Wilson Kipsang defends his title in this 2015 New York City Marathon. But will he carry guilt of blood doping allegations, leveled at Kenyan athletes, with every timely stride he takes?

77 out of 800. Nearly 10%, in other words, of all the athletes suspected of blood doping were Kenyan. This globally explosive story came from results of more than 12,000 tests leaked to The Sunday Times and the German broadcaster ARD/WDR this past summer.

Kipsang, who sprinted away in flawless form from Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa Benti, and the other 50,529 finishers, to win the 2014 NYC Marathon by seven seconds - in his debut no less - is fighting back. Calling them “...just allegations...” he’s asking names to be named. He adds, and this point doesn’t make any sense, (perhaps the Guardian lost something in the transcription or translation) “...the spate of positive drug tests in Kenya is partly down to some coaches in his country ‘taking advantage of the ignorance of some guys to kill the sport’ ”.

Why on earth would any coach want to kill his sport?

But here’s why so many athletes would blood dope. It’s hard to detect. The signs can be gone in as little as two days - but the athletic benefits can last for weeks, three months, even.
Thus, endurance athletes are all over this blood doping EPO stuff. EPO (erythropoietin) is a hormone. The body produces it naturally, but for athletes looking to have their muscles work longer, having a higher red blood count means more oxygen can be transported to muscles, so they inject it. They can stick it to themselves.

But they, in the doing, can screw themselves. Too many red blood cells can cause blood clotting and death.

Why risk your reputation and rigor mortis on blood doping? Money, prestige...money.
(The purse for the six-city marathons of Boston, New York, Chicago, London, Berlin, and Tokyo - the Abbott World Marathon Majors - is $500,000 for the runner with the best results in the bunch.)
But the New York Road Runners (NYRR), bureaucratic-boss of the Big Apple Marathon, now disallows any runner suspended for two months or longer due to doping, to be eligible for prize or bonus money.

That’s gotta help.

Clean runners smeared by these suspicious results and sport-damaging allegations are certainly thankful. And thankfully, finally, reliable EPO tests arrived in 2000, only 14 years after doping was made illegal in 1986.

Everybody’s blaming the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) - a body pulled apart supporting, on the one hand, sport, and policing, on the other hand, sport - for this. The leaked data was theirs. Their dual, diametrically distant positions are untenable.

Now, the venerable NYC Marathon and its boosters would much rather talk of how this race is the biggest in the world, with its over 2 million on-site spectators and over 300 million TV viewers, and how it pumps hundreds of millions into the city’s economy - approximately 415 million for the 2014 running alone, and how it will be even better this year with the new NYC Marathon Pavilion, and how, this 2015, hard-working (hard running anyway) top city officials like Buildings Commissioner, Rick Chandler, and Mayor Bill de Blasio Communications Director, Andrea Hagelgans, and another 30 civic swivel-seat wizards, are entrants.

OK, back to the Kenyans. Why do they so excel in this iconic race? (Don’t forget the 2014 NYC Women’s Marathon winner was Kenya’s Mary Keitany.)

Way back in 1960 the book “The Physique of the Olympic athlete” written by British physician, James M. Tanner, came out. The upshot?

"Amongst competitors in both track and field events there are large significant racial differences. As nature would have it, different populations are better suited to excel at anaerobic activities such as sprinting, jumping, and lifting, than at aerobic sports such as distance running, cycling, and swimming.”
 
Nowadays, genetics and racial differences are touchy subjects. (Kip Keino and Mike Boit, Kenyan running heroes, both play down such possible factors as attributing to Kenyan running successes.)
But can anyone deny that in Kenya most of the best runners, like Wilson Kipsang, come from the Kalenjin tribe, the “running tribe”? This group’s people have thin ankles and calves. The less weight at the bottom of one’s legs, the better for long-distance running. Don’t think so? Run with two-pound ankle weights - see how your race times go...

Reasons for Kenya’s kismet, karma-like marathon accomplishments and aura, start with life styles: many country-rural Kenyan kids run to and from school morning, noon, and night.
And add these factors:

the nation’s passion, high expectations, and pride for the sport; eating a maize porridge staple (Uji); success begetting success; strict, serious mental preparation; having confidence and a positive attitude knowing, however, your competition is excellent - so overconfidence has no place, reason, or rationale to be;  the geographic advantage of high altitude training - with the popular training spot of Iten, for example, 8,000+ feet above sea level; training specifics focusing on core strength, posture, alignment, and stability through, believe it or not, fast - and slow - paced workouts; recovery from those workouts thru loads of sleep and lots of relaxation; running more on dirt paths and less on injury-inducing track tarmacs; the seemingly pervasive Kenyan aptitude and attitude to push and persevere through pain, pains forged during cultural and tribal coming-of-age rites; short memories - allowing for a bad race to be forgotten; materialism: with marathon road racing being a “chasing money” avenue out of poverty;

And ultimately, having patience.

Every Kenyan knows, to make it nationally, and then internationally, to, say, in the NYC Marathon realistically, takes time...

Time, Wilson Kipsang won’t have to spare, to waste worrying about blood doping athletes - not if he wants to make haste and win this NYC Marathon for the second time in a row...
​
Because, really - you should know, in New York City, timing is everything.

​Has ESPN left wrong for right? Firstly, they wrongly suspended Curt Schilling from covering the Little League World Series because he re-tweeted an “incorrect” opinion: an opinion comparing Muslim maniacs to Nazis.

Secondly - they rightly - along the road to Damascus, thankfully, saw the light. True, they upheld their suspension of Curt from Little League, and yes they later said Schilling wouldn’t be shilling for the rest of the regular season or the Wild Card Playoff Game, but then, after he posted up some heady, headstrong images and thoughts – that some Muslims are dangerous and some Americans are oblivious to that fact, illegal immigration is bad, the Iranian nuclear deal is awful, American soldiers are good, self-reliance is good as well, pay for your own birth control why don’t ya - to Facebook - ESPN public relations/media fellow, Josh Krulewitz, asked by Deadspin to comment, had nothing to say.

Hey!

Their conversion to common sense couldn’t be because Schilling folded like a cheap suit, humiliating himself before the altar of mandatory-lefty-liberal-PC ESPN views – because Schilling didn’t.
(Though after his Muslim-Nazi re-spread, he initially bled a seemingly, pathetic regret:
I understand and accept my suspension. 100% my fault. Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part.)

In fact, you’d figure ESPN would be even more peeved at Schilling when he later clarified his apology. He wasn’t sorry for his content but was sorry for using Twitter to display it.
The initial retweet (and a comment added by Curt) that got ESPN’s knickers in a knot was controversial, given today’s crazy politics in the States. 

Islamists were probably offended about the 5 to 10% range – they probably think their numbers are way higher. And the perpetually pissed off politically correct types, were pissed off even more. They think that any pointed comment about the religion of peace – in this case comparing their radicals to Nazis - should be SHOT DOWN with the commentator SHUT UP. ESPN took the easy way out, explaining that Curt’s comments didn’t reflect the company’s perspective.

Whatever that means - because their perspective hasn’t been explained...

How much better it would have been for ESPN to initially just take middle-America-fly-over-country’s thoughts: Good on him and what’s ESPN fussing all about?

Fox pointed out the double standard between Schilling’s retweet and ESPN’s football analyst Cris Carter’s advocating a criminal act in recommending football bad actors have a “fall guy” to blame for law breaking, when speaking at an NFL Rookie Symposium last year ...ESPN condemned his remarks, but didn’t suspend him.

For fun, we could speculate on ESPN’s initial perspective.  Did they think that there are no extremist Muslims, or did they think that Curt’s numbers were too low, or more likely, too high? Or, which was probably the case, they would rather not discuss Islam, unless in praise, for fear of giving offense? So we don’t know if ESPN thought the re-tweet and Curt’s comment were truthful or false...

But in pulling ex-pitcher Schilling from Little League coverage the organization seemed not to care a whit whether their reaction fit with their website’s solemn declaration which says: “Our reputation and credibility...are of paramount concern.” Most Americans, especially those not employed by HuffPost Sports, thought the scorched-earth whack-job reaction to Schilling’s action was way out of line.

Sarah Palin gave no quarter. In Facebook she said that in criticizing Schillings blast, ESPN is, at worst intentionally, or, at best, inadvertently, buying “into the propaganda of ISIS...”

Ultimately, though most might think this simply was (or should be) a freedom-of-speech situation, it isn’t. If an employer, any employer, such as ESPN, deems a worker’s comments unsuitable they have a right to fire that person. It doesn’t make it right. In fact, in a case like this, it makes it ludicrous - but them’s the breaks.
And but here, until ESPN’s new spinaroo, there were no winners except for the appease-Allah-at-all-costs lobby...
Now what about ESPN’s turnaround? Shockingly, Josh Krulewitz wouldn’t take the bait and bite Curt for his newer Facebook musings. Curt’s gotta be thanking his Christian lord for the non-reaction.
Do Josh and ESPN backers now think:

1. Schilling’s latest messages are correct.
2. Schilling’s latest messages are incorrect but they can trumpet their acceptance of that “free speech thing” and even though ESPN, as an employer, can still can Curt, they’ve decided maybe to bite the bullet and give him a free pass whilst differentiating themselves from HuffPost Sports who ardently, even statistically via an FBI report and an EU report, have attempted to slay and shred Curt’s Muslim-menace percentages.
3. It might be part of 2) let Schilling say what he wants: to react negatively brings only more attention to his issues and detracts from ESPN’s neutered in left-wing-liberalism stances (and besides most right-minded Americans, pun intended, agree with Schilling.)
4. They figure: aw, heck, let him trash talk. After that we’ll let him walk. He’s only got one year left on his contract.

Krulewitz has been with ESPN since 1990. It’s safe to say he knows the thinking of that organization inside out, so his “no comment” answer speaks volumes.
 
Josh’s non-move is probably a wise move. Leave Curt be. Schilling is no shrinking violet and to wrestle with the guy, if you are not going to fire him outright, only confuses red-meat males: your original base.

Some feel Schilling should stick to sports. Why? Entertainment and Sports Programming Network ESPN goes political – sticking it to Donald Trump and savoring to newly-newsy debutante Caitlyn Jenner.

Of late?

Q) A Trump-twitter question: Who won the first Democratic Party presidential debate -
when four of the five candidates, asked to name political enemies, atrociously - but not astonishingly, named Americans.

A) Schilling answered: ISIS.

Crisis.

Geez, he’s still throwing strikes, still head-hunting - not ISIS-like - but enough, normally-basically, for ESPN, to dislike...
​
Let’s go with 4. The ballsy baseball guy will be toast once more, once his contract is up. 

Paralympic athletes are awesome - even when not winning.
​
No spinning: their struggles and successes are so unforgettable they put humdrum, ho hum, Jane and Joe stories to shame.

I stupidly complain, and am set back, by a bunion. They, on the other hand, carry on undeterred, while truly physically or mentally impaired. We both try to hit personal bests but their obstacles are so much bigger I can’t fathom them, let alone figure out how they overcome them.
To a man and woman they’re unimaginably bold, but they, as they suffer and toil and strive, exhibit characteristics all winners have.

These athletes, whether they be blind, or have limbs amiss, or have legs of different lengths, or lack some mental capacities, to name but a few examples of impairments, reach for the stars, and reach our hearts (warming them too) as they work out and work out ways to excel - despite their seemingly calamitous circumstances.

Until now I had been somewhat disconcerted by Para-athletes. They take chances, strut their stuff in elite competitions; should they not be feeling sorry for themselves somewhere, nursing grievances, instead of coursing victorious on global stages like at these world championships coming up in Doha, Qatar October 21-31st, 2015? They’ve beaten their adversities. I can barely beat a common cold. I now realize my disconcertion was really embarrassment. Compared to them, I don’t measure up.
  
But reading and hearing of their stories I realize that though they may be missing this or that, or have too much of that or this - in the guts and grace fields - well, they have those traits in rare and delightful abundance. So they are human with extra bravery and class added on top.

Team America is sending 32 females and 52 males, their largest contingent ever, to Doha.  The team reaped in 52 medals, second to winner Russia’s 53, in the 2013 championships in Lyon. Coincidentally, 52 world records were set at the French event. (These world championships are held every two years.)

But one must wonder, generally, how these Para-sports participants, in the States (and in Canada), didn’t succumb to the victim mentality that is all the rage in North America. Why haven’t they pined and whined, declared themselves victims? If anybody should be deemed as legitimate victims it would be them, right?

These people, either through birth, or events, were victims on the day (or days, weeks, months or years to follow) as their disabilities emerged. And, true, they may have felt victimized for a time, gone into a dark hole. But on the whole, they don’t have a victim mentality, don’t moan and groan on their situations, and don’t carp and caterwaul to what life has brought or taken from them.

They’re too busy living for that. They’re not passengers.

They’re players - leaders and heroes, role models for the rest of us, showing that no matter the impairment, one can make the best of life.

In fact, joking takes the place of moping. Here are a couple of lines from one Lex Gillette, an American blind guy who is the World and Paralympic record holder in the long jump.  “Let's go out sometime. I have first-row parking at the mall.”
Or: “I'm going heads over wheels for you.”

They may be a bit corny, but the message is real. While these athletes have serious goals, they are not so self absorbed that they can’t look at their realities in a lighter vein.

Obviously, however, a guy like Lex would have inspirational credos as well. Like his trademark says: “No need for sight when you have a vision.” And, the matter is certainly up to debate, but Lex, because of repeated retina detachments, gradually lost his sight through his first eight years. To have sight, then lose it, as a kid? Wouldn’t that be tougher to adjust to than if one was blind from birth? Wouldn’t Lex feel the pain more of knowing what he had, to then lose it to anatomical misfortune – a misfortune that he in no way induced or exacerbated? How difficult would that be to overcome, mentally and physically? That’s a question almost too heavy to ponder.

Lex has not only mastered his sport, he’s mastered education, figuratively and literally. After getting an undergrad degree in recreation management he got a master’s in business administration. He’s also a singer and song writer. It’s not pandering to say his accomplishments are incredible and indelible.

Indelible is forever, but now is now. This: don’t do it later, do it now attitude drives athletes, like Australian sprinter Kelly Cartwright. She trains 7 days a week, 3 to 4 hours per session with a 2 hour commute each way.

Such commitment.

The 2015 IPC Athletics World Championships in Doha will showcase 1,299 athletes with the same “do it now” behavior and commitment of Kelly’s. They’ll hail from 100 countries and will compete in 214 medal events.

And sometimes “those who have little in life can sometimes achieve a lot more” is a belief that Brazilian blind female sprinter, Terezinha Guilhermina lives by. As one of 12 siblings, money and food were scarce. Both parents worked. At 7, when her eye sight was deteriorating, she was bullied by a 14-year-old girl. Terezinha learned, then, how to run “very fast.” She laughs at the retelling.
But for the rest of us, it’s telling, how she can now laugh at her story of hard-to-believe adversities.

But believe it. Believe in them all. Terezinha and the others are awesome, even if they don’t win their event(s).
​
They’re winners already.

​Baseball’s back baby. It bludgeoned and simultaneously soothed the sporting blahs in Canada’s biggest city, Toronto, when the Blue Jays came back to beat the Texas Rangers in a game so weird and wonderful, so wonky and choppy, seen-it-all-commentators were lost for words.
The baby of baseball, this sport, exploded - in a seventh-heaven-diaper and hyper inning imbroglio that showed five (at least) beer bottles hurled, four Texas defensive miscues, three official in-a-row-Texas Ranger infield-error blights, two bench clearing sights, one 53 minute-lasting inning (having TV advertisers uptight in tights), and a zero in-tolerance Toronto constabulary combing the stadium for criminals in flight.
All right.
Eh?

In gymnastics you need guts with no gut, innovation with tradition, enthusiasm with perspective. No one features these contrary and complementary characteristics better than does Japan’s world best, The King of Gymnastics, Kohei Uchimura, and nowhere will he, and the other 614 best of-the-rest from 90 other countries put their smarts, savvy, strength, and skills to the test than in the 2015 World Gymnastics Championships.

These athletes will acrobat, with their flips of need almost as fast as shutter photo speeds, at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland. Opened in 2013, by Tartan Terror Rod Stewart, this edifice is now ranked #2 for its great show capabilities.

When gymnastics was chronicled in the 5th century BC, by Greek historian Herodotus, nobody cared about that accolade but it is fitting that the sport nowadays whose floor routines, from paper to performance, take time and big bucks to put together - mesh and meet with the SSE Hydro, a construction that was 10 years in the planning.

Every athlete and coach is emphasizing this fine competition to the nth degree as it is the spring board to the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

Speaking of fine, let’s look at what makes Kohei Uchimura, going for his SIXTH CONSECUTIVE ALL AROUND TITLE, tick. Physically, he’s 5’3” and 121 pounds. Many think he’s cute. He’s got a funky, not foppish, haircut. He’s got air sense (to go with hair sense) and invariably sticks his landings. He does the triple twisting double layout highbar dismount Ferchencko like nobody’s business. The All Around titles he’s racked up – again, like nobody’s business, consist of six events: Floor, Pommel Horse, Rings, Vault, Parallel Bars, and Horizontal Bar.

With Kohei, describing his skills as “sick” is laudatory.

His favorite event: the Pommel Horse, because it’s the easiest on his body. His least favorite: Vault.
Nevertheless, for all, he makes the difficult look easy. He started gymnastics when three, at his dad’s gym. He admits to being stubborn once his mind is made up. His body control, his overall poise, astounds.

Now, are his medal counts unsurpassable? Is he the best male-gymnast now and forever? Can he lead Japan to his first TEAM gold medal in Scotland? And for how long will he compete? Pommel horse judge, Steve Butcher, thinks he has two more Olympics in him.
Now, gymnastically, he can’t be scored a perfect 10. That stinks. But he isn’t, outside of gymnastics, perfect. That’s sweet.
 
Kohei, which means either peaceful flight or crossing the Pacific Ocean, depending on the source, doesn’t like vegetables. He really likes a chocolate bar called Black Thunder. How many wannabe extraordinary athletes will see those preferences as evidence that one doesn’t have to be ideal in diet, or in any other way, and still achieve superstar status? Although his nickname is Superman, apart from his feats in gymnastics, he can be related to, he’s tangible, and he’s human - although most of us have not had our image put on the outside of a Japanese 777 airplane.

Let’s get back to earth for a moment. How does Team USA Mens’ chances fare this 2015? In the 2014 showing they came third, behind second-place Japan and winner China. They’ll be led by Sam Mikulak. He’s got a bit of a win streak himself going, winning the US All Around these last three years. He won the All Around at this summer’s Pan Am Games. On September 8th he tweeted a video of his prowess on the rings, so he seems to be peaking. He has even bested Uchimura in one respect, starting into gymnastics at two.

One big controversy, however, surrounds the Mens...they left Jake Dalton, the only American to win individually in both the 2013 and 2014 Worlds off the team. He won silver in the Floor in 2013 and won a bronze in the Vault in 2014. Yes, he just had fluid drained from a cyst in his shoulder labrum, and yes the team selection committee was worried about his recovery time, but, geez, give the guy a couple weeks to prove he’s fit. The team owed him that. Nevertheless, officials feel having the team declared 10 weeks before Glasgow was the way to go.

We’ll see. A lot can go wrong in that time. With a team made, the pressure is released. They’ll either thrive because of it, or dive, fail to hit their highest possible marks.

But if the men flop, the States shouldn’t fret and freak too much. Their star woman gymnast, Simone Biles, is going for her 3rd consecutive All Around victory. And a 50-second routine of hers on the uneven bars is as eventful and as scary to watch as is Tiger Woods’s golf game of late. It is, though, much more successful.

However, no matter the individual, team, or gender, gymnastics is unique in its varied competitions and in participants’ risk - and fear - of injuries. This sport is not for the faint of heart or fancy dan who wants to try their hand at this, or that. For many years, eating disorders amongst teenage girl gymnasts garnered headlines. Gymnastics, at least Womens, was looked upon as a cruel enterprise with domineering coaches lording it over their diminutive waifs.

And many will scoff that it isn’t even a sport, it is a contest. Judges rule. The reality is - there’s no impartiality.
 
But in this one fact, we are all of one opinion. This World Gymnastics Championships has never had so many competitive combatants ready to be awarded as the elite of the elite in a sport renowned for its agility, flexibility and ALL ROUND ability.
​
All it needs now, for perfection, is to bring back the perfect score of ten.
After all, that’s Kohei Uchimura’s calling. 

Any college guy who joins a fraternity is a loser. Fraternities beat the tar out of wannabee members. How sick is that? Gauntlets, and other more imaginative, but just as depraved initiation rites, end in deaths. The whole fraternity culture should be put to the stake.

For what’s at stake? If fraternities were banned, kids would learn to stand on their own two feet, and be independent, not dependent on dumb group-think. They’d have to make connections for parties, dates, or for later work possibilities through the strengths of their personalities, and not through the BS-manufactured “strength” of being a member of this, or that, fraternity.
And they’d avoid being murdered.

Five members “brothers” of Pi Delta Psi, a fraternity for Asian-Americans, have been charged with homicide, third-degree murder charges. Oh, and so has the fraternity. The victim, teenager Chun Deng, a Baruch College student, went along with this gang, to a rented house in Pennsylvania for a weekend in December 2013. There, the brothers saddled the kid with a backpack containing 30 pounds of sand and, to make things fair, blindfolded him so he couldn’t defend himself against the tackles that followed.

Merry Christmas.

Blunt-force head trauma and a death later, Charles Lai, Kenny Kwan, Raymond Lam, Daniel Li, and Sheldon Wong are in heck.

The ritual that razed Deng is known as “The Glass Ceiling.”

Pathetically and laughably, the fraternity, whose ostensible mission is to “...nurture and perpetuate the continual...development of the individual through Academic Achievement, Cultural Awareness, Righteousness, Friendship and Loyalty while fostering ethical behavior...” says it is going to investigate the young man’s death.

The group should focus on adhering to its mission. And, while they’re at it, stop killing. Anyway, the Pocono Mountain Regional Police and the Monroe County District Attorneys investigated, laid the above charges, and are thinking of charging more than 30 others with crimes ranging from criminal conspiracy, hindering apprehension and aggravated assault, to hazing.

The perpetrators didn’t call 911 and waited an eternal, unconceivable, two hours before taking the unconscious guy to the hospital. But they (allegedly) called Andy Meng, the now former-national President of the fraternity, six times. He (allegedly) texted back warning of fallout to the fraternity – and to hide fraternity symbols. Meng’s out on $50,000 bail.

The twisted twerps also googled the net to figure out what was wrong with the Vic (how super-dumb-thick-non-quick are these students?)

But, alas, the killer called political correctness also lurks and rules in parts of Baruch. Commented one Baruch student graduate - it was “...very unfortunate, I think, for all the parties that got involved...” How passive the voice, how massive the mistaken opinion. Using the word “unfortunate” is derogation from decency and a descent to leniency and lunacy that, unfortunately, fits in with our increasingly non-judgmental callow and shallow society.

Baruch College, for its part, should hopefully be dazed. “Ethical sensibility” part of its Mission went AWOL. And the Deng family is suing the school for $25 million.

Baruch has permanently disbanded the fraternity’s local chapter from its school and “brought disciplinary proceedings ...” Oooooh, sounds like the movie Animal House and Dean Wormer’s DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION against the Delta Tau Chi Fraternity.

And what a disgrace, frat-rats referring to each other as brother, in the whole liberty, equality, fraternity shtick. Sure, brothers do terrible things to each other: knee each other, stab each other, shoot each other  - when they are under 10, and the knives and guns are plastic - but brothers 18 and up, and pledges, should have learned manners, and restraint.

But lest we think men are the only demons in this hazing horribleness, sororities have devils - masquerading as women - if the sick stories of forced chugging of booze, drinking near-black water, being denied bathroom access, being whacked with paddles, and being forced to hold hot coals,  are to be believed.

Given that most students are wusses, usually of a lefty-liberal bent, who get the vapors and get bent out of shape if they hear even a little bit of a contrary idea, (God forbid, they hear a conservative one) joining a fraternity and engaging in hazing may be their only chance to act out. This may be the one last bastion that permits offensive behavior.

Remember, being offended is, nowadays, nearly a crime on campuses. Shunned and slammed as non-inclusive or insensitive are acts of clapping, being graded for poor grammar, writing the word “crazy” – it’s ableist - serving burritos in a non-culturally sensitive way, having too many white musicians in a band that play Afrobeat music – it’s cultural appropriation. So we have these coddled, spoiled, immature kids raised and watched over by helicopter parents mixed up with fraternities and their killers. Granted, thought conformity still holds in a fraternity, but they also get a lack of diversity in ethnicity, in Pi Delta Psi for example, being of Asian-American background(s) – which is another horror that campuses try to prevent. Here, if they survive the hazing ritual, they can feel safe among their own...

The first fraternity was created in the States around 1776 when William and Mary in Virginia formed the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Debating was its mainstay. While some may view that as hazing, real fraternity hazings came later.
​
Despite hazing being illegal in 44 states, what is sure to kill off hazing once and for all, in all states, is the trend in elementary schools to creating a super-wimpy child, useless and unprepared for life’s hard knocks. The Mercer School District in Seattle has banned tag. It’s too”...physically and emotionally dangerous.”  Now if making tag taboo, spreads, this stupid reaction to a kids’ game might have one benefit: how long can it be before hazing legally - and culturally - goes taboo too?