VoyForums

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: [1], 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 11:07:34 05/19/06 Fri
Author: LARRYL9797
Subject: The Q Baseball team... OUCH

Front Page of the Courant......

Team Gone Wild?
Photos On Website Raise Concerns Of Hazing Involving Quinnipiac University Baseball Players
May 19, 2006
By MATT EAGAN | Courant Staff Writer One photograph shows young men wearing thongs on their heads and what appear to be adult diapers around their midsections as they cavort in front of female students.

Another shows a young woman lying on the floor, sporting a whipped cream bikini.

ADVERTISEMENT

These photographs are now part of a school investigation into a possible hazing incident involving the Quinnipiac baseball team, a university spokesman said.

The photos gained prominence Wednesday, when BadJocks.com - a website billed as "COPS meets SportsCenter" - posted the pictures, which had originally appeared in a webshots.com photo album.

"We believe the pictures are of our baseball players, but we're not clear they are involved in anything that raises concerns," Quinnipiac spokesman John Morgan said in a statement. "Of course, we are looking into it."

The school's hazing policy indicates that it is a violation for team members to request that other members "wear conspicuous apparel publicly that is not normally in good taste" or participate in "degrading or humiliating games."

The state also has an anti-hazing law, but it focuses heavily on hazing that could lead to physical harm.

Bob Reno, who owns and operates BadJocks.com, said verifying the photos took some detective work.

"The people who put up the album listed their affiliation as Quinnipiac," Reno said. "One of the photos is labeled with `Perloft 120.' My assistant looked at that and thought it might be a dorm, and there is such a dorm at Quinnipiac."

Reno said other captions indicated the pictures were from a freshman initiation. Reno said he has come across hazing photos in the past that he has not posted because he wasn't able to properly identify the school.

As a final step, Reno said he matched faces in the photographs with photos posted on the university's website.

The Quinnipiac photos have surfaced amid a flurry of hazing incidents uncovered by BadJocks.com.

Earlier this week, Northwestern University suspended its women's soccer team from all athletic-related activities after photos of a hazing party held in August were uncovered and posted on the website.

And Catholic University in Washington, D.C., is investigating its women's lacrosse team after photos allegedly show a male stripper at a freshman initiation party.

Each incident was uncovered through photographs posted on the Internet.

But unlike other instances of high-profile bad behavior, such as the photo of model Kate Moss snorting cocaine, many of these photos are posted by participants unaware of the possible ramifications of such behavior.

"You are seeing the confluence of three things," Reno said. "One is the technology of the camera phone and the Internet sites for posting photo albums. Two is the behavior of all students is getting riskier, and three is their willingness to share their antics with others. They consider this to be normal activity."

Reno said he first posted a picture from a photo album-based website in 2004.

Since then, hazing photos have been easy to find on the Internet. Reno will point you to webshots.com's own search engine, which reveals more than 2,800 entries for the words "soccer initiation" and 2,200 entries for the words "lacrosse initiation" or "lax initiation."

The issue is forcing schools to take pre-emptive action.

At UConn, as well as at many other state schools, each athletic team meets with the school's compliance officer before the season to discuss the hazing policy, which forbids any activity that might lead to emotional or physical discomfort.

UConn's student athlete handbook also includes the state's anti-hazing law. "We try to let them know what it is because they might think something isn't hazing when it is," UConn spokesman Mike Enright said.

Most teams, including professional teams, have some form of initiation ritual designed to reflect the status of veterans.

Professional football teams are known to force rookies to carry luggage and sing their college alma mater.

Earlier this spring, the San Francisco Giants forced rookies to sing in an "American Idol" style competition that made headlines when Barry Bonds dressed up as Paula Abdul.

Many people consider these to be acceptable forms of hazing, along with things such as forcing freshmen to carry equipment bags off the field after practice, but others see a slippery slope leading to more injurious forms of hazing.

Reno has teamed with Dr. Susan Lipkins, who advocates the elimination of all hazing, on his website. As a result, reports of hazing are given more serious treatment than other incidents of athletes engaging in boorish or criminal behavior.

"The hate mail I'm getting is along the lines of, `What do you care as long as nobody gets hurt?'" Reno said. "Is that the standard you want? If someone has to go to the hospital and get their stomach pumped because they were forced to drink too much but they end up OK, then it's all fine? For me, this required a higher level of seriousness."

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.