South Royalton
Former University of Vermont athletic director Rick Farnum, St. Michael’s College psychology professor Dave Landers and Burlington-based lawyer Heather Thomas Lynn spoke for more than an hour to about 30 attendees at Chase Community Center about the implications of hazing in athletics, the latest in a series of panel talks organized by VLS professor Brian Porto, director of the school’s Sports Law Institute.
Farnum — UVM’s A.D. when the Catamounts’ men’s hockey team canceled the last dozen games of its 1999-2000 season amid a hazing-related controversy — and Landers spoke about the pervasiveness of hazing, which they’ve spent decades battling.
“The saddest part for me is that we’re still having these discussions in 2018,” said Landers. “I’ve been involved in these kinds of talks since the 1980s, and I’m sure they were going on even long before that.”
Landers led off by offering a definition of hazing as an act against someone looking to become part of or maintain membership in an organization that is “humiliating, intimidating, demeaning, or endangers the health and safety of a person.”
“A lot of people confuse hazing with bullying,” Landers said. “Hazing has to do with inclusion, a requirement to participate, whether it be a sports team, fraternity, fire and rescue group, band, all kids of groups. Bullying is about exclusion and deflection. If I call you a derogatory term for a homosexual, no one is going to think that I’m homosexual, so it’s to deflect you and protect myself.”
Lynn’s firm grapples with instances of hazing, bullying and harassment, which are prohibited by state and federal laws. “The investigations we deal with are when a K-12 student’s safety or access to education (is compromised),” she said. “We let the facts determine which category it will fall under.”
Farnum offered ideas about some of the causes of hazing, a phenomenon he called culturally pervasive.
“You can’t call it human nature, because some of what we see is far from that, but I grew up in a household with four boys and that’s all it takes to see some of the nonsense that takes place in groups,” he said. “You make your brother eat the onions you don’t like, and you keep doing it until he gets sick, and then it’s funny.”
Farnum went on to elaborate on some of the degrading behavior that can arise as a symptom of group mentality. “When you have a group where they think there needs to be a ritual to gain acceptance, they don’t care about consequences. … They want someone to abandon their beliefs and morals to become part of the group,” said Farnum. “And we only hear about the tip of the iceberg. Ninety percent of these instances never get reported. We only hear about it when something goes wrong.”
Some have gone terribly wrong, as recounted by Landers on Thursday. The St. Michael’s professor spoke of the 2004 film documentary Unless A Death Occurs, which depicts the circumstances surrounding the death of a SUNY-Plattsburgh student who refused to abide by the demands of his fraternity.
“He had an exam the next day, so he wouldn’t drink alcohol,” Landers said. “So his fraternity made him drink gallons and gallons of water, so much that his internal systems gave out on him and he died.”
Individual, psychological impacts of hazing were discussed, particularly the trauma it can inflict. Landers spoke of a Milton, Vt., teen who committed suicide after being sodomized as part of a hazing ritual, and of a teen swimmer in Connecticut who gave up the sport after being humiliated by peers.
Landers also denounced hazing in professional sports, reflecting on an instance that struck him during a Boston Red Sox telecast several years ago.
“Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy were laughing about how Daisuke Matsuzaka arrived at his locker one day and his uniform was gone; instead there was a woman’s dress,” Landers recalled. “He was forced to wear it on a team plane, and the announcers thought that was so funny. Well, it’s not funny. Young people watching that game listen to that and think it’s OK. They think, ‘That’s awesome. I want to be a part of that.’”
Panelists pointed toward education and attempts to implement replacement behaviors as preventative measures to hazing, such as seminars with messages of inclusivity that are readdressed throughout the season.
“It needs to get to the point where older players are putting their arms around the freshmen and telling their older classmates, ‘This is the future of our team, and they need to feel welcome,’ ” said Farnum. “It starts with educating coaches not to be naive, not to think that (hazing) either isn’t a risk on their team or that whatever happens is no big deal.”
In her legal profession, Lynn strives to advocate for clearly defined school policies that legitimately punish hazing perpetrators.
“It’s important to have a certainty of outcomes and to take out the guess work as much as possible,” Lynn said. “You don’t want (athletes) thinking, ‘Maybe this is OK, maybe this isn’t OK.’ Let them know that anything that (jeopardizes) another student’s safety or access to education is illegal and that any violation means they will be removed from the team, and it doesn’t matter if they’re the team’s top scorer.”
Despite a number of high profile cases involving hazing in athletics and other social groups, Farnum iterated that the issues persist stubbornly.
“It’s a cultural norm that’s proven to be very difficult to eradicate,” Farnum said after the discussion. “Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much evidence of improvement.”
Aaron Chambers, who was in the audience on Thursday, said the prevalence of social media and video recording at parties makes it harder for fraternities and other groups to maintain a culture of secrecy.
“I think it’s probably harder to hide some of these initiation rituals than it used to be,” Chambers said.
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.