I just told you. My mom doesn’t think or act the way you think. 
There is no need.
Do your grown up kids need a mommy?
There is no need for most men. Let’s say there was hazing and 5 guys get punished. That is so bad? That is how the system is supposed to work.
Let’s say there is no hazing. Then the guy will lose his court case. That is how the system is supposed to work.
You don’t believe in the legal system. The alleged victim is allowed to sue. Do you want to take away his rights?
What in the world are you talking about? The legal system is neutral; it hears both sides of a case, not just the victim’s.
There is not even the remotest thought in my mind that there was “no hazing.” Look, 5 students were suspended by UVA for a semester. 2 transferred schools. Marcantonio has a very good law firm out of Boston and a local attorney in Virginia as well. These people are not fools – they are not going to take a case that has no basis. Especially the local attorney – he has a reputation to protect.
I am betting this is going to turn out like the Yeason case where we went back and forth on whether there was “enough” for the University of Kansas to expel him. Press reports seemed rather sketchy and everyone was on the fence. Then I read the court documents – no way that school could have done anything else but expel him. He was a risk to the girl and possibly to other students. If something happened the University would have been held accountable. In that case I think FERPA prevented some of the details from being made public, although much of it showed up in the court documents.
There will likely not be those obstacles in this case and it will all come spilling out as the suit progresses. I very much doubt that this will turn out to be a case of a little drinking, harmless pranks and some typical initiation rowdiness.
Here is the legal definition of “hazing” under Virginia law: http://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/18.2-56/
The plaintiff apparently alleged numerous causes of action, including hazing. Based on VA’s statute, I am not so confident that the “hazing” allegation is a slam-dunk, but some of the other allegations may be. We haven’t see the complaint but are discussing it based upon the little information we have.
I am at a loss as to why that would be offensive to anyone. It seems to me that those who have already decided how this case is going to turn out need not check into this thread any more or insult those who are interested in considering all possible alternatives. That is what the lawyers, the judge and the jury will do.
So it looks to me then that bodily injury is not required – although the first paragraph of the statute seems to contradict the last one above.
Bay, The speculation reads really mean to me.
5 guys are suspended. 1 guy says he was hazed. He sues.
And the speculation is he wasn’t really hazed. It wasn’t that bad if he was. Poor 5 guys. Their lives are affected. Maybe the accuser was a perpetrator and he is suing to protect himself. He doesn’t have social skills. The accuser didn’t get along with the coach. The accuser should take the hazing like a man and shouldn’t rat on his teammates. If the accused can’t hack being hazed he should quit the team. The accuser may be better off at Northwestern. Etc.
Edit… I forgot about tradition. How could I forget that?
You’re right. Some of us who aren’t interested in speculation should not be paying much attention here. Those who like to speculate have every right to speculate.
I don’t know how the case is going to turn out. The speculation is irrelevant to how the case turns out. The case is going to turn out the way the case is going to turn out.
I am interested in hazing. I don’t think certain forms of hazing should be tolerated. If freshmen are forced to carry the gym bags of the seniors, that’s ok with me. As long as the bags don’t weigh too much.
So what interests me in this case is what happened and what was tolerated if something bad bappened.
Outside the Lines, a sports show on espn, ran a story today about a college basketball coach who was fired for abusive language, kicking players and throwing the ball at players. His practice sessions were caught on video tape. The coach wasn 't arrested. The guy can’t get a college coaching job now. I felt sorry for the coach when I first started to listening to him. The guy has mouths to feed and he is sorry and he said he would do a better job.
But then I started thinking. Some of his players needed therapy. Some of the players lost confidence. There are other coaches out there who haven’t abused players that deserve a chance to coach too. The coach is being sued by a colleague. I don’t know what that is about.
I know there are differences between coaches and players. There are some similarities too. Older players can hurt younger players.
I don’t know the facts of the UVA case. If the facts come out, I would love to read the facts.
Dstark,
Have you ever been sued? I haven’t. But I know people who have been sued for reasons they felt were unjustified. Being sued can be a horrible experience, from what I’ve been told. It can ruin your life, both financially and your personal relationships. It can be all consuming. A lawsuit alleging aggregious harm and seeking punitive damages is not one that should be accepted as true on its face. There is too much at stake.
Whoever started this thread wanted to discuss this suit and so did everyone who participated. Lawsuits are public record.
It’s your prerogative to believe everything the plaintiff alleges without question, but the rest of us don’t have to, and that doesn’t make us “mean,” it makes us thoughtful.
@bay, I am not believing everything the plaintiff said. I don’t know. I don’t like negative speculation about the accuser. Because people don’t know.
The speculation is about unknown facts… Speculation that is mean. The things people say about the accuser are mean. The speculation going on here has very little to do with the law.
Being sued is a horrible experience. I know because I have been sued. And the case has changed my life. The case was bogus bay. I would talk about the case. It is a lot more interesting case than the UVA case. It is an incredible case. I am only a small part of the case but I am still @@@@@@. It is unbelievable that I was involved. I had lawyers bay. I talked to a lot of lawyers. Every lawyer said you are sued? We never heard of anybody being sued for such a thing.
I know a little about the law. There is plenty I don’t know, but there are things I know about some aspects of the law most lawyers don’t know. 
I would discuss my case, but this isn’t the right forum. There would be too much speculation. People would be speculating without facts. The law is interpreted. I would be reading a lot of nonsense.
I will just add…it was not a criminal case.
For someone who claims grown men don’t need protecting, you are awfully soft on this plaintiff, Dstark. We do have some facts, and they are not insignificant.
I don’t like demonizing a person.
This is human nature. We demonize somebody (or a group of people).
Then we have an excuse to treat them unfairly. Then we treat then unfairly.
Mankind has been doing this for thousands of years. I don’t expect human nature to change.
I don’t want to demonize the accuser.
I am not going to demonize the 5 guys.
We have a right to sue in this country.
Some facts aren’t good enough. We don’t know enough facts. I do know 5 people were suspended.
I am not going to speculate. You can.
I am not going to bug you about your speculations anymore.
Oh good.
This case was in the papers and supposedly discussed on Good Morning America. The reporting revolved around these 5 young men who are mentioned by name, having “hazed” this other young man. Guess what? That is pure speculation. Allegations in a complaint are just that. They are not facts. There was a criminal investigation and no prosecution for anything. There was no release of the reason for the 5 young mens’ suspension by the university.
These five young men are being demonized by the press and by people on this thread who say things like, “There is not even the remotest thought in my head that there was no hazing.” And look, here is what you wrote, dstark: “They made themselves look bad by hazing.” Pure speculation. What a hypocritical lecture.
The way I read the Virginia statute that was linked above is that for the “criminal” prosecution one needs to show physical bodily injury. Marcantonio did not pursuing a criminal claim. We don’t know if the “first year” who did allegedly incur bodily injury pursued a criminal prosecution or even if he is still with the team.
But most importantly the statute does impose legal responsibilities on the University to report and discipline students in the appropriate circumstances. This may explain why the coach questioned the team and then referred it up the line:
It seems the coach and UVA did what they were legally required to do.
One of the articles we read did say that the injured player chose not to press charges. I believe it was a quote by the DA. From what I have read, he was struck in the eye by a chard when a glass bottle was dropped on the ground.
I am not going to speculate anymore. We will see what happens. Maybe.
I would just like to suggest that, as is often the case, a lot of the discussion above is based on an idea that I believe to be false: that hazing isn’t normal. I think it is very normal, including cruel and inappropriate hazing. It has been a part of human behavior as long as history exists, and it has been present, more or less, in college settings for as long as any of us can remember. It is a type of herd behavior that promotes cruelty and humiliation. The mistake is thinking that it’s deviant. It’s actually pretty normal, particularly in settings in which the most aggressive and dominant personalities are given power over weaker, newer members of the group.
What’s more, it’s clear to me that hazing (especially for men) does promote bonding of a certain kind–it’s the bonding that comes from sharing adversity. In the case of hazing, of course, the adversity is created by the older members of the group. I guess that’s because there isn’t a natural source of the kind of shared adversity that creates bonds among (for example) military recruits who have to undergo grueling physical training. Indeed, we don’t call tough drills hazing when the coach–or the DI–impose them.
The fact that hazing does create bonds, and the fact that most people endure it without obvious damage, means that there will always be apologists for this kind of behavior. Furthermore, it’s always going to be difficult to draw a bright line between harmless elements (freshmen have to wait for upperclassmen to finish before they can use the showers) and harmful elements. People tend to think the line is just beyond what they had to do and pushed others to do.
Finally, I’m not persuaded by the idea that people who don’t want to submit to the hazing can just quit the organization. This suggestion comes from the same people who go on and on about how wonderful these organizations are and how they build friendships that last forever, etc., etc. People will endure costs to get benefits–that doesn’t make imposing those costs the right thing to do.
My point, I guess, is that hazing is normal and natural. It’s just immoral.
Hazing is difficult to discuss, imo, because the term is meaningless on its own. Hazing can mean requiring new members to learn the words to a song as a condition of membership (this is banned by sororities now as “hazing.”) It can also mean locking people in rooms until they down a pint of whiskey. These two things are not remotely similar. That is why I really hate generalizations of any kind about whether hazing is bad or not.
This case should be discussed in the context of VA’s hazing law, not general notions of hazing.
Agree. And Marcantonio was under contract to swim with UVA so this was not a frat that he could just walk away from.
The university said this when questioned about the swim team hazing:
The University cannot release specifics of their investigation because of FERPA. But the timing of the report by the coach, the investigation and the subsequent suspensions make it pretty clear what happened.
The case can be discussed anyway a poster wants.
I agree with @hunt.
Yes, that would be the logical conclusion, but it is still speculation. As I wrote earlier, it is also possible that the five were suspended not for hazing, but for supplying alcohol to minors. The release does NOT say the university found proof of hazing. We just do not know for sure.