Carmel hazing update: A victim, er, perpetrator speaks

A figure in one of the most notorious cases of school sports hazing in recent memory — and his family — were counseled by their attorneys to stay silent in the face of accusations of possible sexual crimes, intense media coverage and a backlash from some locals. After breaking their silence, the figure and his family proved their attorney provided wise counsel.

Scott Laskowski was one of four Carmel (Ind.) High School basketball players (now all graduated) who faced criminal charges following two separate hazing incidents, one on a team bus on the way back from a game, and one in the team locker room. Laskowski pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge related to the locker room incident, though he was suspended from the team and expelled from classes. Laskowski is the son of former Indiana University basketball player and announcer John Laskowski, making him, by accident of birth, the most prominent of the four accused. (Two others have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in the locker room incident, while other charges have been dropped, and two players — not including Laskowski — are still going through the court system over the bus incident.)

I’ll save you the slog through a six-page story on The Indianapolis Star’s website to get to the meat (on page six):

When the Laskowskis finally decided to speak, they lashed out at the media and the school and the accuser. They said their son is the real victim. The school took one student’s word against their son’s. His accuser — whose family plans a $2.25 million lawsuit against the school district — is in it for the money. And the media excess was motivated by greed.

My response: boo fucking hoo.

I’ll give the Laskowskis that having stalkers (including one person arrested for doing so) posting “a sex offender lives here” signs on their lawn and following them through the streets of Carmel was way over the top, and I don’t blame the family for moving 65 miles south to Bloomington to get away from it.

But, for Christ’s sake, when you have a victim who is reported to have had various objects shoved up his anus, you don’t go around proclaiming yourself or your golden boy as “the real victim.” There is no way to come out of that unscathed.

The story dwells on all the information that wasn’t released because of laws governing school privacy and grand-jury testimony. (It’s nice to see that the Laskowskis and those sympathetic with the victim can agree on one thing — that the school totally mishandled the situation.) But it doesn’t shed a lot of light on what Laskowski did or saw.

His guilty plea came for, as he put it, holding the ankles of a victim attacked in the locker room, and he denies doing anything on the bus. OK, we’ll take him at his word. So what did Laskowski see on the infamous bus ride? Did he see something happen? Are the others guilty? Is the victim making this up? In six pages, either Scott Laskowski wasn’t asked, or the interview was conditioned on the reporter not asking. Or, given the Laskowski family’s self-absorption, at least as it came across in the story, nobody knows or cares.

Carmel basketball hazing victim: “I don’t smile as much as I used to”

The attorney for the one of the targets of hazing last season by teammates of his Carmel (Ind.) High School basketball team — three former members of which are facing misdemeanor criminal charges, not counting the other one who has already pleaded guilty, as a result of hazing incidents — put his client out there, sort of, on Nov. 12 for a news conference.

I say sort of because the rules of the road laid down by attorney Robert Turner included no identifying the victim, no identifying his parents, and no pictures. Still, this is the first time the public has heard from any of the victims of one of the more notorious and talked-about cases of youth sports hazing in recent memory. However, Fox59 News in Indianapolis said the victim holding the news conference was the subject of the Indiana Department of Children and Family Services sexual assault report that blew the lid off the case.

Here are some quotes from the victim, as relayed by The Indianapolis Star:

How has your life changed? “I don’t smile as much as I used to. I don’t laugh and joke as much as I used to.”

Did you embellish your story to authorities? “I’m sure I would not make something like this up. I would not be in the situation I am here if I were making this up. I am very very serious about this.” (Fox59 also has him saying, “Why would I make something like this up?”)

Any advice to other victims for getting authorities to listen? “You just have to keep saying it and saying it.”

Also, the Star quoted the victim’s mother: “You’re supposed to feel safe to go to your leaders, your coaches and your teachers, and know something is going to be done. … They (students) are watching everything that is going on, and saying, ‘what’s the point.’ Look at what we’ve been through and still nothing’s happened.”

In particular, she’s talking about the plea deal for Scott Laskowski, who the previous week had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal recklessness. Laskowski, the son of former Indiana University player and longtime IU basketball announcer John Laskowski, was sentenced to slightly less than a year of probation and 40 hours of community service. He also was ordered to stay away from the victim.

Despite the Department of Children and Family Services report saying that the victim was anally penetrated with foreign objects, no felony or sexual assault charges have yet been made against Laskowski and the three others who have been indicted in north suburban Indianapolis’ Hamilton County on misdemeanor charges: Robert Kitzinger, Brandon Hoge and Oscar Faludon, all of whom, like Laskowski, graduated in spring 2010.

The charges are related to incidents in Carmel’s locker room. Fox59 reported on Nov. 5 that it’s expected the other players will follow Laskowski’s lead and take plea deals, which would certainly eliminate any chance Laskowski would have to testify in their cases. (Also, the judge handling their case on Oct. 27 was arrested for drunken driving while on vacation in North Carolina.)

I say there are no felony or sexual assault charges “yet” because the prosecutor in west suburban Hendricks County is still investigating a hazing incident on the back of a team bus heading back from a January game in Terre Haute. Laskowski, Kitzinger and Hoge were suspended from the team for that incident (Faludon was suspended for the locker-room incident). There’s no word on when those charges might come.

Not surprisingly, the victim’s family — and its lawyer, who is the former public safety director for the Indianapolis police — feel like everyone involved has not investigated or dealt with the hazing case sufficiently. Turner has threatened lawsuits, and said during the Nov. 12 news conference that he will file a complaint with the U.S. Attorney to investigate the Hamilton County prosecutor, the players’ attorneys and others he said have manipulated witnesses. So far, these only have been threats.

In fact, Turner has had a lot of public bluster that hasn’t gone much of anywhere. But whatever Turner’s tactics, what will not change is that the victim will feel the effects of what happened forever, no matter what a court says. It’s cases like this that explain why, say, the Needham (Mass.) High School administration took a zero-tolerance stance toward supposedly far more innocent hazing with its girls soccer team. Hazing is a power trip, and a school trusts its students not to go too far with it at its own, and its students’, peril.

Needham soccer hazing, and why this douchebaggery keeps happening

In March, I wrote a piece called “Why youth sports hazing happens: because adults say it can.” I’m delighted to report that my hard-hitting look at adult compliance in condoning and/or covering up hazing was a major factor in why, for example, prosecutors find it so difficult to convict or even file cases in the most egregious of examples, has had absolutely no effect, judging by the adults’ reaction when some Needham (Mass.) High School girls soccer players got suspended because of alleged hazing of teammates.

Four seniors and a freshman were suspended for activities that, news reports say, involved victims being led, blindfolded, on dog leashes, then hit in the face with pies. This happened after Needham clinched its conference title Oct. 29.

As hazing goes, this is certainly no broomstick-up-the-anus. But the school was right to take action. School administrators are often criticized for having zero tolerance for anything but zero tolerance, but it can’t condone hazing of any kind. In too many places, what started as an innocent ritual devolved into something far more sinister, sometimes including alcohol, sometimes including activities that could put perpetrators on the sex-offender list for life. If schools are going to take a hard line against bullying, then hazing is included. After all, in hazing, the victims are coerced or forced to participate, lest they be seen as bad teammates or stupid little pukes. Massachusetts since 1985 has had a state law that bars hazing in schools.

As you can imagine, many in the greater Needham community united in the face of such action — united so they could hire a lawyer to try to get an injunction overturning the suspensions, which happened right before the start of the state tournament. On Nov. 8, a judge refused to grant the injunction, saying students did not have an inherent right to participate in school sports, and that the plaintiffs failed to show they could win the case. On Nov. 9, Needham got smoked 7-1 by Brockton in the first round of the state tournament.

Hazing didn’t start at Needham this year. One of the most impassioned defenses of the soccer team was that hazing had gone on forever, but Principal Dickbag for some reason decided this was the year to ruin everybody’s life. Now, on some level, I can understand students — especially the players themselves — reacting this way. They are teenagers. Everything is a tragedy, and, yeah, it would suck to suddenly have your season taken away from you, especially if it’s something no one thought twice about for years.

But they are reasonable, dispassionate observers compared to some of the adults. Who do you think taught these kids to haze, and be outraged when they were told hazing wasn’t allowed?

I learned by watching you!

From the Boston Globe:

The mother of a junior on the Needham High School girls soccer team says that the suspensions of several players on the team for alleged hazing were too severe for what she called a “misguided attempt at team building.”

In an email to the Globe, Needham parent Sharon Lund said that the team was supporting both the players and the team’s coach, who also reportedly has been placed on leave. She said her daughter is a junior on the team who was not implicated in the incident.

…

“As the parent of an underclassman, I can safely say that the ENTIRE Needham Girl’s Soccer team and parents are UNANIMOUS in supporting each senior who has been placed on suspension and the coach who has been placed on administrative leave, and assert that the event in question in no way warrants the issuing of suspensions by Needham High School,” Lund said in the email. “In a nutshell, there was no intention to harm, nor was any harm perceived by team members, during a misguided attempt at team building.”

She continued:

“In my personal opinion, these girls have handled a serious mistake in a more mature fashion than either the NHS administration or the press has to date. This was an isolated intra-team issue that they resolved to everyone’s satisfaction amongst themselves with active support from the coach, and in the process strengthened the bonds amongst them. As some of the parents have so aptly pointed out, aren’t these the life skills that we want our daughters to have?”

Yes, not having that experience when I ran cross country and track in high school has always been a handicap for me when I got to the part of the job interview where I was blindfolded, led on a dog leash, and hit with pies.

More from the Globe:

In an interview, a 1988 graduate of Needham High School who said he was the godfather of one of the suspended students said he was shocked and disappointed that the girls were suspended.

“This is something that has been going on for years. It is nothing major, and everyone jumped to conclusions so quickly,” said Joshua Melia, a Needham resident. He said he was “angry and disappointed” on behalf of his goddaughter, a senior co-captain, and her teammates for “something so minor.”

“This was not bullying and it was not hazing, but that’s what they are calling it. To just label the kids in that way isn’t fair,” said Melia, who said he was a member of Needham High’s wrestling team, and recalled that minor-league teasing of freshmen team members was common in his day.

In an email to the Globe, Benji Eisenberg, who identified himself as a Needham High graduate, said “Hazing. What’s the big deal?”

“Hazing/initiation rites are one of the most important aspects of team building and bonding,” he said, adding that team “tryouts are almost a hazing experience in themselves.”

I was never in a fraternity, nor any organization where hazing was a rite of passage. Amazingly, I also have been part of organizations where team building and bonding happened, despite no one  having beer blasted up their rectums. So I don’t get this mindset that hazing is some necessary event to ensure team unity. Though the Stockholm Syndrome is, by nature, a unifying experience.

Especially if Yo La Tengo is involved.

At least in the Needham case, the school finally put its foot down, unlike in Bossier, La., where a middle school principal called hazing “tradition,” and in Carmel, Ind., where it took media and public pressure — and a call from child services — before high school administrators took seriously hazing accusations involving the boys basketball team that ended up with charges brought against four players.

So what’s going to stop adults from viewing hazing as anything more than unnecessary abuse? It’s a long train to that station.

When I’ve written about hazing, more often than not I’m writing about a fairly well-to-do community. That’s not to say that hazing doesn’t happen elsewhere, but well-to-do communities tend to have wealthier parents who, say, went through fraternity or sorority hazing rituals themselves (as victims and perpetrators), who are used to getting their way, who are ready to pull out all the stops for their kids as necessary no matter what monsters they might be, and who can pay for lawyers. In the communities, as well, there is pressure to sweep things under the rug so as not to mess up the unofficial idyllic status of their town, where kids aren’t just above average like they are in Lake Wobegon, but are fucking special and have big, important futures that, frankly, kids not from here will never have. Why would you ruin a good kid’s life over some innocent fun, hmmmmm? Needham fits the profile of that well-to-do community.

So, to continue waving my broad brush, the hazing will continue, no matter what school officials say, in these communities because they’re full of adult douchebags. To be fair, these communities also have plenty of adults who don’t support hazing. But enough of them do to ensure that hazing will remain a sad fact of life.

Carmel hazing update — if one player pleads guilty, does he sing?

The legally convoluted Carmel (Ind.) High School basketball hazing case(s) has its lasted twist and turn — one of the players is apparently ready to plead guilty to charges related to bullying a fellow player in the locker room. Scott Laskowski, 20, son of former Indiana University player and announcer John Laskowki, has a plea hearing scheduled for Nov. 4 in Hamilton County (Ind.) Court, which various legal experts contacted by local Indianapolis media say is where Laskowski and his attorneys would be expected to put forward a plea agreement.

If you want all the down-and-dirty details to one of the more infamous hazing cases of 2010, go to the search bar on the right for “Carmel,” and you should get everything.

But the short version is that Laskowski is one of four now-graduated players facing various misdemeanor charges on what have been called hazing attacks, or bullying attacks, or just plain attacks on team members (or one team member) on a bus back from a game in Terre Haute, 100 miles from the north Indianapolis suburb, and in the Carmel locker room. The case became particularly infamous, at least locally and among the readership that spiked when I posted about it, because school officials at first seemed more than happy to accept the team’s explanation that nothing big really happened — until state child protection reported that the assaults could be considered sexual in nature and resulted in injury to one of the victims.

Four Carmel players — Laskowski, Robert Kitzinger, Brandon Hoge and Oscar Faludon — face misdemeanor charges in Hamilton County for the locker room incident, a decision by the county prosecutor that itself caused a lot of controversy locally because there was a feeling the charges were light compared to the alleged offense. An investigation is still under way by the prosecutor in Hendricks County, in west suburban Indianapolis, where the bus assault was alleged to have taken place.

As I’ve written about before — and put “hazing” into that search bar on the right if you want more details — hazing cases are hard to win, because the defendants tend to circle the wagons, and because there is still a boys-will-be-boys mentality among schools and prosecutors that prevents them from cracking down on athletes, and because there is a fear at schools in well-heeled communities (which is where a lot of these cases seem to take place — such as Carmel) of a hit to their image and to “ruining” the future of “good” kids.

The most interesting part about Laskowski’s apparent interest in a plea deal is that, as experts, including Hamilton County Prosecutor Sonia Leerkamp, point out, in cases involving multiple defendants, one part of a plea deal is that the person then testifies against the others. Leerkamp doesn’t acknowledge that this is the case with Laskowski

But it would interesting if self-preservation is starting to take hold. After all, Laskowski is a “good” kid from a prominent family, and even though to some (such as the victim’s lawyer) the misdemeanor charges don’t go far enough, one wonders (OK, that one is me) if the calculation is being made that the longer this case lasts, the more Laskowski’s bright future starts to dim. If Laskowski does testify against his former teammates, at the least it would be a rare case of the wall breaking down when athletes get in trouble for hazing, bullying, or whatever the hell you want to call it.

Why a Midwestern suburb is going on a youth sports building frenzy

Here is an example on what gets built, and what doesn’t, in our not-officially-in-a-recession economy.

In the fast-growing Indianapolis suburb of Westfield, Ind., there was a proposed $1 billion, 1,400-acre project that was going to include mostly new housing and stores, but would also have 150 acres set aside for youth sports fields, a new Y, and a minor-league baseball stadium. Because of the lousy real estate market, the housing-and-stores part of the development has been cut by two-thirds.

Meanwhile, the athletics portion of the project has broken off, and its size has doubled — to 300 acres, or as the Indianapolis Business Journal points out, the size of the Kings Island amusement park.

I’ve written about it here before (and before that), and I’ll write about it again, because cities keep doing it:  using youth sports as an economic development tool. And why not? At most, your huge complex can host scads of tournaments, which means scads of out-of-town teams, which means scads of parents and kids spending money at your hotels and restaurants. At worst, if the out-of-towners don’t show up, you can justify the cost of the project (and Westfield’s was estimated, when it was half the current size, at around $60 million) by pointing out that, unlike building a new NFL stadium, the community gets to use it.

Even in the throes of the recession, parents in unemployment-scarred towns such as Elkhart, Ind., ponied up to put their kids in sports. As one parent told me in 2009, he will cut any other expense, because “if you save $5, it’s $5 you can spend on your child.” With such a loyal spending base to work with, it’s no wonder even little towns like Edwardsburg, Mich. (population 1,200), have huge sports complexes in the planning or construction stages.

After all, you don’t want to have your hometown newspaper write about all the tournaments (and money) you lost because you didn’t keep up with the Basketball Joneses. (Often, the local coverage of proposed complexes sounds a lot like the fawning articles that beat the drums for taxpayer-funded pro stadiums. Sample headline: “New sports complex offers cities financial home run.”) Again, so what if the promised multimillion-dollar impact from youth tournaments doesn’t happen? At least your kids have a nice place to play, right?

Westfield, population 27,000, is much more ambitious than most cities building youth sports complexes. Instead of just saying, we’re building a complex, Westfield and its mayor, Andy Cook (no relation to your humble blogger) have declared they are building “The Family Sports Capital of America.”

Why so grandiose? Westfield, located in Indiana’s Hamilton County, one of the fastest-growing in the nation, is trying to grab more of the executives who have been more apt to settle in other suburbs, particularly Carmel, located immediately to Westfield’s south. Carmel (hometown of your humble blogger) itself has stood out nationally because of its grand schemes, such as its embrace of roundabouts, its snagging of Michael Feinstein and his Great American Songbook, and its getting Kendra Wilkinson to film her reality show there. A few years back, the U.S. Census Bureau renamed the Indianapolis metropolitan area the Indianapolis-Carmel metro. One of Westfield’s few claims to fame was being the home of a serial killer.

Carmel has always been bigger, richer and more important than Westfield, and damnit, if the town was going to be known for being more than Carmel’s leftovers, it needed to do something grand. Hence, “The Family Sports Capital of America.” (Giving yourself a grandiose nickname is a tradition among Hoosiers. See Michael Jackson, “King of Pop.”)

With ground yet to be broken, we’re a long way from finding out whether Westfield can pop a big civic boner in the face of its rival, which I just realized is a highly inappropriate metaphor in a piece about a place kids play. But we are hardly a long way away from cities of any size determining that putting money into shiny, new youth sports complexes is maybe not such a good idea after all. As long as parents are willing to spend their last $5 on their kids and their sports, there is going to be a market for the facilities. The only question might be is if some other town is going to try to beat Westfield to the “Family Sports Capital of America” punch.

(Actually, Blaine, Minn., already did.)

Hazing allegations shut down Minnesota HS football team, for now

Hazing allegations involving a sports team — not unusual. Suspending practice while the school tries to get to the bottom of those allegations — that’s unusual.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the varsity football program at Elk River (Minn.) High School, located in an exurb at the end of a commuter rail line connected with Minneapolis, was suspended Aug. 25 while school officials check into hazing allegations made by the parent of an apparent victim.

The school did not reveal the nature of the hazing, and apparently no one has sought medical attention related to it, according to the Elk River district. But the school has hired an attorney to conduct a third-party investigation. The district told the Star Tribune that all 54 players have been interviewed, with 15 of those players more closely tied to the allegations coming back for another round Aug. 26.

From the Star Tribune:

Superintendent Mark Bezek announced his decision to shelve the program “until further notice” in a meeting with about 200 parents and students Wednesday night at the high school.

“I am shocked and dismayed by these allegations,” Bezek told the gathering. “This district does not tolerate hazing or other unlawful activities.”

Bezek added, “This isn’t just kids fooling around. This has some very serious implications.”

One of those implications: that the school will get its ass sued off and/or get its name sullied if it doesn’t address the hazing allegations in a firm and forceful way. Ask Carmel, Ind., High School how much mental and financial pain has come from brushing off hazing allegations involving its boys’ basketball team, allegations that later become criminal cases against the players who allegedly perpetrated the treatment.

Of course, you’d also like to think that the school really was outraged on a moral level. Until I hear otherwise, I won’t take the cynical route outlined in the previous paragraph.

The Star Tribune reports that the players could be back on the practice field as soon as Aug. 27, and that Elk River’s  opening game is still expected to kick off as scheduled on Sept. 2. However, it will be interesting to see what is left of the team at that point. Unless the hazing allegations turn out to be completely baseless, you can consider Elk River’s season sufficiently ruined.

Carmel hazing update: The mayor says you hate because you're jealous

A lot has happened in the Carmel (Ind.) High School basketball hazing case since I last posted about it, including my own self being interviewed by The Indianapolis Star about it in a quote that had the feel of, “Well, we talked to him, so we might as well use something from him.”

However, I’ve stayed away from the blow-by-blow detail of everything that’s happened since the four now-former players were indicted on misdemeanor charges related to abuse of their teammates, in part because I was getting a little tired of writing about it, a decision that came at great risk to my readership statistics, given Carmel-related articles make up four of my top 10-read posts.

However, Carmel Mayor James Brainard said something the other day that’s drawing me back in. From an interview with WRTV television in Indianapolis:

Carmel Mayor James Brainard said jealousy is fueling intrigue into charges against four former high school basketball players accused in assaults on younger teammates.

“I think it gets sometimes more attention because it’s Carmel,” Brainard [said]. “I think that the community is an affluent community, so sometimes I think … when something doesn’t go perfectly, or doesn’t go right, that it gets more attention than that same sort of thing might get somewhere else.” …

Brainard said it is time for the community to move on and focus on other things beside the case.”We’re building a new community here,” he said. “All sorts of good things are happening.”

Carmel, where I graduated from high school, where my mother still lives, has been transformed under Brainard from your standard-issue bedroom community into a model of suburban development, with an emphasis on arts, green development and other strategies to make the city of 70,000 feel like its own unique place, rather than a mere, wealthier extension of Indianapolis. Yes, all sorts of good things are happening.

However, by his comments on the Carmel case, Brainard gave evidence of why my late father often referred to him as “Mayor Brain-dead.” Even if the community’s affluence helped to drive the intensity of the coverage on the hazing case, the maya sayin’ y’all playa hatin’ is a ridiculous statement. Another major factor in driving the intensity of the coverage is the shock of four senior basketball players who, allegedly, took it upon themselves to ram various items up the rectums of freshmen, for no other apparent reason than they were freshmen.

I haven’t believed that the Carmel school system, the Carmel police, the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office and the Illuminati have conspired to try to put a lid on the Carmel hazing case. However — same as I feel about whether David Stern bent an envelope to make sure the New York Knicks won the 1985 draft lottery so they could get Patrick Ewing — I don’t doubt that everyone involved WOULD like this case to go away. It’s a subtle difference. A conspiracy assumes that everyone knew what was going on, and tried to squash all word about it. In the case of Carmel authorities, I believe that they didn’t 100 percent of the time try to find out everything that happened. In some part, that might be because they couldn’t conceive of how awful it was, that “good” kids from their community would never be capable of doing such bad things.

As the Carmel case makes its way through the legal system, Mayor Brainard is best staying out of the discussion about it, and instead limit his public comments to subjects such as, say, roundabouts.

[youtubevid id="mn4kGw1rk-c"]

By the way, the fear of so many Carmel playa hatas is that because none of the four — Robert Kitzinger, Brandon Hoge, Scott Laskowski and Oscar Faludon — were indicted on any sexual assault charges, any punishment won’t have their desired effect of a tar-and-feathering, public hanging or, at least, a permanent spot on the sex offender registry.

However, that’s not to say that even the charges of battery (the worst any of them face) aren’t going to have some long-term effect, no matter what happens in a courtroom.

The Indianapolis Star on June 10 quoted a spokesman from DePauw University, where Kitzinger is supposed to be playing basketball next season, that it’s possible he won’t be there when the fall begins. Kitzinger is trying to follow in the footsteps of his father Kirk, a Carmel attorney (not representing any of the players in this case) who played at DePauw from 1976 to 1980.

At DePauw, university spokesman Christopher Wells confirmed that a number of alumni have contacted the school to express concern about Kitzinger, who is slated to play on the school’s basketball team in the fall. University officials want to talk to Carmel school leaders and Kitzinger’s family, Wells said.

“Anytime we become aware of a situation that occurs after admission, we’re going to try to get as much information as possible,” Wells said. “We have an expectation that our students are going to end their high school career as it began.”

University officials have not indicated when a decision will be made.

Kitzinger and the three other seniors were expelled but received their diplomas through online classes offered by the high school. Wells said DePauw also could halt Kitzinger’s enrollment if it finds Web courses weren’t equal to in-class work.

Your kid's cellphone: a youth sports parent's best friend

You might have seen over the weekend that the New York Times put up a blurb about the growth of cell phone use by six-to-11-year-olds, a group that back in my day (insert old man voice) would still have been playing with pretend land lines. However, I see nothing disturbing at all in kids having cell phones, not with my 12-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter having had them for about two years. I’m also guessing a lot of parents who are shuttling kids to multiple events, sports or otherwise, feel the same way.

[youtubevid id="M0PAVZJhtx8"]

“Oh-hoh! I’ll send Goofy to pick you up at the field, Billy!”

The Times, quoting a study released Jan. 4 by Mediamarket Research and Intelligence, said that in 2005 11.9 percent of six- to 11-year-olds had their own mobile phone. In 2009, that number was up to 20 percent. The most dramatic increase, according to the market research company, was 10- and 11-year-olds, whose phone ownership was up 80.5 percent.

These numbers might be disturbing if you believe cell phones cause brain tumors, or if you imagine your 6-year-old now having the power to send naked pictures of himself all over the virtual world. And, yeah, when I put it that way, even I’m starting to freak out a little bit. Let me check my kid’s phones, and I’ll be right back. …

(OK, nothing untoward there. Whew.)

Or maybe you think merely that a post-toddler or preteen is too young to have a phone.

The New York Times item on this survey, being a blurb, left out a key part of the 5,000-child survey: why they use their phone.

The overwhelmingly No. 1 reason why kids use their phones is to call their parents. Now, as a child — and I was a good kid (really, I was) — my worst nightmare was that my parents could have some sort of tracking device on me that would always reveal to them where I was at any given moment. But my experience with my own children is that both sides like the security of being able to get in touch, anytime. Certainly, a cell phone would have been helpful so I could go from one park to another without having to make a detour home first so I could ask my parents if I could go.

The survey said 88.1% of the kiddie cellphone wielders use the device to call their parents. This is where the phone as youth sports parent’s best friend comes in. There comes a time, when the number of kids you have and the schedules they keep outflank you ability to be everywhere at once, that the phone is a necessity for making sure that your child isn’t left stranded after practice or a game — or that you can talk to your child and the parents of whomever has offered to bring him or her home, preferably via a postgame ice-cream shop stop.

My 12-year-old’s phone certainly comes in handy for his frequent, hours-long in-line skating jaunts, so I can call him home, or he can call me in case there is a problem. I feel safer with him having the phone, though my concern for his safety does not extend to making him wear a helmet and pads.

Over the summer, when we were visiting my family in Carmel, Ind., my son bladed over to the nearby Monon Trail (a conversion from a rail line upon which a parent threatened to send up Hickory basketball coach Norman Dale after hidestrapping his ass to a pine rail), which runs south to downtown Indianapolis. I was running the trail myself, so I saw him as we entered at about 146th Street, and I saw him again as I ran south from the trail’s end at 161st Street in Westfield, with him heading north. His phone in hand, I let him keep going after I was done running.

About 90 minutes later, not having heard from my son, I figured I’d better call him to see if he was OK. “Yeah, I’m fine, Dad,” he said. “Where are you?” “I’m not exactly sure.” “What was the last street sign you saw?” “I think it was… 96th Street.” (96th Street is the border between Carmel and Indianapolis.) “96th Street? Where the heck are you going?” “I wanted to go all the way downtown and back.” “Uh, no.”

Hey, my 12-year-old son may be old enough to have a cell phone, but I wasn’t going to let him traverse by himself to downtown Indianapolis and back. I might let him skate with no pads and no helmet — and an iPod going full-blast — but I have my limits. (I did let him skate back, though.)

By the way, second in the survey was calling friends (68.1 percent) and emergency purposes (55.7 percent). Mediamarket says much of the rise in cell phone use has to do with more kid-friendly phone offerings.

Left totally unsupervised, with no cell phone pads and cell phone helmet, can mobile technology welcome your 6- to 11-year-old to a world of sexting, cyberbullying, tumor-iffic, airtime-charge-sucking ne’er-do-wells? Perhaps. When we got our kids phones, my wife and I gave long lectures about what they were to be used for — and not. We haven’t gotten our 7-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter their own phones yet, but they’re not moving about independently enough to need them.

Anyway, I think the results of the Mediamark survey show that children — and parents — want that electronic tether to make sure they’re never out of reach; what was once my nightmare, now a child’s and parent’s dream.

Should student athletes get punished for out-of-school conduct?

In Haddonfield, N.J., there are two lawsuits — both involving students suspended from extracurricular activities after being arrested for underage drinking — that seek to answer in the negative the musical question I’ve posed in the headline. However, there is a long tradition of that question being answered in the positive. Recent court decisions have affirmed that opinion, by saying plainly that while students have a right to stay in school, they have no special right to stay there afterward and participate in activities.

Contrary to how the new or unusual the concept of punishing student-athletes for nonschool conduct might seem, it’s been around for a long time, long enough that it was the rule when I was running cross country and track at Carmel (Ind.) High School back in the days when parachute pants were all the rage. In fact, it’s been around long enough that when I was editor of the high school’s newspaper, I identified the names of multiple basketball players suspended for a game after they were among 90 arrested at a party where underage drinking was taking place. (So there is a precedent to my revealing the names of Carmel’s current basketball players identified in a budding hazing scandal.)

However, apparently this concept is new to Haddonfield, N.J., where the school district adopted its “24/7″ policy in 2006 to take action against students who run into trouble outside of school events. The policy includes the Haddonfield police tipping off the district if any of their students get arrested, a fairly common practice in many areas.

According to the Philadephia Inquirer, 70 students, including those of Haddonfield Mayor and 24/7 policy promoter Tish Colombi, have gotten caught in its net. (Correction: Colombi’s children got busted for underage drinking while in high school, and she later promoted the 24/7 policy.) Local attorney Matthew Wolf is seeking class-action status on behalf of all of them in his lawsuits representing two 15-year-old student-athletes got smacked down by the 24/7 policy in two separate incidents. Wolf, in a story that aired March 6 on NPR’s Weekend Edition, called 24/7 “simply a vigilante system of justice established by a school board in violation of the Constitution of the United States.”

Wolf says the off-campus policy violates the Constitution by duplicating the punishment and meting it out before the kids have gone to court. Also, he says drinking at a party on Saturday night has nothing to do with school safety.

“If a student has stabbed another student outside of school, or stabbed anyone outside the school, we don’t contend that the school doesn’t have the right to exercise its authority over students who commit serious offenses,” says Wolf.

Actually, courts so far have said the opposite — that it would be tougher to expel a student who stabbed someone outside of school than it would be to boot someone off the volleyball team for getting busted for even the most minor of offenses.

An Ohio state appeals court case is hardly legal precedent, but it’s the closest we might come (other than a judge denying one of Wolf’s clients a temporary restraining order) until a case like Mather v. Loveland City School District Board of Education makes its way to the Supreme Court.

The plaintiff was Charlie Mather, a student at Loveland High, located in a suburb of Cincinnati. One night in summer 2008, police pulled over a car in which he was riding, and police noticed an open container of alcohol between his legs. Mather was arrested. Later, a Loveland resource officer who also is a city cop told the school about Mather’s arrest. The school, under its policy, suspended Mather for 40 percent of the football season. Mather’s mother sued the school district, and got a local court to give a temporary injunction for him to play football — but he still faced sitting out 40 percent of lacrosse season in the spring.

With that in mind, the case (relatively quickly) made it to a state appeals court. On March 13, 2009, in a unanimous decision, the three judges said the lower court was all kinds of wrong in even giving Mather the time of day.

The first problem, the judges noted, was that the Ohio legislature never granted students a right to appeal suspension from extracurricular activities, even though they did have the right to appeal suspension or expulsion from curricular activities (which is why I noted Wolf had it backward about who had the harder time getting back into school). As a matter of fact, the Ohio legislature appeared to make it clear there would be no legal right of appeal on the extracurricular end. In 1996 it passed a  law allowing school boards to adopt policies for prohibiting students from participating in extracurricular activities. In 1999, it struck out the word “extracurricular” when it amended statute on students’ rights to appeal suspension or expulsion from school.

It is significant that the legislature both created a separate statute to address policies for prohibiting students from extracurricular activities and deleted “extracurricular” from the statute concerning the right to appeal a school board’s decision. It is clear to us that the legislature intended to create a right of appeal to a common pleas court only for curricular activities. Extracurricular activities are governed solely by R.C. 3313.664, which provides no right to appeal a school board’s decision. Perhaps the legislature reasoned that some issues have to be left to the good faith of school officials, rather than to have every incident such as this one dragged into court.

That court also noted a 1980 decision by the Sixth Circuit Court — one step short of the Supreme Court — in a case called Glenn v. Harper. That court upheld the right of a school district to kick a student off the cheerleading squad, without a hearing or a right of appeal. The Sixth Circuit noted, and the Ohio state appeals court followed, that there is no Constitutional right to participate in extracurricular school activities.

So that’s what a court says, but is that right? I’ll sound like a grumpy old man, but, yes, it is. If a college team can suspend a player for off-campus problems, there’s no reason a high school or middle cannot, as well. As schools note, participating in extracurricular activities is a privilege. Generally, students and their parents have to sign an agreement (as Mather and his father did) adhering to a code of conduct, and if the student doesn’t, well, see you in math class, but not on the football field.

However, if Wolf and his like want to make some progress on giving young athletes more wiggle room in the code of conduct, they might concentrate on what’s in the code itself, and how it is applied. There is a case pending in U.S. District Court in Fort Wayne, Ind., in which two female athletes were suspended from teams for salacious MySpace pictures (often known as the “Penis Pop case”). In that case, the issue is whether photos taken and posted for the benefit of a select group of people (they couldn’t be seen by people outside the girls’ networks) counts as any sort of moral public turpitude worthy of getting suspended, and especially worthy of having to grovel in front of all-male panels gawking at your licking a phallus lollipop in order to get back on the team.

I’ve already gone on record as saying I don’t think this is actionable like an athlete getting busted for something illegal. At least in the latter case, you have a public record to go on, rather than trying to make some judgment call. But we’ll see what the court has to say. For now, those athletes in Haddonfield shouldn’t hold their breaths that Matthew Wolf will succeed in his goal of getting their suspensions off their permanent records, something extremely important in the well-to-do community. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

A number of Haddonfield parents were contacted for this story, and all declined to speak on the record. They expressed concern that their comments would affect their children, both in their day-to-day existence in high school and when they applied to college in the months or years ahead.

[youtubevid id="qYsko_tc3a0"]

Apropos of nothing, Bill Cosby talking about drinking, when he was more funny than hectoring.

Carmel hazing update: 1998 revisited, and time to take off the tinfoil hat

The other day I noted that at Carmel (Ind.) High School, center of criminal investigations into alleged violent and sexual crimes into two separate hazing incidents involving the boys basketball team, had a similar situation pop up in 1998: three senior swimmers accused of harassing, beating and sexually assaulting a freshman teammate in what may or may not have been a case of hazing. I also noted that I couldn’t find any record of what happened to the alleged victim’s lawsuit against the school district and the swimmers.

WISH-TV in Indianapolis got a hold of the court documents and found the boy’s attorney. (Thanks to the intrepid Your Kid’s Not Going Pro reader who tipped me.) Tonight (March 5) the station aired a report that while a bit over the top in linking the swimming incident to the basketball incident — hey, it was 12 years ago, and none of the administrators overseeing (or not) things then are not the ones overseeing things (or not) now — do provide some disturbing parallels into how these incidents happen, and get so out of control. Most disturbing, perhaps, to those who want to see Carmel’s basketball players, coaches and school administrators hanging in the courtyard at dawn is how the 1998 case ended up being resolved.

[youtubevid id="CNvef2Zk9q0"]

Actually, the most direct parallel is with the three seniors being investigated for assaulting two freshman teammates Jan. 22 on a bus trip back from a game in Terre Haute, a 100-mile trip. Like in that case, the victim apparently never stepped forward for whatever reason (in the swimmer’s case, fear that no one would believe three well-liked teammates would do such a thing), and the apparent assaults came to light only when the victim was injured badly enough to go to the hospital, which reported the injuries to the state’s Child Protective Services division.

In each case, coaches and administrators initially appeared to either not believe the victim or failed to appreciate the gravity of the situation. According to WISH-TV, the swimming coach told the freshman, when he complained, to tough it out, that a little “horseplay” was part of being a freshman. In the basketball case, Carmel principal John Williams went on television — WISH-TV, to be exact — to note that, even after a police report on the alleged assault was released, “I’m still pretty comfortable with what happened on that bus and our knowledge of what happened on that bus.” Depending on how the case develops, that sentence could be his career epitaph. (After all, the three seniors were suspended from school and the team for whatever happened on that bus.)

[youtubevid id="JaJ2-iTVlTI"]

However, Williams might be OK in the end. In the swimming case, then-coach Tony Young was charged with failing to report a crime — but those charges eventually were dismissed. The swimmers never faced criminal charges. The lawsuit against the school and the swimmers, filed in 2002, was settled for an undisclosed amount soon before trial was scheduled to begin, according to WISH-TV.

One incident in 1998 and another in 2010 do not a pattern of violent hazing behavior make. However, each case shows a common pattern in any school where such an incident emerges: victims are afraid to speak out, coaches don’t want to hear it, and administrators are either left in the dark, intentionally or by their own desire to not hear anything they will have to recite later in a deposition.

That’s why I’m calling for everyone across these Internets who are screaming cover-up to can it. Hazing cases are notoriously difficult to investigate, because you have a lot of potential witnesses, and you have a lot of people who don’t want to say what they’ve seen. (A reason cited as to why the prosecutor in Grand Rapids, Mich., elected not to file criminal charges in a hazing case involving a high school cross country team.)

No doubt, the authorities in Carmel don’t want a bruise on the Indianapolis suburb’s well-polished image as a high-class, desirable place to live. But if no charges end up being filed, if no coach or administrator loses his or her job, it will be a testament to police and administrative incompetence and/or witnesses refusing to say exactly what they know.

On the other hand, those across these Internets, including Carmel’s own city attorney, who are screaming about how the mean ol’ media is attacking the Bestest City in the Universe and harassing poor, innocent high school kids also need to can it. Without the media attention, it’s doubtful there would be a police investigation in the first place. Maybe that’s what those screamers wanted. If there’s any “cover up,” it’s going to come from community pressure to get basketball players and other witnesses not to talk, not an orchestrated campaign by the police.

(Oh, by the way, Carmel lost at home tonight in its own sectional to neighboring Indianapolis ‘burb Westfield, so everybody’s season is over, not just that of the four seniors.)