The alleged sexual assaults in the Sayreville case are worse than I’d imagined.
Graphic details of what allegedly happened inside the locker room at the school were also revealed in a report Wednesday on NJ.com.
The report stated that “a freshman football player would be pinned to the locker-room floor, his arms and feet held down by multiple upperclassmen. Then, the victim would be lifted to his feet while a finger was forced into his rectum. Sometimes, the same finger was then shoved into the freshman player’s mouth.”
What is wrong with people.
Six of them were arrested on Friday evening and a seventh was being sought.
You know what’s most disturbing…this doesn’t surprise or shock me at all.
And the “won’t someone think of the POOR ATHLETES!?!?!?!” articles are falling thick as ichor from a lovecraftian god:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/sports/with-season-canceled-sayrevilles-players-vanish-before-recruiters.html
I’ve been in a boy’s locker room (admittedly, swim team not football) and the idea that this shit was going on without the other members of the team knowing, or the coach knowing — is flat out absurd. Locker room talk is what happens in locker rooms.
Weeding this kind of shit out is important. Because those kids that are doing the assaults and hazing are learning that’s how to be dominant in the world. Where will the next recruits for Skull and Bones come from? And where will the next generation of sociopathic corporate or political elite come from? Hazing becomes a litmus test to see if you can handle the pressure of wearing the boot that stomps on the face of the 99% forever, or something. Seriously, what surprises me is that people are surprised that such programs produce the occasional thug. Excuse me? Sporting programs are designed to produce thugs. What else do you get when you whip up “team spirit” except Yanomamo-style raiding behaviors? Teaching young people to feed off adrenaline in impersonal contests against “othered” raiding groups — what could possibly go wrong!
Sports teaches character all right. Bad character, but – still character.
PS – I just re-read what I posted and feel I should explain that I am biassed and that I recognize my experience has slanted my opinion about sports and its products. In one job I had a supervisor who was one of the proud products of a sporting program that emphasized harassment and belittlement and threat of violence as a way of building team spirit. Needless to say, that was one of the most dis-spirited groups of people I’ve ever worked with; he was a terrible leader. That left a mark. I also remember the trouble I got into when several of the frosh/soph football players backed me into a corner in the locker room with wet towels and I came out swinging a padlock in the end of a gym sock and caused some asymmetrical damage, from which a couple bruises on myself and the “boys will be boys” philosophy rescued me from more serious punishment (because the kid who draws blood using a weapon when cornered by 3 guys twice his size is wrong, ya know…) Anyhow. Yeah. Sports. Fuck sports.
@3&4 Marcus Ranum – I didn’t see anything wrong/needing explanation in either post. Both were perfectly clear and perfectly reasonable.
Me neither. But I’m also similarly biased, with my own experiences from the locker room to remember, and my opinions slanted. A different sport, a different country, but still. (Nothing I want to discuss in detail, certainly not now, probably never.)
If anything, I would probably change the emphasis from
“Because those kids that are doing the assaults and hazing are learning that’s how to be dominant in the world.”
to
“Because some of those kids who suffered the assaults and hazing will carry the baggage for the rest of their lifes.”
but nothing more than that. Just to be sure (and I really mean it): nothing objective and no criticism here. I’m just biased in a slightly different way.
I probably should have stopped writing there, but I kept thinking “anecdotes aren’t data! anecdotes aren’t data!” I realize that it’s unfair to extrapolate from a single person’s bad experiences to society at large. On the other hand, society at large clearly has a problem with sports programs. So, it’s complicated.
And it makes me mad. It makes me mad because when Harris and Kleybold blew their tops at Columbine, I thought “I bet I know where they were coming from” – I don’t even like having thoughts like that, but that’s the way I think, and probably always will. I don’t think it’s rational.
But what about the football program!?!?!
http://www.cbssports.com/general/eye-on-sports/24750683/seven-charged-sayreville-hs-hazing-scandal-programs-future-in-peril
Seven charged Sayreville HS hazing scandal; program’s future in peril
The football program at Sayreville High School in New Jersey, reeling from a hazing scandal that caused school officials to cancel the rest of the games this fall, may be in jeopardy past this season.
I bet the kid who was anally raped by and in front of his teammates was reeling, too.
I can’t help but notice a distinct difference in how cases like this are handled, depending on the gender of the victims. You assault a girl, “boys will be boys”. You assault another boy, the freaking governor comes out to condemn you.
Moreover, the parallel between violent and sexual harassment in high school football and the violence of adult, professional football players is similarly striking. This stuff doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s not an accident. It’s being deliberately taught, as part of the sports culture.