Hazing Incident at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps forces cancellation of rest of season

[Kuiper]

I thought this deserved it’s own thread because hazing is a potential issue at all sports programs and many of you won’t pay much attention to a post in the Go West thread.

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps announced this week they were cancelling the rest of the men’s soccer team’s season because of a hazing incident

https://www.cmsathletics.org/general/2022-23/releases/20221012xq07q7

“The investigation found that nearly all members of the team, acting as a team, violated multiple conduct standards, including organizing and carrying out an event which subjected new team members to multiple acts of hazing.”

This is a real stain on the men’s soccer program and its players.  My guess is hazing is still a pervasive problem in sports, whether D1 or D3, and they were just caught by an administration that took their policies seriously.  I’m sure the old-timers on the board can tell us whether this kind of thing has cancelled a season before.  I hope no one was hurt.

[PaulNewman]

Thanks for posting this.  I hope it's not still rampant.  As much as anything, it's dangerous.

[Kuiper]

I probably should have said it differently:

Is hazing still pervasive and CMS is just taking action or is this kind of rare nowadays? 

I hope it’s the latter, but fear it’s the former

[PaulNewman]

I probably should have said it differently:

Is hazing still pervasive and CMS is just taking action or is this kind of rare nowadays? 

I hope it’s the latter, but fear it’s the former

You may be right.  I just think for administration folks to collude with it anywhere is real incompetence because (even just selfishly) the school is being put at huge risk of serious liability issues and lawsuits.

[Kuiper]

I probably should have said it differently:

Is hazing still pervasive and CMS is just taking action or is this kind of rare nowadays? 

I hope it’s the latter, but fear it’s the former

You may be right.  I just think for administration folks to collude with it anywhere is real incompetence because (even just selfishly) the school is being put at huge risk of serious liability issues and lawsuits.

Based on this article and op-ed in the student newspaper at Claremont McKenna, hazing sounds like a pervasive problem throughout their athletic program. Fifth team in the last four years. 

https://tsl.news/cms-mens-soccer-hazing/

https://tsl.news/change-cross-country-culture/

[Saint of Old]

So when St. Lawrence was on the come up back in the mid 90s, there was another team in the region who we all knew were top dogs.
That team and program got derailed big time due to one hazing incident that totally dismantled their program.
That basically made everyone aware of the dangers of such actions.

There are two types of people in this world:

1. The man who learns from other people's mistakes.
2. The man who pees on an electric fence in order to figure it out.

[Caz Bombers]

So when St. Lawrence was on the come up back in the mid 90s, there was another team in the region who we all knew were top dogs.
That team and program got derailed big time due to one hazing incident that totally dismantled their program.
That basically made everyone aware of the dangers of such actions.

There are two types of people in this world:

1. The man who learns from other people's mistakes.
2. The man who pees on an electric fence in order to figure it out.

What school was that?

[PaulNewman]

So, highly regressed behaviors and sexualized humiliation are a feature of elite American education and not a bug?  And maybe worse the higher up the academic and/or social status ladder you go?

[Another Mom]

It seems like where fraternities are banned, sometimes the athletic teams step in with reprehensible behavior.  Or filling in for other Greek behavior like holding most of the parties etc. Which contributes to a feeling like there's a divide between athletes/nonathletes.

[PaulNewman]

It seems like where fraternities are banned, sometimes the athletic teams step in with reprehensible behavior.  Or filling in for other Greek behavior like holding most of the parties etc. Which contributes to a feeling like there's a divide between athletes/nonathletes.

I think this is very true...but really only involves shifting what umbrella the stuff is happening under.  The fraternity/sorority mentality and the attendant exclusivity framework would seem to be at the core of the problem.  When I went to Davidson there was what I would call "soft fraternity life" which involved some relatively bad behavior and hazing but I imagine nothing compared to the hypercompetitive fraternity scene at places like UVA, UNC, Univ of Georgia, Ole Miss, Alabama, and probably Ohio St, Penn St, Michigan, etc.

[MessageBoardMessi]

Disheartening to see this, but expect that the actions must have been significant for the schools admin to take this action.  I am hoping all athletes and teams are taking notice.....no place for this, and I honestly believe that kids won't allow themselves to be the victim of hazing like in decades past.....

[Kuiper]

Because I was curious about the prevalence of hazing, I did some research to see if there were any studies about hazing in the college sports team context and I found at least one study published just last year that focused specifically on DIII athletic programs.

"Examining the Nature and Extent of Hazing at Five NCAA Division III Institutions and Considering the Implications for Prevention"

https://journals.ku.edu/jams/article/view/13632/13778

Building on the scholarship of  Hoover (1999) and Allan and Madden (2008, 2012), we examined the nature and extent of hazing at five NCAA Division III institutions. NCAA Division III athletics has not been a focus of scholarly inquiry on the subject of  hazing, despite documented accounts of  athletes experiencing hazing and the outsized impact varsity athlete hazing can have on campus climate, given the high percentage of the student body at Division III institutions that may be at risk. Across the five institutions in this study, 40.9% of athletes experienced hazing, compared to 24.8% of non-athletes. The percentage of athletes that experienced hazing at the five Division III institutions ranged from 19.6% to 56.5%. Athletes experienced high-risk and abusive behaviors and were more likely than their non-athlete peers to have attitudes and perceptions supportive of hazing. These results indicate there is a need for research-informed hazing prevention strategies that can be utilized by Division III colleges and universities. Researchers can build upon these findings by continuing to examine hazing and factors predictive of hazing across institutional type within NCAA Division III.

The most commonly cited incidents of hazing range from the potentially dangerous (typically involving drinking) to the mildly embarrassing (being forced to sing in public), with drinking being by far the most common.

The last DIII men's soccer program I found where hazing forced a cancellation of some or all of their program was Skidmore in 2013.

https://dailygazette.com/2013/02/22/skidmore-cancels-mens-soccer-season-over-hazing-in/

I also found that Ohio Wesleyan's men's soccer coach, Dr. Jay Martin, received a $10,000 grant from the NCAA in 2015 to study hazing with the intent of identifying certain behaviors exhibited by coaches and players who haze, but I haven't been able to find the results of their research published anywhere (it may just have been presented at the NCAA convention in 2016).

https://owutranscript.com/2015/03/18/jay-martin-receives-grant-to-combat-hazing/

According to this story, Martin became interested in the topic after finding that it existed at Ohio Wesleyan soon after he arrived

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/delaware-news/2015/03/23/owu-coach-digs-deeper-into/23236639007/