Accusations of hazing at Northwestern University are mounting, with a female volleyball player planning to file a lawsuit against the school on Monday, arguing the athletics program was rife with bullying, retaliation, and physical “punishments.”
The new complaint comes on the heels of other suits alleging abuse and discrimination within the university’s football program. Football coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired soon after one ex-player came forward to the student paper about hazing that included upperclassmen allegedly “dry-humping” younger team members while wearing “Purge-like” masks.
Since then, student athletes have sued the Big Ten school in Cook County and, according to their attorneys, “many more” are expected to follow suit.
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The volleyball player, referred to as Jane Doe in a complaint reviewed by The Daily Beast, accuses coach Shane Davis of humiliating students by “blasting” balls at them and goading team captains into doling out “punishments against the other players.” Doe’s lawsuit is the first from a female student athlete in the hazing scandal.
For Doe, who was on Northwestern’s volleyball team from 2019 to the end of 2022, the initiation rites were allegedly so severe she required medical attention.
The complaint says that Doe contracted COVID in February 2021, leading to a temporary pause on the volleyball program. Soon after, Davis allegedly threatened to terminate her scholarship, saying her team performance was lacking. He and an assistant coach then informed Doe she’d need to endure a “punishment” for breaking the team’s COVID rules, the lawsuit says.
She says the team’s captains chose what happened next: Doe was ordered to run “suicides” in the gym and dive to the floor each time she reached a line—all in front of teammates, trainers and coaching staff. As a result, Doe suffered physical injuries and Northwestern initiated a hazing investigation that led to Davis’s temporary suspension.
During the probe, Northwestern’s Deputy Athletics Director Travis Goff encouraged players and their parents to write letters in support of Davis to university president Morton Schapiro, the lawsuit says. While Doe never received a copy of Northwestern’s final investigation report, Davis’s contract as head volleyball coach was renewed.
Doe says that over the next two years, Davis sidelined her and prevented her from traveling with the team; he also allegedly forced her to “write an apology letter to trainers without a justifiable reason,” the complaint says.
At one point, Doe met with Dr. Derrick Gragg, the school’s vice president for athletics and recreation, about the toxic culture of the volleyball program, but he apparently did nothing to help her.
Around the beginning of the 2022-2023 academic year, Northwestern’s deputy director of athletics for operations and capital projects, Deneé Barracato, held a “culture meeting” with the team “as a result of multiple complaints against” Davis, the suit alleges.
The complaint says Northwestern “took no other actions addressing the multiple complaints against” Davis, and Doe medically retired from volleyball in December of last year.
Doe’s suit names Northwestern, its board of trustees and other officials, alleging negligence and negligent retention and supervision, among other counts.
“Jane Doe 1’s case is an example of how an enabled culture and an enabled coach had become accustomed to practices of hazing and abuse for years, if not decades,” Patrick A. Salvi II, one of Doe’s attorneys, said in a statement.
“Here, we have a university where many brave young men and women are standing up for themselves, and we hope it’s a sign of things to come, where student athletes are not abused in the pursuit of wins for the school but treated like the human beings they are.”
Salvi’s Chicago-based firm thus far has filed three other lawsuits against Northwestern on behalf of former football players accusing the school of enabling hazing.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump was also expected to announce a lawsuit against Northwestern on Monday, with “damning new details” of sexual abuse.
