A school divided Students split over Central board's decision to cancel football season
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Instead, the football field stood empty and silent.
Seniors were inside the Mepham auditorium, listening to administrators tick off ways the Central High School District could help them get through what, in just over a week's time, had become a national scandal and a tragedy that has left a tattered Bellmore-Merrick community in stunned disbelief.
Within the past three weeks, allegations that three older Mepham players sodomized three junior-varsity team members with a broomstick, pine cones and golf balls during a summer football camp have come to light.
In a bold and rare move, the Bellmore-Merrick Board of Education voted unanimously last Wednesday night to cancel Mepham's football season, after deliberating over the matter for 4 1/2 hours in a closed-door session. The district also decided to suspend the three as yet unidentified alleged assailants -- ages 15, 16 and 17.
Dr. Thomas Caramore, the district's superintendent, said many of the 60 players who attended the week-long football camp in Preston Park, Pa., were believed to have known of the attacks but said nothing about them, a violation of the district's conduct code. That left the Central district with no choice but to end Mepham's football season, officials said.
Pennsylvania state troopers continue to investigate the case, but as of press time, no arrests had been made. Pennsylvania authorities said that, by state law, they could not release the alleged assailants' names because they are all minors. Authorities were, however, considering charging them as adults.
Several media outlets have reported that the attacks were part of a football hazing ritual, but Caramore said in a published report that he wasn't sure. The alleged attacks appear to him to be an outright "brutal crime," he said.
A sophomore football player, who spoke with the Herald on the condition of anonymity, admitted that the majority of Mepham players at the camp knew of the alleged attacks. They told no one because "we were just trying to defend our friends [the alleged assailants]. We didn't want them to get in trouble, but people found out."
Since word of the alleged attacks broke on Wednesday, Sept. 10, the case has received attention in newspapers and on TV from coast to coast.
Central district officials learned about the attacks from the victims' parents. One victim continued to bleed for several days after camp ended and required surgery, according to a published report, which a Central district official confirmed.
On Sept. 18, after officials announced in school that Mepham's season was over before it had begun, dozens of angry football players, cheerleaders and other students marched out of school and onto the gridiron, engaging in an informal pickup game, accompanied by a short-lived protest. Newspaper and television media swarmed around the school, filming the walkout.
Indeed, this case has emotions running at a boiling point at Mepham High, which, on Friday, students, said was in a state "of anarchy," divided over whether the football season should have been canceled.
Speaking anonymously, one student said, "Everything [the alleged assailants] did has altered the school."
Said another pupil, "Supposedly one [Mepham student] got beat up and pushed through a glass door for agreeing with the cancellation of the football season on the news. These players [the alleged assailants] have made kids not want to come to our school. They have ruined the school's reputation."
On Friday, three Mepham students spoke about the schoolmate who was reportedly shoved through a glass door, but Kate Collins, the Central district's spokeswoman, said she had heard nothing about the incident.
Two Bellmore-Merrick officials, who did not wish to be quoted, noted that the vast majority of Mepham's roughly 1,200 students are behaving with dignity during this trying time. Many students are heartbroken over the attacks and are wearing green ribbons to show support for the victims.
Matthew Roth, a junior, said "some" students are "upset that the football season was canceled, but they're not upset that their teammates were brutally assaulted. To that point, it's sickening." Roth said he would like to see the school hold a candlelight vigil as a display of solidarity with the victims.
Another student, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "I feel terrible for the victims. Anyone protesting against the cancellation of the season is as crazy as the people who did [the attacks]."
Lance Leighton graduated from Mepham this past June. He played football for the Pirates in 2002, and said this summer was only the third year that Mepham had taken its gridmen to sleep-away camp. Leighton believes the current scandal is wrecking his alma mater's reputation for academic excellence, noting that this past year, Newsweek ranked Mepham among the nation's 130 best high schools. "Bellmore-Merrick is one of the top districts in the country," he said, "and the way the school district is being portrayed is not good."
So as not to punish all students, Central district officials are reported to be planning at least some "spirit-building" activities to make up for Mepham's lost football season.
The gridiron, however, will remain quiet this season -- for the most part, at least. Last Friday, as the day ended shortly after 2 p.m., students streamed out of the school. A couple of older students sped from the parking lot in cars with signs like "Mepham #1 Pirates" and "Let's Go Pirates" emblazoned on their windows. On the field, a small group of students, who appeared to be football players by their size and skill, tossed a pigskin around in the bright sunlight, laughing. When asked whether they were members of the Pirates football team, their answer came in unison: "No!"
Hector Flores contributed to this story.
What school officials knew
According to The New York Times, parents told Mepham High School principal John Didden that one of the football players who allegedly sodomized three junior-varsity squad members during football camp had threatened teammates before the squad left for the camp.
The day after the Times' story was published, Newsday picked it up and placed it, along with Didden's yearbook photograph, on the paper's front page.
According to the Times, the parents said one of the older players who is suspected in the sodomy case allegedly told their son, "Don't even think of sleeping at football camp and don't dare tell." The parents said they reported the threat to Didden on Aug. 19, four days before camp began. The parents wanted the threatening student to be barred from the trip, but Didden said the older boy would attend. The principal did, however, warn him about harassing other players.
Didden and varsity football coach Kevin McElroy reportedly met with the alleged assailant before camp. Dr. Thomas Caramore, the Bellmore-Merrick superintendent, said in Newsday, "Clear expectations of behavior were defined, and the student assured the principal that he would comply. No one, not the principal, the coach or any reasonable person, could have anticipated alleged criminal behavior on the part of the student."
Freshman Friday freaks out 9th-graders
High-school freshmen might not hear much about Freshman Friday during orientation with school officials, but it's the sort of thing that most of them are well aware of before entering high school.
Freshman Friday sounds harmless enough. It could even be a pleasant occasion, a picnic, perhaps. The day, however, is anything but for ninth-graders.
Freshman Friday is always the first Friday of the new school year. It's the day that upper-grade students pick on incoming students as a form of initiation, or hazing, in their new school. The bigger kids slap books out of freshmen's hands, punch them in the arm, stuff them in lockers. Sometimes they tie them up to flagpoles or duct-tape them to walls.
It all sounds like high-school folklore, but a group of Mepham High School freshmen interviewed last week said Freshmen Friday is very real.
Speaking of how freshmen are hazed, David Brunton, a current ninth-grader, said, "Mostly, everyone who is popular gets the worst of it." He also noted that girls are rarely picked on.
One eighth-grade teacher, who did not wish to be identified, said the prospect of Freshmen Friday freaks her students out long before they enter high school. And when they get there, they're so scared of the day that many ninth-graders skip school altogether.
Seniors were inside the Mepham auditorium, listening to administrators tick off ways the Central High School District could help them get through what, in just over a week's time, had become a national scandal and a tragedy that has left a tattered Bellmore-Merrick community in stunned disbelief.
Within the past three weeks, allegations that three older Mepham players sodomized three junior-varsity team members with a broomstick, pine cones and golf balls during a summer football camp have come to light.
In a bold and rare move, the Bellmore-Merrick Board of Education voted unanimously last Wednesday night to cancel Mepham's football season, after deliberating over the matter for 4 1/2 hours in a closed-door session. The district also decided to suspend the three as yet unidentified alleged assailants -- ages 15, 16 and 17.
Dr. Thomas Caramore, the district's superintendent, said many of the 60 players who attended the week-long football camp in Preston Park, Pa., were believed to have known of the attacks but said nothing about them, a violation of the district's conduct code. That left the Central district with no choice but to end Mepham's football season, officials said.
Pennsylvania state troopers continue to investigate the case, but as of press time, no arrests had been made. Pennsylvania authorities said that, by state law, they could not release the alleged assailants' names because they are all minors. Authorities were, however, considering charging them as adults.
Several media outlets have reported that the attacks were part of a football hazing ritual, but Caramore said in a published report that he wasn't sure. The alleged attacks appear to him to be an outright "brutal crime," he said.
A sophomore football player, who spoke with the Herald on the condition of anonymity, admitted that the majority of Mepham players at the camp knew of the alleged attacks. They told no one because "we were just trying to defend our friends [the alleged assailants]. We didn't want them to get in trouble, but people found out."
Since word of the alleged attacks broke on Wednesday, Sept. 10, the case has received attention in newspapers and on TV from coast to coast.
Central district officials learned about the attacks from the victims' parents. One victim continued to bleed for several days after camp ended and required surgery, according to a published report, which a Central district official confirmed.
On Sept. 18, after officials announced in school that Mepham's season was over before it had begun, dozens of angry football players, cheerleaders and other students marched out of school and onto the gridiron, engaging in an informal pickup game, accompanied by a short-lived protest. Newspaper and television media swarmed around the school, filming the walkout.
Indeed, this case has emotions running at a boiling point at Mepham High, which, on Friday, students, said was in a state "of anarchy," divided over whether the football season should have been canceled.
Speaking anonymously, one student said, "Everything [the alleged assailants] did has altered the school."
Said another pupil, "Supposedly one [Mepham student] got beat up and pushed through a glass door for agreeing with the cancellation of the football season on the news. These players [the alleged assailants] have made kids not want to come to our school. They have ruined the school's reputation."
On Friday, three Mepham students spoke about the schoolmate who was reportedly shoved through a glass door, but Kate Collins, the Central district's spokeswoman, said she had heard nothing about the incident.
Two Bellmore-Merrick officials, who did not wish to be quoted, noted that the vast majority of Mepham's roughly 1,200 students are behaving with dignity during this trying time. Many students are heartbroken over the attacks and are wearing green ribbons to show support for the victims.
Matthew Roth, a junior, said "some" students are "upset that the football season was canceled, but they're not upset that their teammates were brutally assaulted. To that point, it's sickening." Roth said he would like to see the school hold a candlelight vigil as a display of solidarity with the victims.
Another student, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "I feel terrible for the victims. Anyone protesting against the cancellation of the season is as crazy as the people who did [the attacks]."
Lance Leighton graduated from Mepham this past June. He played football for the Pirates in 2002, and said this summer was only the third year that Mepham had taken its gridmen to sleep-away camp. Leighton believes the current scandal is wrecking his alma mater's reputation for academic excellence, noting that this past year, Newsweek ranked Mepham among the nation's 130 best high schools. "Bellmore-Merrick is one of the top districts in the country," he said, "and the way the school district is being portrayed is not good."
So as not to punish all students, Central district officials are reported to be planning at least some "spirit-building" activities to make up for Mepham's lost football season.
The gridiron, however, will remain quiet this season -- for the most part, at least. Last Friday, as the day ended shortly after 2 p.m., students streamed out of the school. A couple of older students sped from the parking lot in cars with signs like "Mepham #1 Pirates" and "Let's Go Pirates" emblazoned on their windows. On the field, a small group of students, who appeared to be football players by their size and skill, tossed a pigskin around in the bright sunlight, laughing. When asked whether they were members of the Pirates football team, their answer came in unison: "No!"
Hector Flores contributed to this story.
What school officials knew
According to The New York Times, parents told Mepham High School principal John Didden that one of the football players who allegedly sodomized three junior-varsity squad members during football camp had threatened teammates before the squad left for the camp.
The day after the Times' story was published, Newsday picked it up and placed it, along with Didden's yearbook photograph, on the paper's front page.
According to the Times, the parents said one of the older players who is suspected in the sodomy case allegedly told their son, "Don't even think of sleeping at football camp and don't dare tell." The parents said they reported the threat to Didden on Aug. 19, four days before camp began. The parents wanted the threatening student to be barred from the trip, but Didden said the older boy would attend. The principal did, however, warn him about harassing other players.
Didden and varsity football coach Kevin McElroy reportedly met with the alleged assailant before camp. Dr. Thomas Caramore, the Bellmore-Merrick superintendent, said in Newsday, "Clear expectations of behavior were defined, and the student assured the principal that he would comply. No one, not the principal, the coach or any reasonable person, could have anticipated alleged criminal behavior on the part of the student."
Freshman Friday freaks out 9th-graders
High-school freshmen might not hear much about Freshman Friday during orientation with school officials, but it's the sort of thing that most of them are well aware of before entering high school.
Freshman Friday sounds harmless enough. It could even be a pleasant occasion, a picnic, perhaps. The day, however, is anything but for ninth-graders.
Freshman Friday is always the first Friday of the new school year. It's the day that upper-grade students pick on incoming students as a form of initiation, or hazing, in their new school. The bigger kids slap books out of freshmen's hands, punch them in the arm, stuff them in lockers. Sometimes they tie them up to flagpoles or duct-tape them to walls.
It all sounds like high-school folklore, but a group of Mepham High School freshmen interviewed last week said Freshmen Friday is very real.
Speaking of how freshmen are hazed, David Brunton, a current ninth-grader, said, "Mostly, everyone who is popular gets the worst of it." He also noted that girls are rarely picked on.
One eighth-grade teacher, who did not wish to be identified, said the prospect of Freshmen Friday freaks her students out long before they enter high school. And when they get there, they're so scared of the day that many ninth-graders skip school altogether.
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