I would imagine that this is far from over.
I would guess that members of the Athletic Dept. who were charged  with carrying out the original investigation will undoubtably lose their jobs. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Gilligan be fired as head coach on the grounds that it was on his watch that shame was brought to UVM's athletic program.
 
What they do about the athletes themselves and their scholarships is a tricky situation. Just yanking scholarships would assure a myriad of lawsuits.  I'm sure that investigations will continue and individuals will be singled out as facts become known.
 
The most interesting part of this situation will probably never be known. All Division 1 programs (and probably most Division 3 programs have some kind of freshman ritual). It ranges anywhere from hazing down to initiation rites (and the dividing line where initiation becomes hazing can be very vague). A positive argument in favor of initiation can be made
to some degree by arguing that team bonding is solidified as a result of the "rite of passage".
Of course, it's very easy to step across the line and have the initiation become hazing.  Once school officials at UVM start losing their jobs over this, AD's and coaches everywhere will probably become acutely aware that they are being held accountable for the behavior of the athletes in their charge. They may find it to their own benefit to set strict bounds as to what is and what isn't acceptable behavior on the part of their athletes. I imagine this will vary widely from school to school, and we, the public, will probably never know what effect this incident at UVM had on our own institutions.
 
Although I'm not necessarily against initiation rites, I am not in favor of "hazing" and, if the "facts" made public so far are true, this incident, IMHO, has crossed the line into "hazing".
This incident is going to hurt UVM's hockey program badly.
They will probably lose people in their Athletic Dept, their coaching staff and possibly their team. It will probably adversely affect their recruiting efforts for the next several years and will most certainly decrease revenue the school brings in from the hockey program.  This was a gutsy move on the part of UVM's President and I commend her for it. In the long run, this has the potential of having a positive impact on college hockey and all college sports.
 
 
>I don't get it. The University of Vermont conducts an investigation of a
>major hazing incident in the hockey program and discovers that enough players
>were lying to the investigators that it cancels the remainder of the season.
>Yet no one is punished, and all the players retain their scholarships and
>will be invited back next season with their scholarships intact.
>
>What is missing here?
>
 
 
 
--
Mark Lewin
RPI  class of '69
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