's all about your dreams, and don't ever let your dreams be taken away by being foolish."
In addition to handing out literature on hazing and leadership education, Farnham urged student to get involved with their teachers, coaches and others to develop policies to prevent hazing.
"I think the forum was great for the young people," said Joe Knoll, head football coach at Lynbrook High. "You know, it's like Mom and Dad telling them something they should do, or their coaches yelling at them to do it, and they shrugged it off. But when you have a professor from a university standing up there telling you [hazing] can happen, it will happen if you don't do something to correct it or prevent it, they're more receptive to what he's talking about."
"What stood out was his stress on how we're all human beings and should be treated responsibly," said Don Snyder, of the Nassau County Football Coaches Association, a former football coach and athletic director at Farmingdale High. "And that you should be more of a help to the younger players than putting them in embarrassing situations."
Central Sports Physical Therapy in Garden City, which offers forums on steroids, concussions, heat exhaustion and other sports-related issues, co-sponsored the forum, along with the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame, and the Nassau football coaches.
"The issue of hazing is in the forefront, not only locally but nationally, and it's a problem," said Jeff Corben, director of CSPT. "What we do here in these meetings is prevention. This is an issue that we have to be up front about it, we have to research it, and we have to understand why it happens and how we can prevent it. That's exactly what Mr. Farnham has done."
