A former Northwestern University football player on Tuesday accused former coach Pat Fitzgerald and the school of tolerating hazing — including alleged rituals involving a naked human “carwash” and a punishment called “Shrek claps” — in the first lawsuit filed since the scandal rocked the Big Ten university.
Fitzgerald and school leaders “endangered, enabled, and concealed the exploitation” of student-athletes under the coach’s supervision and took no action against “credible reports of hazing, dating back to 2014,” plaintiff’s attorney Patrick Salvi wrote in the lawsuit.
The John Doe plaintiff’s civil action was filed in Cook County Court in Chicago. The plaintiff was a student at the prestigious school just outside of Chicago from 2018 to 2022
Northwestern’s football program “has had longstanding issues involving hazing and bullying that takes on a sexual and/or racist tone,” the civil action said.
The lawsuit went into troubling detail, outlining rituals that were allegedly carried out within the program, but on campus and at the team’s pre-season training camp in Kenosha.
Many of the acts included forced nudity, touching and “dry humping,” the lawsuit said, as Fitzgerald allegedly “took part in the harassment, hazing, bullying, assault and/or abuse of athletes.”
The football coach was fired last week amid allegations that he failed “to know and prevent significant hazing in the football program,” said university president Michael Schill, who was named as a defendant in Tuesday’s lawsuit.
Among the alleged, institutional acts the lawsuit says were carried out within the Northwestern football program:
- “Running” — A punishment that “consisted of 8-10 upperclassmen, dressed in masks, holding down a player, and dry humping the player in a dark locker room.”
- “Shrek claps” — When “upperclassmen on the team would run around” a player who made a mistake in practice “while clapping their hands above the head” of that teammate.
- “Carwash” — A “tradition” that consisted of “players lining up, standing naked, and spinning around the entrance of the showers so that all freshman players were forced to rub up against the line of men to get to their showers.”
- “Naked center-quarterback exchange” — Another “tradition” that called for freshmen to execute a routine center-QB snap while both are naked.
- “Gatorade shake challenge” — When freshmen are forced to drink as many Gatorade shakes as possible in 10 minutes, and if they refused they would be subjected to “running.”
Northwestern spokesperson Jon Yates declined comment on the lawsuit Tuesday, but insisted that the school takes student welfare seriously.
“As policy, we do not comment on the specifics of pending litigation,” Yates said in a statement to NBC News.
“Protecting the welfare of every student at Northwestern University is central to our mission and something we approach with the utmost seriousness.”
The school first learned about hazing complaints within the football program this past November and “acted immediately with an independent investigator to conduct a comprehensive review of the allegations,” according to the school representative.
“We have taken a number of subsequent actions to eliminate hazing from our football program, and we will introduce additional actions in the coming weeks,” Yates said. “The administration is committed to working alongside the Board of Trustees, the faculty, and the student body to ensure that hazing has no place at Northwestern.”
A representative for former coach Fitzgerald could not be immediately reached for comment on Tuesday.
Days after Fitzgerald was let go, Northwestern fired baseball coach Jim Foster.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
