The University of New Mexico is reeling from recent hazing allegations that its women’s soccer team’s newest players were pressured to drink alcohol, strip naked, and then endure a spray of urine, a ritual that reportedly landed some in the hospital.
Two girls were taken to the hospital, with one young lady vomiting and having difficulty breathing, the OC Weekly reports.
The alleged hazing ritual has caused an uproar, as two twin soccer players have quit the team as a result of the experience and administrators cancelled the first game as they respond to the uproar.
“A victim’s parent confirmed to KOB Monday night that freshmen on the women’s soccer team were forced to strip naked, consume large amounts of alcohol and were sprayed with urine,” KOB Channel 4 news reports.
“University officials said heavy drinking was involved, but they rejected local media reports that Sunday night’s incident involved players being made to strip, or even being sprayed with urine,” Reuters reports.
The parents of the twin girls have released a statement asking for privacy, the OC Weekly reports:
We respectfully request privacy as our family tries to move on from this incident, and as our daughters attempt to identify the next steps for their collegiate educational and athletic careers. Our daughters were the victims in this case, and we would ask the university to honor our right to privacy. No person should be subjected to the type of abuse, humiliation and degradation that our daughters were forced to endure as they embarked on what should have been a momentous time in their lives. We urge the university to take swift action to end this reprehensible behavior and the culture of shameful hazing that we now know exists.
The OC Weekly also quotes University of New Mexico’s athletic director Paul Krebs, who expressed regret over the entire incident:
“In this particular instance involving our women’s soccer program, we failed,” Krebs conceded at a news conference. “Whether it’s coach [Kit] Vela, myself, as a department, we failed the young women in this program, that they didn’t understand and they didn’t know better that what they were doing was simply wrong and uncalled for and should have never happened.”
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