History of hazing?

      It was September, and news that three Mepham freshmen football players had been sexually assaulted by three older teammates in a "hazing rite" while at a Pennsylvania camp had just come to light.
      Jane told her son she knew about the attacks. "What did you hear?" she asked him.
      He laughed, she recalled, a "nervous laugh."
      "What's so funny?" Jane asked. "He said, 'Mom, this happens all the time.'"
      A feeling of dread ran through her. "Are you talking about sexual attacks?"
      No, her son replied. "Everybody gets beat up," he said. "The seniors always beat up the freshmen."
      Jane said, "My family was almost in tears."
      "You talk as though this is acceptable," the mother told her son. As she later recalled the conversation, "He said this is acceptable."
      In the wake of the Mepham attacks -- which Wayne County (Pa.) District Attorney Mark Zimmer has called "brutal" -- parents across the Bellmores and Merricks are wondering whether the alleged series of assaults were isolated, or whether there is a history of such hazing among Bellmore-Merrick athletes and in the district.
      Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg (D-Merrick), who authored the county's "Good Sportsmanship Law," recently appeared on NBC's "Today Show" to discuss the alleged attacks. Denenberg described the district's three high schools -- Calhoun in North Merrick, Kennedy in south Bellmore and Mepham in North Bellmore -- as "great" learning institutions.
      "If something like this happened here," Denenberg said, "it can happen anywhere."
       Conjecture that hazing regularly happens in the Central district has only been fueled since two students -- one Mepham and one Kennedy graduate -- began speaking out in the media recently, saying in no uncertain terms that it does.
      The Mepham alumnus, Wesley Berger, played on the football team. He said that he was subjected to a violent act of hazing in the school's locker room six years ago. He was jumped by his teammates, stripped, flipped upside down and had his head dunked in a toilet. During the altercation, Berger said, he suffered head wounds and cracked teeth.
      Since word of the recent sexual assaults surfaced, the Herald has conducted an investigation into how widespread hazing might be in the Bellmore-Merrick Central District. We interviewed numerous students, alumni, teachers, parents and elected officials over a three-week period. We found, perhaps not surprisingly, that the majority of those we approached, particularly Mepham students, did not want to talk.
      Some students said that before the Mepham attacks, they didn't know what hazing meant. We worked with a definition given to us by anti-hazing experts, who said the purpose of hazing is to diminish the individual through a series of jarring "tests," which, if passed, gain him -- or her -- entry into a new group, whether a high-school football team or a college fraternity or sorority. The tests range from food and sleep deprivation to forced consumption of alcohol or drugs. Experts also noted that at times, hazing rituals can turn violent.
      We expanded our investigation beyond hazing to include bullying. Since the Mepham attacks were first reported, this paper's position has been that hazing is a form of bullying.
      Many, though not all, of those interviewed said they've seen hazing in one form or another in Bellmore-Merrick schools. Almost everyone said they had witnessed or been subjected to bullying.

Hazing since the '70s

      One Bellmore-Merrick teacher, who declined to be identified, said, "Hazing has been going on since the '70s. You know, putting kids' heads in the toilet, stealing their clothes, making them drink beer -- but not this sodomy stuff."
      The teacher noted that she knew of a recent incident in which freshmen girls at Calhoun High School were hazed by seniors. "I heard that there was a Calhoun freshman initiation party going on off campus," the teacher said. "It was on a Friday or Saturday at the beginning of the school year. I think it was in a park, or maybe at the Brookside School."
      The state-owned woods behind the Brookside School, which serves as the Bellmore-Merrick district's administrative office in North Merrick, is a known partying haunt for area high-school students.
      The teacher said, "There was a bunch of freshman girls and junior and senior girls, and there was a lot of alcohol. The junior and senior girls coached the younger girls to come to 'welcome' them to the school. I heard a lot of girls came home drunk or stoned. Some got really sick and were throwing up."
      The teacher also said she sees bullying at Calhoun daily. "Hitting and bullying -- it goes on in the freaking halls every day. It's mostly the boys, from freshmen to seniors. I see a lot of shoving, a lot of pushing, a lot of tripping."
      The teacher continued, "I've gotten shoved inadvertently by kids. Sometimes, if there's a kid walking down the hallway, and he's short, all the other kids override him. You feel bad because they're taking advantage of the kid who's short. They make fun of him or try to trip him. It's just horrible what they do.
      "It really sends me up the wall," the teacher said. "It drives me nuts when I see kids pick on other kids. I ask them, 'How would you feel if someone did that to you?'"
      Jeremy Kimmel, 22, who graduated from Calhoun in 1999, said he was bullied in high school. "There were kids who harassed me for change," he said. "I was even patted down once. Basically, you had the tough-guy kids trying to start stuff with the quieter kids."
      Kimmel spoke about a gang hazing that happened outside Merrick Avenue Middle School when he was a student there. "I remember there was a gang called MIK. One time in ninth grade, this kid Joe beat the s--- out of this eighth-grader outside Merrick Avenue junior high school to get into this so-called gang.
      "Basically," Kimmel said, "it was like, 'You're cool if you beat up someone.' After that incident, it kind of died out. Not many people took the gang seriously."
      Kimmel also said, "There were bullies, but it wasn't rampant. You had cliques. If you're in the cool clique, then you have the right to make fun of a dorky kid in the hall."
      One girl, a Kennedy High School junior named Charly, said that, before this year, "I never heard about hazing or knew what it was. I was sitting in health class [recently], and my teacher told us about an article in The New York Times that mentioned hazing in the drama class" at Kennedy.
      "I have been involved in the school's drama class," Charly said, "and I have never seen hazing."
      She did, however, say that she has been bullied. Charly is openly gay, and since she came out, she has been regularly "harassed," even during classes, she said.
      "People just like to pick on the smaller person," Charly said. "I would like to step in and stop these bullies, but I can't because I would just get my a-- kicked. This is all just so infuriating."
      Maxi Goldstein, a Mepham sophomore, said of bullying at the high school, "In general, there's more verbal abuse than physical abuse. A lot of kids call things 'gay'" as an insult. "They don't even know what they're really saying."
      For an earlier Herald article, Mepham ninth-graders spoke about how they and freshmen across the South Shore are hazed on the first Friday of the school year. On that day, older students pick on incoming students as a form of initiation into their new high school.
      The bigger kids slap books out of freshmen's hands, punch them in the arm, stuff them into lockers. Sometimes they tie them up to flagpoles or duct-tape them to walls.
      David Brunton, a current Mepham ninth-grader, said, "Mostly, everyone who is popular gets it the worst." He also noted that girls rarely get picked on.

Athletes: No hazing here

      To a person, Bellmore-Merrick athletes said hazing doesn't happen on their teams. Two Calhoun cross-country runners, one senior and one junior, neither of whom agreed to be identified, said team members like to play practical jokes on one another, "stupid stuff," as they described it.
      They spoke of a recent practical joke in which one team member stole another's clothes, locked him in the locker next to his and left a note that read something like, "If you're looking for your clothes, check the locker to the right."
      The runners, who said that practical jokes don't constitute hazing, both thought the locker bit was "pretty funny." They also noted that it was one upperclassman playing a joke on another. Older cross-country runners, they said, don't play jokes on freshmen and sophomores.
      Daniel Roubi, 16, a Kennedy junior and a member of the basketball and baseball teams, said, "There's no initiation whatsoever for the basketball and baseball teams. Our school is different from Mepham. Our seniors aren't as big as they are ..."
      William Primm, 16, a Kennedy junior and football team member, said, "We treat the younger kids good. Sometimes we make them bring in the pads and get us water, but that's really it."
      And Jim Frim, 16, a Kennedy junior and golf team member, said, "There's no hazing on the golf team. Everyone is being very careful to follow the rules this year. Teachers now aren't letting kids do overnight trips."
      Jane, the mother of the former Calhoun wrestler, said she witnessed what she considered an act of hazing perpetrated on her son. She was in the Calhoun wrestling room one afternoon, and watched a upperclassman run up behind her son, hurl him into the air and throw him down on his back.
      "I know he was hurt," Jane said. "I saw him try to pretend like it didn't hurt."
      She approached the head coach about the incident. According to Jane, he said, "They were just kidding around."
      "[The coach] totally brushed me off," the mother said. "And I was so angry about it."
      Jane added that she doesn't believe athletes are telling the whole truth about hazing in the schools because, she said, "The kids are so scared."
      Hector Flores contributed to this story.
      

      Ending school violence

      The North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights will offer a program, "Can We Avoid Another Columbine? Another Mepham High School?" on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at C.W. Post College's Hillwood Commons. The program will start at 7:30 p.m., and the cost is $15.
      Dr. James Garbarino, author of "Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them," will lead the program. "While there are fewer than 100 child fatalities each year at school, there are literally millions of kids who suffer from physical and emotional violence in the form of bullying, harassment, stalking, intimidation, humiliation and fear," he said. "Beyond the rare event of gunshots at school are the common events of psychological stabbings -- the millions of kids who suffer emotional daggers to their hearts."
      To make reservations for this program, call (516) 626-1971, extension 335, and ask for Carole Knudsen.