Seven football players at Sayreville War Memorial High School in New Jersey have been arrested over an alleged hazing incident at the school. The seven youths, ages 15 to 17, face sex-crime charges ranging from aggravated sexual assault to conspiracy and criminal restraint. Four victims were allegedly held against their will in four separate incidents.
This, unfortunately, brings back memories of a similar incident that occurred in my hometown high school. Several students held down a boy in the high school weight room, and used a round wooden, oblong object to assault the victim.
What prompted me to write this column is the stark contract of public awareness between the two incidents. Granted, Sayreville appears to have more of a widespread problem of hazing, than did my hometown high school, involving the one isolated incident. However, the types of assault were very similar...but how school officials addressed the problem is very different.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when I was in school, hazing had been a recent memory. While my school district, and presumably most other school districts, had banned the practice of hazing....it was still a recent enough memory in many young people's minds, since they had older siblings who had been involved in such activities. I still remember hearing about the unfortunate person who had their head held in a toilet bowl, while the perpetrators flushed the toilet. Thank God such activities had been banned by the time I entered high school!
Or had they? The sexual assault incident that occurred while I was in high school was not publicized. This was presumably to protect the well-being of the victim. Nor did school officials ever hold a school-wide "awareness" session on sexual assault, and what to do if one learns of such an incident. In a way, the school district's unwillingness or inability to address the problem before the high school student body, somehow gave the unspoken verdict that such hazing/sexual assault activities were either condoned, or not an issue that the average student should concern themselves with. Because every student was talking about the assault, why shouldn't it be addressed by the school staff?
But I was very concerned. I was never the victim, or threatened victim, of such assault occurrences. But I was still affected. The term "pegged" began to be used by some of the students at my high school. If a student wasn't careful, he might be the next victim to be "pegged." I remember one day in my English class, the teacher pulled a student aside and asked what the term "pegged" meant. After the student told the teacher what it meant, the teacher just smiled and said nothing. Again, that teacher's response to the activity of "pegging," merely reinforced my perception that students were "on their own" to defend themselves, because the adults didn't appear overly concerned with those types of assaults.
Contrast that with today. The sexual assault incidents at Sayreville, New Jersey are national headlines, appearing as the lead story on the evening newscasts. What has happened during the past 30 years? In the past, such traumatic incidents were handled quietly to protect the victims, and society appeared to view the issue as "boys will be boys," and offer little public awareness of the issue. Today, such sexual assault incidents become publicized in the news media, while school districts cancel the football program for the season, and use the incident as a learning experience to educate the entire student about the issue of sexual violence.
I believe it's important that school classrooms are a "safe zone," where students who use threatening language are quickly reprimanded by the teacher (in a pro-active way), and where students know the teacher will protect/defend them against threats from other students. If I ever return to the classroom, that's the kind of teacher I will be.
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