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Northwestern University is in the news these days. Normally, that makes them happy. An allegedly prestigious, globally-renowned research university certainly ought to make the news all the time – with revelations of scientific discoveries, medical breakthroughs, or career announcements about proud alumni. Not today, however. Northwestern is in the news because of a rash of reports – some uncorroborated, some perhaps exaggerated or understated, some likely perfectly accurate – of various types of hazing and otherwise toxic cultures in their athletic programs. A baseball coach was fired for allegedly discouraging students from reporting injuries. A volleyball student’s sensible reticence to...

Northwestern has fired coach Pat Fitzgerald amid allegations of widespread hazing within the football program, university president Michael Schill announced Monday. "The head coach is ultimately responsible for the culture of his team," Schill wrote in an open letter to the school community. "The hazing we investigated was widespread and clearly not a secret within the program, providing Coach Fitzgerald with the opportunity to learn what was happening. Either way, the culture in Northwestern Football, while incredible in some ways, was broken in others." Defensive coordinator David Braun is expected to be named the Wildcats' acting coach, sources told ESPN.

Two frat boys from the University of Missouri have been charged in connection with a 19-year-old at the school who was left blind and unable to walk or talk after being forced to down a family-sized bottle of Tito's vodka. Ryan Delanty and Thomas Shultz were indicted Friday in Missouri's Boone County in connection with the treatment of Daniel Santulli, a teenager whose family say was forced to drink until his heart stopped last October during pledge month at Phi Gamma Delta. Shultz is facing an additional felony charge of tampering with physical evidence. He has been left permanently and...

The Wall (N.J.) Board of Education offered at least two students now facing criminal charges related to allegations of ongoing hazing in the football locker room thousands of dollars toward school tuition to leave the district, NJ Advance Media has learned. In the midst of the scandal that has engulfed the Wall community, one of the district’s school board attorneys, Athina Cornell, made the offers to at least two suspects, according to two sources, who asked not to be identified to discuss personnel matters involving juveniles. They said the district would pay the students a prorated amount of money toward...

A French pilot has filed a legal complaint after being subjected to a traumatic hazing ritual in which he was tied to a target and had fighter jets open fire around him. The unnamed man had just been posted to an airbase in the south of the island of Corsica in March 2019 when he was grabbed by colleagues and tied up with adhesive tape. After having a bag put over his head, the recruit in his 30s was then transported to a live-fire target range, tied to a target, and then heard fighter jets open fire and drop munitions...

A sophomore at Bowling Green State University was left in critical condition after he took 40 shots in an alleged hazing incident as a Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity pledge. According to a statement from the university, Stone Foltz, 20, was hospitalized after an 'alleged hazing activity involving alcohol consumption' at a Pi Kappa Alpha event in Bowling Green, Ohio. Officials said the event occurred off-campus last Thursday. Foltz was rushed to the ProMedica Toledo Hospital where he remains in critical condition as his family works the process of donating his organs, the family's lawyer, Sean Alto, told ABC News.

The parents of a Cornell freshman who was found dead at the bottom of a gorge after a hazing prank are suing the college and the fraternity he was joining the night he died. Antonio Tsialas died in October last year after a night of brutal drinking and hazing with Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in Ithaca, New York, at a 'Christmas in October' party. His body was found in a gorge and he had high levels of alcohol in his system but his family's attorney says his cause of death was multiple blunt force trauma to the body. They...

UCF has suspended sorority Pi Beta Phi after receiving an anonymous complaint of hazing, including members forcing others to use drugs and drink alcohol until they blacked out. An anonymous person alerted the University of Central Florida on Nov. 16 about a post on the website greekrank.com that described a friend’s experience in Pi Beta Phi. UCF sent the sorority a letter Nov. 21 demanding it cease all activities, including business meetings, fundraisers, socials, mixers, intramural competitions and recruitment events while the university investigates the allegations. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 5. The accusations are “of utmost concern” to...

The hazing antics of two New York City high school students during a school trip stop at a New Jersey motel last year that included branding a fellow student’s buttocks have landed them a two year prison sentence, officials said. The students, whose names were not released because of their age, pleaded guilty earlier this month to two counts of aggravated assault, aggravated hazing and three counts of hazing, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office announced Friday. The Queens-based Francis Lewis High School students will serve their time at the New Jersey Training School in Monroe Township, prosecutors said. “We believe...

Up until the 1980’s, the “hazing” of new employees was a time-honored tradition. Here, the new employees would be given the crappiest jobs, told to do the hardest things, and treated horribly. This all seemed to disappear in the middle 1980’s. This article is dedicated to all those older workers who had to endure the “hazing” period and what it was like… Introduction Today, little remains of the old days of Hazing. You can see it on College campuses and universities when people “rush” to join a sorority or a fraternity. That’s about it. The hazing during High School has...

<p>At about 3 p.m. on Friday, February 3, Tim Piazza, a sophomore at Penn State University, arrived at Hershey Medical Center by helicopter. Eighteen hours earlier, he had been in the kind of raging good health that only teenagers enjoy. He was a handsome, redheaded kid with a shy smile, a hometown girlfriend, and a family who loved him very much. Now he had a lacerated spleen, an abdomen full of blood, and multiple traumatic brain injuries. He had fallen down a flight of stairs during a hazing event at his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, but the members had waited nearly 12 hours before calling 911, relenting only when their pledge “looked fucking dead.” Tim underwent surgery shortly after arriving at Hershey, but it was too late. He died early the next morning.</p>

Police are investigating a Denver high school's administration after video surfaced of cheerleaders being forced into doing splits, NBC affiliate KUSA reported. The video shows an incoming freshman at East High School surrounded by teammates and a coach in June during the first week of cheer camp. The girl screams in pain and repeatedly cries "please stop" as the group tries to force her legs into a split. KUSA received seven similar videos. The school's principal, cheer coach, assistant cheer coach and an assistant principal, as well as Denver Public Schools deputy general counsel, have been placed on leave during...

ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University officials say the college's oldest all-male a capella group has been permanently dismissed from campus for hazing that included requiring new members to put Icy Hot muscle cream on their genitals........

NEW YORK -- That baseball hazing ritual of dressing up rookies as Wonder Woman, Hooters Girls and Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders is now banned. Major League Baseball created an Anti-Hazing and Anti-Bullying Policy that covers the practice. As part of the sport's new labor deal, set to be ratified by both sides on Tuesday, the players' union agreed not to contest it. The policy, obtained by The Associated Press, prohibits "requiring, coercing or encouraging" players from "dressing up as women or wearing costumes that may be offensive to individuals based on their race, sex, nationality, age, sexual orientation, gender identify or...

The Marines have launched an internal investigation into staff at a boot camp in Parris Island, S.C., after Muslim recruit Raheel Siddiqui died in an apparent suicide 11 days after arriving. Fifteen drill instructors are now under investigation, as scrutiny increases of military practices that many believe cross the line from teasing, camaraderie, and toughening-up into danger. The Parris Island drill instructors face allegations of hazing, assault, and physical abuse, the Marines announced Thursday. The probe into Mr. Siddiqui's death has sparked a wider investigation into wrongdoing in his training unit, known as the "Thumping Third Battalion," as The Wall...

New Berlin —In the wake of the Oct. 22 attack on a Bichon poodle in which a coyote carried the dog off but later dropped it, New Berlin police say they have information about what to do in coyote encounters. In the Oct. 22 incident, the dog was near a patio when it was snatched up and the dog owner was actually on the patio. He and his teenage son gave chase making noise and finally the coyote dropped the dog who needed stitches to close its wounds. The attack was the only one that police Capt. Michael Glider said...

A grand jury has recommended charges against three dozen members of a New York City college fraternity in connection with the death of a freshman who was killed during a "brutal" hazing ritual, police said on Monday. Five of the young men face third-degree murder charges. Police and prosecutors are expected to announce details at a Tuesday morning press conference. The victim, Michael Deng, went on a weekend retreat to Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains with the Baruch College chapter of Pi Delta Psi in December 2013 and never came home. He and other pledges were were blindfolded and ordered to carry...

Thirty-seven fraternity brothers have been charged in connection with the 2013 hazing death of a New York City college student, according to police. [Snip] Five of the students and Pi Delta Psi fraternity are charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter, and aggravated assault, among others charges, said Pocono Mountain Regional Police. The 32 others in the group are facing charges ranging from aggravated assault to criminal conspiracy.

Generally left-leaning ice-cream company Ben and Jerry’s has refused to rename its “Hazed and Confused” hazelnut ice-cream flavor despite cries from activists that it’s insensitive to hazing victims. “It didn’t make sense for us to change the name,” Ben and Jerry’s spokesman Sean Greenwood told Bloomberg. “We named it after a pop-culture reference.” Greenwood said the company did not see anything about the flavor name that “even inferred” [sic] hazing. But that’s not how Lianna and Brian Kowiak of Tampa feel, who say they were “shocked” and “dismayed” to see an ice-cream flavor with that name. “The company completely...

... The stomach-churning details emerging from the investigation into the football program at Sayreville War Memorial High in Parlin, N.J., nearly are matched by the nauseating reaction from parents appalled by the wise decision to cancel the school's football season... But while the Sayreville scandal is the one we're hearing about today, it sadly is only the latest in a seemingly ceaseless line of cases across the nation. "I believe hazing is getting worse and it is becoming more violent and more sexualized," said Susan Lipkins, a psychologist in New York and the author of "Preventing Hazing: How Parents, Teachers...