Ex-Northwestern volleyball player becomes first female athlete to join hazing scandal lawsuits

The Northwestern University hazing scandal continues to develop, as the primary feminine athlete – an ex-volleyball participant – has sued the college after alleging she was retaliated in opposition to after coming ahead to report mistreatment. 

Northwestern is going through quite a few lawsuits stemming from hazing allegations that embody sexual abuse to gamers, which features a new lawsuit by former quarterback Lloyd Yates that got here on Monday. 

However the volleyball participant reveals that this scandal isn’t simply allegedly present in one program on campus. 

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Northwestern’s Shane Davis throughout the South Carolina Gamecocks sport on Sept. 1, 2017, at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, North Carolina. (Andy Mead/YCJ/Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Photographs)

“It isn’t simply soccer gamers,” Parker Stinar, one of many volleyball participant’s attorneys, mentioned Monday by way of The Related Press. 

In her lawsuit, the place she is recognized as Jane Doe, the volleyball participant claims she was bodily harmed “to the purpose of requiring medical consideration” throughout a hazing incident in 2021.

The state of affairs occurred after volleyball coach Shane Davis and an assistant coach mentioned she needed to obtain punishment for violating the team’s COVID-19 guidelines after contracting the virus. She claims that she did comply with the rules, however acquired a punishment anyway. 

AT LEAST 15 FORMER NORTHWESTERN ATHLETES TO FILE SUIT IN HAZING SCANDAL, ATTORNEY SAYS

She was pressured to run “suicides” within the gymnasium, and when she reached every line, needed to dive on the ground whereas her workforce, coaches and gamers alike, watched. 

Campus police and the Northwestern athletic division have been made conscious of the incident, in keeping with the lawsuit. The participant additionally mentioned she met with athletic director Derrick Gragg to debate the volleyball program’s tradition, although nothing was finished in response. 

Northwestern College spokesperson Jon Yates confirmed to Fox Information Digital that, in March 2021, the coed made the hazing allegation on the volleyball workforce. The teaching employees was later suspended following an investigation by the college. That discovered hazing did happen, main to 2 volleyball sport cancellations and anti-hazing coaching turning into necessary. 

Former Northwestern soccer participant Lloyd Yates speaks Wednesday, July 19, 2023, alongside different former gamers, from left, Warren Miles Lengthy, Tom Carnifax and Simba Quick in regards to the abuse and hazing they are saying occurred in this system. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune Information Service by way of Getty Photographs)

“Though this incident predated President [Michael] Schill’s and Athletic Director Gragg’s tenure on the College, every is taking it critically. Dr. Gragg met with the coed at her request final 12 months, and as President Schill wrote in a message to the Northwestern group, the College is working to make sure we have now in place applicable accountability for our athletic division,” Yates mentioned in an announcement given to Fox Information Digital. 

“This contains the engagement of a agency to judge the sufficiency of our accountability mechanism and to detect threats to the welfare of our student-athletes. President Schill has additionally dedicated that we are going to study the tradition of Northwestern Athletics and its relationship to the educational mission. These critiques shall be performed with suggestions and engagement of school, employees and college students, and the College will make the suggestions publicly out there.”

Yates’ case is the primary that comes ahead with a plaintiff’s title and has feedback from different named gamers in it as properly. Extra like this one is anticipated to return quickly, with civil rights legal professional Ben Crump calling this school sports activities’ “Me Too” second. 

“That is the primary in a collection of lawsuits,” Crump mentioned, including greater than 30 shall be filed within the coming weeks. 

“It’s an actual huge deal when these younger folks have the braveness to take a stand and refuse to be victims anymore, refuse to have their voices silenced,” he defined. 

FORMER NORTHWESTERN PLAYERS RETAIN PROMINENT CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY AMID HAZING SCANDAL

Crump was joined by a number of former Northwestern athletes throughout a press convention final week, the place he and co-counsel Steven M. Levin spoke with greater than 50 student-athletes, each female and male, who mentioned they’ve skilled hazing on the faculty. 

“It’s obvious to us that it’s a poisonous tradition that was rampant within the athletic division at Northwestern College,” Crump mentioned on the time. 

“And what they shared with us was clearly a sample and apply of a tradition that was predicated on bodily intimidation, harassment, discrimination, abuse, each mentally and sexually, and it was normalized.”

A volleyball on the courtroom previous to the Division I Mens Volleyball Championship between the UCLA Bruins and the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors at EagleBank Area on Might 6, 2023, in Fairfax, Virginia. (Scott Taetsch/NCAA Images by way of Getty Photographs)

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Northwestern head soccer coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired after 17 seasons with the Wildcats following an unbiased investigation that discovered him at fault over his “failure to know and forestall vital hazing within the soccer program,” per an open letter written by Schill on July 10. 

Fox Information’ Paulina Dedaj and The Related Press contributed to this report.