Purple Haze

By Roland Lara on Jan 12, 2006 8:49PM

What kind of a city do we live in where a high-school senior gets expelled simply for shoving his testicles in a freshman’s face?

Oh sure. The hippie school board president says, “This is not acceptable behavior,” and “To take no action is to condone it,” but boys will be boys, right? Come on, what red-blooded American male high-school senior hasn’t hauled his balls across the punim of an unwilling and struggling boy who must be about 14?

They were on the wrestling team! It’s all in a day’s hazing! And two upperclassmen pinning a freshman down in the back of the bus while a third forces his beanbag on the nose of the freshman is just a part of teambuilding.

Yeah, dear reader, you just read three paragraphs of sarcasm.

But the hazing is true, as is the fallout, and the Sun-Times is right on top of it: by unanimous vote the board of School District 217 suspended three coaches and expelled three varsity wrestlers at Argo Community High School for the incident.

Two things from the article bear emphasis: (1) the discipline of the offenders “reduced teenage boys to tears;” and (2) “some parents characterized [the incident] as a harmless prank.”

First, there’s no crying in sack-dragging.

Second, we’re going to hazard a guess here at Chicagoist and guess that the but-it’s-no-biggie parents were not the parents of the freshman kid, unless his mom is Courtney Love.