A former Northwestern University football player has filed a lawsuit against the school, claiming that student athletes were negligently subjected to bizarre and intensely homoerotic hazing rituals.According to USA Today, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of former Wildcats quarterback and wide receiver Lloyd Yates.The complaint, lodged in Cook County Circuit Court, provides new information on alleged hazing incidents, including claims that members of the Wildcats’ coaching staff were both aware of the acts and, in some cases, subjected to hazing themselves.USA Today reports that the lawsuit relays several instances wherein assistant coaches were purportedly “ran” by players “on more than one occasion.”Yates’s attorneys define “running” as a ritual in which a group of student athletes forcibly restrain a non-consenting person before “[rubbing] their genital areas against the [victim’s] genitals, face, and buttocks while rocking back and forth.”“During a training session during the Fall of 2015 or Spring of 2016, a strength and conditioning coach was ‘ran’ by members of the football team, on the field, in front of the entire team and coaching staff,” the lawsuit claims.The complaint, adds USA Today, does not provide any additional details about this practice, nor does it identify the coaching staff members who were allegedly hazed.“We were all victims, and I want to make that clear,” Yates said in a press conference. “No matter what role—if you were being hazed, or on the perpetrating side—it was just a culture that you had to find a position in.”

Football; image courtesy of
Dave Adamson via Unsplash, www.unsplash.com

While Northwestern University is facing several lawsuits relating to the ongoing hazing scandal, Yates’s claim is the first to feature a publicly-identified, non-anonymous plaintiff.Yates says that, when he was “ran,” he was assaulted by a group of between 12 and 15 upperclassmen in the common area of an off-site dormitory-type building.Some of these upperclassmen allegedly formed a small group called the “Shrek Squad,” members of which would gather before hazing events and don unusual, homoerotic attire."They would dress with either no shirts or shirts with holes cut out over their nipples. Some would wear thongs," the lawsuit claims. "The 'Shrek Squad' would flicker the lights, and chant 'Shrek is love, Shrek is life' while screaming, clapping and yelling."Afterward, players would be hazed and, in some cases, “run.”The so-called “Shrek Squad” would target new players, especially those seen as being overly confident—or, in some cases, woefully incompetent.Before initiating acts of hazing, the “Shrek Squad” would often play a siren noise from “The Purge” movies.“Frequently, after a night of hazing […] the coaching staff would comment and scold players that they had been too loud the night before,” the lawsuit says.Yates also claims that he saw other teammates being pressured to participate in other ritualized activities, including “naked events,” or exercises and drills performed in the nude.“It’s like a brainwashing culture, this was just so normalized,” he said. “And it’s just wild to think back, and look at the complaint, to look at what we put up with and what we had to go through, and just how it was so normal.”

Sources

New lawsuit provides most detailed account to date of alleged Northwestern football hazingTwo more hazing lawsuits filed by former Northwestern athletes