Lisbon High School needs accountability over hazing investigation

The most damning sentence in seven pages, filled with damning line after line, came in the penultimate paragraph of a report filed by Drummond Woodsum lawyers during a week-long investigation into molestation allegations at a Lisbon high school.

“This suggests that the problem is rooted in a program culture that shapes attitudes among players who want to appear tough when these events happen to them, rather than speaking up or putting an end to the harassment they witness or experience,” Tom Trenholm and Kelsey wrote Cromie.

Lisbon doesn’t have a soccer team and it doesn’t look like it has had one for a long time. It’s a gang of bandits pretending to be football players. What he has is institutionalized intimidation.

During the investigation, Drummond Woodsum interviewed students from Lisbon High School. The report shows that the athletes interviewed saw what happened as just fun, but at the same time wanted to keep it a secret.

Some Lisbon employees reported to Trenholm and Cromie that they overheard players telling their teammates not to cooperate with the investigation. Some players told investigators to keep their mouths shut about what happened.

This behavior suggests that the football team knew what was happening was wrong and did it anyway, either as a twisted nod to tradition or simply to conform. Whatever band culture existed in Lisbon has been perverted into this mess that cannot possibly be called a band. sense.

Teammates never treat each other with such extreme disrespect. A strong team culture comes from universal support, not rampant humiliation. Team members do not lock junior teammates behind a screen door and repeatedly poke them with a broom handle, Drummond Woodsum’s report alleged. Team members do not hit each other with belts, which is also alleged in the report.

Further action by the Lisbon School Committee and Superintendent Richard Green will determine whether Lisbon is serious about tackling this problem or whether it wants to create the illusion of action.

“Conversations about our next steps will continue, including the process of appealing any potential MPA sanctions, but our primary concern at this time is ensuring support for our students,” Green wrote in an email to the Press Herald on Tuesday morning.

Under Maine State Principals Association rules, high school varsity teams that fail to complete the season face a two-year ban from competition. Lisbon has abandoned its last four football matches season.

Schools whose sports teams were unable to complete the season can appeal to the MPA Interscholastic Management Committee to have the two-year ban lifted.

However, if at this stage you are wondering how to appeal a potential penalty, you have already failed to respond. You’re not thinking about how to make a real change and you’re not ready for difficult internal conversations. Wondering how we can make this go away? It’s an empty road forward. It’s a fresh coat of paint on a house with a rotten foundation.

The talks that need to take place in Lisbon will be painful. They should be honest and include an admission of guilt from all adults involved. By turning a blind eye to the institutionalized harassment that the report said likely occurred in previous seasons, they failed miserably. If coaches and teachers who have access to the locker room where many of the irregularities were allegedly taking place, but did not actually know it was happening, they are not paying enough attention to be trusted in their supervisory role. If they knew this was happening and attributed it to “boys being boys”, their supervisory role should be lost.

The seven students removed from the football team he should have been banned from continuing to play sports at the beginning of this month, period. Their high school sports careers were over. The expulsion of these seven should be considered and an investigation should be carried out to see if other Lisbon athletics teams, both boys and girls, behaved as appallingly as members of the football team. The report said some students described bullying that also occurred in other sports. If this happens, athletics should be shut down for the entire school year. Changing rooms should not be open unless under adult supervision.

Every school in the state should be paying attention to what’s happening in Lisbon, just as every school in the state should be paying attention to what happened in Braunschweig three years ago. There, the football season was shut down and coach Dan Cooper was fired following an investigation into the team’s preseason cheating. If you tell yourself that something like this can’t happen at your school, you are either naive or willfully ignorant. Each school’s anti-hazing and bullying policy must be reviewed with each student. Providing a student with a textbook full of rules is not enough.

This phenomenon is also reflected in the legal system. Neil McLean Jr., district attorney of Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties, received a report from the Lisbon police regarding a specific gambling incident which resulted in the filing of a criminal complaint.

The next move is up to Green and the Lisbon School Committee. Will they show you that they are serious about solving the problem, or do they just want it to go away?