AGAWAM – The on-going investigation of a hazing incident involving several members of the Agawam High School football team marks an inauspicious silver anniversary for the state’s anti-hazing law passed after the death of a Springfield college student.
A bill outlawing all types of hazing at all Massachusetts colleges and high schools was signed into law 25 years ago on Nov. 26, 1985, by then-Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.
The 25-year-old law resurfaced last week. Four players on the Agawam High School football team were suspended for 10 days and four coaches were put on paid leave following an undisclosed hazing incident in the locker room following a Nov. 17 practice. No physical or mental injuries resulted, the school superintendent said.
The state’s anti-hazing law was itself was inspired by another much-publicized 1984 Western Massachusetts hazing incident that left a 19-year-old American International College freshman dead.
The student, James “Jay” Lenaghan, of Watertown, died Feb. 22 after an initiation ceremony for Zeta Chi, at an off-campus fraternity house that was located at 112 Shattuck St.
The ceremony, called a spaghetti ritual, involved having pledges eat spaghetti, wash it down with wine, and then to induce vomiting in order to begin eating and drinking all over again.
An autopsy revealed the cause of death was acute alcohol poisoning. He was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.45, more than four times the legal definition for intoxication, which at that time was .10 and has since been lowered to .08.
During a court inquest, it was revealed that Lenaghan during the initiation had been made to consume about a gallon on wine in 45 minutes.
His death resulted in an inquest by Hampden District Attorney Matthew J. Ryan but a grand jury declined to issue an indict the fraternity nor any of its officers in connection with Lenaghan’s death.
Shortly afterward, the college dismantled its fraternity system and closed its off-campus frat houses. Fraternities and sororities have re-emerged at AIC in recent years but only as service-based organizations that have no physical off-campus address.
Blaine Stevens, AIC’s long-time vice president for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, recalled those events as a very hard time and difficult for the college.
“It was a different time, a different era,” he said during a recent interview.
The fraternities were all off-campus, privately owned properties and no more a part of the college than the residences of any of the commuting students, he said.
That didn’t stop AIC from receiving the brunt of the blow-back whenever one of the frats did caused trouble, he said.
While the college was aware that hazing activities were likely taking place there, he said there was little the college could do about it.
“A lot of that stuff was hard to document and to substantiate,” he said.
Then as now, he said “it was not considered cool to be a rat.”
He said the Lenaghan death was tragic and avoidable.
At the time, he was a second-semester freshman, and his grades were quite low – 0.8 on a 4.0 scale – and both should have automatically barred him from being eligible to join a frat, he said.
Lenaghan’s parents, James E. and Mary C. Lenaghan, of Watertown, later sued AIC and the Zeta Chi fraternity for $40 million. The case was settled in 1986 for an undisclosed sum.
Mary Lenaghan also devoted her life to raising awareness about hazing across the country. She was considered instrumental anti-hazing legislation approved in Massachusetts 25 years ago and stood next to Dukakis when he signed it into law.
Family members could not be reached for comment this week.
The bill sponsor, James E. Collins, of Amherst, then a state representative and now a judge with the Massachusetts Juvenile Court, said he remembered a general “ground swell of concern” about hazing particularly at college campuses.
“There was a recognition of the abusive nature of some of the hazing practices,” he said.
He recalled there was growing concern at the time that hazing “could well put young people in danger of being hurt.”
He declined to comment about the Agawam incident because as a juvenile court judge, he may be called upon to preside over a trial if charges are eventually brought in Agawam.
Author Hank Nuwer, of Indiana, who has researched hazing since 1975 said this week that despite anti-hazing laws such as the one in Massachusetts, the practice persists at collegiate and high school levels.
What happened in Agawam is similar to other recent hazing incidents at high schools in New Mexico, Arizona and California, he said.
“Massachusetts has had quite a few cases of hazing,” he said. “As much as anyone.”
In recent years, hazing practices have become more violent or disturbing and in some cases sexual, he said.
Nuwer, who has published four books on the subject and working on his fifth, said that he is aware of three deaths nationwide this year related to hazing at the high school level. Two of them were suicides, he said.
For each death, there are likely hundreds if not thousands of other incidents that are not reported, he said.
It is difficult to determine the number of cases involving athletic teams, he said, because young men “are the least likely to report it because of embarrassment and fear of retribution.”
Stevens said that when he heard about the Agawam incident, he thought about Phoebe Prince who committed suicide following continued bullying by students at South Hadley High School, according to prosecutors who have pressed criminal charges in the matter.
“Types of bullying and hazing are all kind of cousins of each other,” he said. “They are ways to get kids to conform.”
Whenever he hears of a hazing incident, such as the one in Agawam high school, he said he wonders what it will take to get students, parents and coaches to realize just how serious it is.