(NAME-MCE) Schools Official in New Jersey Orders Plan to Combat Hazing

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Schools Official in New Jersey Orders Plan to Combat Hazing

By TINA KELLEY    September 21, 2009    New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/nyregion/22hazing.html?_r=1

MILLBURN, N.J. — The president of the Millburn Board of Education said
on Monday night that district administrators would have to undergo
sensitivity training and ordered them to come up with a plan within
the next two months to address the longstanding tradition of hazing at
Millburn High School.

The action came at a board meeting that drew about 50 parents and
lasted more than three hours.

“This is not acceptable behavior; it will not be tolerated,” the board
president, Noreen Brunini, said of the most recent hazing, which
included the distribution of an annual “slut list” of incoming
freshman girls. “This is the end of this.”

The hazing took place on Sept. 8, the first day of school, and a
handful of parents reported that their freshman daughters were pushed
into lockers, that senior girls blew whistles in their faces and that
girls were made to wear camouflage shirts.

School administrators have said that they had been aware of the list
for the past 10 or 15 years, and that while they had been able to
suspend five or six senior girls in some years, they were not able to
find any of those responsible this year.

“We have three or four names that might be accurate, but I doubt
anybody knows all the names,” the principal, William Miron, said. “We
will do what we can to find some proof, but we will not discipline
students without proof.”

The 2008 cover of New Jersey Magazine that proclaimed Millburn the
best high school in the state hung on a plaque near where Mr. Miron
spoke.

“Going into September, I felt we had taken probably all reasonable
steps we could’ve to address bullying,” he said. “Obviously we need to
address more.”

Debra Fox, a board member, told those present that she had been hazed
as a freshman. “Many of my high school memories have faded, but not
that one,” she said.

Several of those in the room applauded when Ms. Fox gave her solution
to the problem: “If it were my decision alone, I would punish the
entire female population of the senior class. If you punish them all,
you’ll get the names you need, because no one is going to take the rap
for someone else.”

Jean Pasternak, a parent, was applauded when she said parents must
also take responsibility when their children acted like bullies.

While most of the parents spoke in measured tones, Bill Kelly, a
father of seven, took the board to task. “The fact of the matter is,
you guys have failed yourselves as board members, you’ve failed us as
taxpayers and you’ve failed our kids by not protecting them, which is
part of your job,” he said.

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A Rite of Hazing, Now Out in the Open

By TINA KELLEY

Published: September 18, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/nyregion/19hazing.html?ref=nyregion

MILLBURN, N.J. — The principal of Millburn High, New Jersey’s
top-ranked high school, says it has gone on for a decade: annual
hazing by senior girls who create a “slut list” of incoming freshmen
for the first day of school. A dozen or more names are written on a
piece of notebook paper, with crass descriptions, and copies are
passed around — hundreds this year, some say.

Parents have complained to officials at Millburn High, a top-ranked
school, about hazing of freshman girls.

“We’ve had girls — which is one of the bad things — obsessed that
their names are on it, and girls who were upset that they didn’t make
the list,” said the principal, William Miron. “It’s basically vulgar.”

And that is not the only type of hazing that goes on, some girls say.
Seniors blow whistles in some girls’ faces and jostle or push them
into lockers, leaving them afraid to come to school the next day.

These tales were out in the open on Friday after half a dozen parents
complained to public school officials and a discussion of hazing on a
private e-mail group for mothers made its way around this Essex County
township.

Dr. Miron said this year’s list was generated at an August sleepover
party of seniors involved in athletics. Like most, it took aim at
pretty and popular incoming ninth graders.

In past years, students found responsible for hazing have been
suspended, and up to six senior girls in one year have been held out
of school for three to five days, Dr. Miron said. This year, which
parents in the e-mail group considered worse than usual, none have
been reprimanded.

“We spoke to at least a dozen freshmen and half a dozen seniors, and
not one person wanted to really give any names,” Dr. Miron said.
“There’s very little we can really do if a student doesn’t come to us
and say, ‘This is what happened.’ ” He added that none of the 150
faculty members reported seeing any hazing incidents this year at the
1,400-student school.

Most of the girls interviewed after school on Friday said they had
never been hazed. Some had not even heard of the problem, and some of
those who had said it was all in good fun. One girl talking with
friends on Millburn Avenue several blocks from the high school said
freshmen were unlikely to name names.

“Then you’ll be the loser,” said the girl, 14, who said she had not
been hazed and whose father, contacted later, requested that she not
be named. “And it gets much worse.”

Across the street, several freshman girls in sports uniforms said that
senior girls on the soccer team had blown whistles in their faces, and
that some of their teammates had been pushed into lockers.

“I was scared, actually,” one said. “I didn’t want to go to school the
next day. It’s done every year, but it’s still pretty mean.” (After
the interview, she asked that her name not be used and that the team
she was with not be identified.)

Mikayla Nissan, a 16-year-old junior who was walking with friends on
Millburn Avenue toward the center of downtown, said hazing added
needless anxiety about the first year in a new school.

“It makes them nervous to come to the school,” she said of the
freshmen. “They shouldn’t be nervous. High school is all about
teachers helping you figure out what you want to do with your future.
It should be a more comforting environment. You shouldn’t have to feel
new and uncomfortable.”

There have been no reports of injuries requiring medical attention,
but experts say bullying can inflict long-lasting and severe damage.

Lisa Ryan, whose daughter is a former member of the soccer team, said
she had heard reports of egregious hazing in the past.

“I was horrified,” Ms. Ryan said in a downtown parking lot. “They did
get reprimanded.”

One commenter on the Local, the New York Times blog covering Millburn,
Maplewood and South Orange, N.J., said of school administrators: “They
have an obligation to protect these new and more vulnerable students.
The administration can’t continue to lay the responsibility for their
inaction at the feet of a bunch of terrorized kids.” (The commenter,
contacted by e-mail, asked to remain anonymous, saying, “My kid would
never, ever feel safe in the school again.”)

Asked if students caught with the list could be suspended, Dr. Miron
said: “A senior with a slut list we would probably suspend. But it
sounds so easy talking about it. When a kid says, ‘I just found it on
the floor and picked it up,’ it becomes a little bit messier.”

The school’s superintendent, Richard Brodow, sent an e-mail message to
parents on Friday saying hazing was against school policy “and just
plain wrong.”

“We are encouraging any student who either has been a victim of or a
witness to such behavior to please come forward,” Dr. Brodow wrote.
“Those who are found to have engaged in this type of behavior will be
disciplined. Parents, along with school personnel, must make it
perfectly clear that hazing is wrong and we as a school community are
better than that.”

The school, which had a note on its bulletin board congratulating its
12 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists, was ranked first in the
state in a recent survey by New Jersey Monthly magazine. But it has
found itself in the news for less savory reasons a few times this
year.

In January, a fight in the school parking lot involving a minister and
his sons and a baseball bat resulted in numerous criminal charges but
no convictions. In March, school officials called in drug-sniffing
dogs for a search that produced no illegal substances.

As she was pulling away from the campus on Friday in a late-model
S.U.V., one senior said she did not think the hazing this year was any
worse than in past years, but “parents are taking it to an extreme
level.”

“Hazing has always been a tradition at Millburn,” she said. “It’s
never really a personal attack. As a freshman you get pushed on the
first day, and it reinforces the fact that they’re seniors.”

She got pushed three years ago. Did she do any pushing this year? “Not
more than anyone else,” she said.