Football season cancelled in NJ

There is no Friday night football game tonight in Sayreville, New Jersey. The school board cancelled the season earlier this month after systemic hazing of first-year football players came to light.

More details are sure to emerge as an investigation into the incidents, which took place in the team locker room, allegedly unbeknownst to coaches or any other school staff person. This is not a Title IX case yet (and it may never turn into one) but some parents have hired lawyers and because the hazing was sexual in nature, the incidents described surely fall under the category of sexual assault.

According to various reports, upperclass players would come into the locker room, turn off the lights, and grab a first-year player and then use a finger or some other object to anally penetrate the player (who was being held down). Sometimes the player was forced to suck on whatever had been put in him.

The outrage over the cancelled season among some members of the community, including students, is especially disappointing. One, it speaks to the idea that football is a right and not a privilege--even when you are a highly successful program (making the playoffs for the past 20 years). Two, it trivializes sexual assault in two ways: when it occurs amongst boys (something recently addressed by the federal government in its new sexual assault laws) and when it occurs under the guise of hazing--a ritual required for admission to a group. And finally, in regards to students, these are young people who may be heading off to college in a few years, where the issue of sexual assault is being taken (more) seriously. So in regards to the female student who said "things have been blown out of proportion.We know the players, and hazing, to them, they didn't mean it in that way. It was more like being friends"--well the idea that talking about and reporting and punishing sexual assault is blowing things out of proportion is a paradigm that is shifting. And non-consensual digital anal penetration is not something that happens between friends.