For some reason, I feel like there is another side to this story. Like, all of the swimmers are about to be suspended/expelled/arrested or ineligible, so this one guy is going on the offense to make it look like he wasn’t part of it.
The guy alleging this is younger than the 5 guys he is suing. He was a first year and said these things happened during welcome week on the team.
Fwiw, I also agree that it’s stupid to allow yourself to be subjected to hazing (assuming, of course, you actually have the option to leave- that is not always an option and those people should be prosecuted as appropriate). I haven’t seen this mentioned- was he a scholarship student? Did he have a swim scholarship? If so, that places increased pressure on one to stay… it might be someone’s only chance at a good education.
But I still don’t understand the mentality of “In order to be my friend, you have to do x, y, and z stupid and harmful things.” It’s not bonding. It’s humiliation and if you need to humiliate someone in order to bond with them, there is something wrong IMO.
Bay, I see you like to take contrary opinions. You are victim blaming.
Let’s see… The victim should have prevented abcdefg…
Or
The victim is actually a perpetrator and he is covering his tracks by claiming to be a victim and leaving his school and suing.
Of course, the most likely scenario is the victim is actually a victim. I think that is the way to bet. 
I agree. The whole thing makes no sense but I saw an old study that said that 80 percent of sports teams do some type of hazing (hopefully that figure is decreasing radically). Some fraternities and sororities probably continue to do some form of hazing as well, and do other groups . .
I can’t victim-blame, if I’m not convinced there was a victim. I already said I think these adults can say “no” to this type of behavior, unless they are being falsely imprisoned, which may or may not be the case here.
Other articles online say prosecutors declined to file charges because there was no injury (another swimmer whose eye was injured was not interested in pressing charges).
Ok Bay.
I’m guessing that some of the very prevalent "hazing " type activities can have a sexual undertone involved. Could be that most would not want to press charges or have others know the details of what they were involved with. They (male or female) could have had things happen that were uncomfortable but they just didn’t want to make waves, press charges, etc.
If this was a fraternity we would be talking about the entire team getting kicked off campus, the coach getting fired and all sports at the university being suspended. It’s crazy how differently we view these things,
Hardly. When fraternities behave badly, first of all, it’s usually worse than what is alleged here. No one even came close to dying. Secondly, are you saying that all frat members are generally expelled if someone merely alleges that any hazing took place? Isn’t the usual response just to suspend the frat activities for a year or two, and only then if the allegations can be substantiated (or if someone died–all too common) and then it’s business as usual? Can you cite for us the many cases you are implying happen all the time where all frat members were expelled, all frats shut down, on the basis of a charge by one person about one frat where no serious physical harm ensued?
Is it some kind of coincidence that the alleged perpetrators were not allowed to participate in some swim meets a few weeks after the hazing allegedly occurred? Is that somehow different than shutting down frat parties for a while? How many frat members subsequently do leave the university in response to mere charges? Two of the five accused coincidentally already transferred to University of Michigan. Were they asked to leave UVa? I don’t know. I haven’t seen any report about this. Perhaps they saw the writing on the wall.
I’m with you guys… I “get” herd mentality, but if someone really doesn’t want to go along, then why not just say no. I’m with you Bay, I think “peer pressure” shouldn’t be a valid excuse for adults. I can’t condone “stealing” from a retail store however. I think it’s good for kids to learn how to function in a team and when to push back and when to go along.
I find the coach’s behavior objectionable as well. Seems the boy did all the right things by reporting the hazing and then the coach told him to swim “when the other team members were not present” and that “he could not guarantee his physical safety.” What a cop out - sounds like he is siding with the other 5 and telling Marcantonio there was nothing he could (or would) do. Basically he was no longer really “part” of the team.
As far as peer pressure not being an excuse, well there was obviously a culture on this team that the incoming freshmen were targeted with this sort of behavior – 5 upperclassmen were involved not 1 or 2. So basically if the behavior is unacceptable to someone they have to take on these upperclassmen. Marcantonio did so and look what happened – he got little support and had to transfer.
I have never been part of a fraternity or a team that engaged in any kind of hazing – except maybe for being a young associate at a large law firm – so I can’t address this out of personal experience. But people close to me have been, including my father, and I think I can generalize what they have told me about the experience: They loved their fraternities; they were skeptical and annoyed about the hazing going in, but having been through it they thought it contributed to the intimacy and strength of their ties with their bros (or sisters, in the case of sororities).
And I can see that. At some level, there’s positive value in the message that you don’t form strong friendships acting only out of the most comfortable, well-defended part of yourself. You need to be willing to be uncomfortable, vulnerable, to take risks for the relationship, to expose yourself. Sure, there are more mature ways of doing that than touching each other’s genetalia, but these are teenage boys – most of the time, when they come to a fork in the road, it won’t be the high road they choose.
I think there’s also a complex, anarchistic social process of working out within a group what’s OK and what isn’t. The whole institution depends on being transgressive and breaking down barriers, but there are always bounds to that, limits beyond which it’s not OK to go. Like actually risking life and health (but as perceived by teenagers, not adults). When you have a trial-and-error process like that, there’s going to be some errors. Richard Linklater’s early movie Dazed and Confused deals extensively with a town-wide hazing ritual in the Texas of his youth, in which on the last day of school rising high school seniors harass incoming freshmen. The movie isn’t exactly realistic, but I suspect it’s realistic enough in its nuanced treatment of the hazing: How the group forms and enforces (but not perfectly) its own norms; what the benefits are for the hazees, both in terms of their relationships with one another and in terms of their relationships with their tormenters.
I hear you @JHS – but I think you can form those bonds by engaging in less objectionable initiation rites than those described in the OP. I think for most teenagers and especially young males, touching each other’s genetalia, it’s just a tad too far. And the chewing on goldfish I just find horrifying. Too far in my book as well.
HarvestMoon1, I probably agree with you, except, maybe, for the degree of horror I feel, and for the appreciation that, as I said, a trial-and-error system (which is what peer group systems tend to be) by definition means that there are going to be some errors.
We are going through a period of insisting that adults – university administrators, legislators, police – apply legal-type regulation to lots of areas that have traditionally been left to peer group social standards. I think we have gone too far with that, too. There has always been a place for law and authority on the outer edges of teen behavior – rape isn’t OK, creating serious risks to life and limb isn’t OK (I don’t mean goldfish life and limb, such as it is, here) – but I don’t think it’s good policy or wise to attempt to eliminate all risk of discomfort through regulation.
It looks like the police got involved, which is a good thing since hazing is called out in the Virginia statutes as a misdemeanor (IANAL but the words hazing and misdemeanor appear in the same section). It was determined that no charges were warranted. So the student is now pursuing it through civil suit.
This is exactly how this stuff should be handled. Don’t punish the whole organization.
As a clear example of how a school should react - In the late 80’s, not too far down the road in Blacksburg, a couple ROTC cadets decided to haze some freshmen. Threw them in the trunk of a car, drove them to the duck pond and tossed them in. The next morning their commander noticed they were banged up and asked them what happened. The commander’s next action was to call the local police. Done. No university investigation, no hand wringing, etc. It sent a clear message to the entire student body.
I am also attempting to look at this particular case through the eyes of an 18 or 19 year old male and not my own. My only measuring stick is my own son – hockey player, “guy’s guy” who doesn’t take himself too seriously. Having said that, at 16 he has already set identifiable boundaries with his peers and I am going to bet that he would have been pretty put off if the requests in the OP were made of him during an initiation period. I do not think he would have done it. And unfortunately I think he would have suffered for that stance just like Marcantonio did.
Somethings wrong with this picture.
What happened is probably a lesson in politics more than anything else. Obviously I don’t know exactly what happened and how much the plaintiff did to extricate himself from the situation before turning in his teammates. One would hope that the upperclassmen were not as unreasonable as were portrayed. The DA did not file charges and UMichigan took them in, after all.
“you don’t form strong friendships acting only out of the most comfortable, well-defended part of yourself. You need to be willing to be uncomfortable, vulnerable, to take risks for the relationship, to expose yourself.”
I agree, but I can’t understand why more groups don’t achieve this through difficult, positive, meaningful tasks. We got rock-solid bonding in my a cappella group by working our butts off during intensive retreats to learn music and choreography and put a show together in three weeks. We rehearsed for six hours every night for a week before the performance. It was harder than the vast majority of hazing that I’ve read about, but it was also a wonderful experience with an actual purpose. I’d like to see some sports teams or fraternities give the members 48 hours to get a public playground built or clean up every scrap of trash in a big park or even backpack up a mountain together. The hard work and discomfort and vulnerability can be achieved without any humiliation, danger, or infringing on other people.
I think the coach is a big jerk. He sets the expectations for the team - not only in how they swim but how they treat one another, how the team is led, how they bond. He failed, in my opinion.