About ten years ago, a battle-weary veteran female Dade County (Florida) state’s attorney offered a remarkable quote when questioned by a reporter about a particular sex crime she had successfully prosecuted: “Half of my cases would disappear if kids were taught that you don’t suck a penis for a cookie.”

Needless to say, that prosecutor wasn’t one to mince words.

But she raises a point that should not be lost on the Maine Township High School District 207 administration as it seeks to investigate and address the kind of “hazing” that allegedly went on at Maine West High School: At what point does a “boy” or a “girl” become charged with the responsibility of understanding that having one’s orifice(s) penetrated with anything, whether by a classmate, teammate, coach or teacher, is NEVER an appropriate or acceptable element of a school activity?

Had that lesson been adequately taught and learned, we suspect we wouldn’t be writing this post.  And a number of students would not be scarred by the reprehensible conduct of fellow students.  And District 207 wouldn’t still be running the meter on attorneys and consultants to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars investigating that conduct and the alleged blind eyes of the coaches cast toward that conduct.

According to newspaper accounts of the situation, the five month-plus investigation into the alleged hazing of players on the Maine West boys’ soccer team already has cost the District approximately $115,000 of attorneys’ fees paid to a prominent Chicago law firm.  The District also has paid an undisclosed amount to California-based consultant Community Matters “to survey the climate of bullying, hazing and harassment in the district” and produce a 24-page report, which was delivered to school administrators in May and can be accessed through the D-207 website under Community Matters Presents Report.

And the District and/or its insurer is also burning cash in defending against a civil lawsuit for money damages filed by the victims of this hazing.

All because it appears that male soccer players at Maine West somehow thought that conduct described in news accounts as “sodomy” – which covers more than one kind of sex act – was okay.  Or because those players didn’t necessarily think it was okay, but they didn’t have sufficient courage and resolve to resist the peer pressure that reportedly endorsed it and encouraged it.  And because some coaches allegedly knew about this conduct but did nothing about it, a la the Penn State football program.

We find it difficult to fathom how this sort of “hazing” could occur to the extent and for the length of time it is alleged to have occurred.  We find it equally difficult to fathom how sheltered even a 14 year-old boy would have to be so as not to understand and appreciate the wrongness of this kind of conduct – from the perspective of either the perpetrator or the victim.

We’re not suggesting that the accused coaches don’t bear the principal responsibility for this situation if it is determined that they knew about this conduct and did nothing to stop it.  That would be deserving of criminal prosecution as well as termination; and, to borrow a page from the Mennonite playbook, shunning.

But the finding by the law firm investigating these incidents that staff at the District’s three high schools reported having less time to be in places where hazing and bullying incidents are likely to occur highlights the age-old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Just as there are not nearly enough attorneys and investigators in the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s office to investigate and prosecute all the incidents of political corruption in Chicago and Crook County, it is unlikely that D-207 will ever have enough staff to provide complete and seamless policing and prevention of all hazing and bullying that might occur.  It is, therefore, incumbent upon the students themselves to buy into and self-police a “zero tolerance” attitude toward such behavior.

That means the “kids” themselves are going to have to accept some responsibility for refraining from, resisting and reporting these kinds of abuse.  And their parents are going to have to accept some responsibility for impressing on their “kids” that this conduct is criminal and intolerable.  Aberrant behavior of any and every type must be rejected clearly, convincingly and consistently by our community as a whole.

The message must be unequivocal that the kind of behavior engaged in by those Maine West athletes is nothing remotely close to “boys being boys” or acceptable team-building activity.

With or without a cookie.

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