An 18-year-old football player has withdrawn from McGill University and is weighing criminal action after he said teammates put him through a degrading hazing ritual that involved getting down on all fours with a gag in his mouth and being anally prodded with a broom handle.
The promising rookie, who had been recruited by McGill after playing for teams in Ontario and the United States, has returned home to Toronto.
"If these are the types of people at McGill, I will not associate with and be part of McGill," said the rookie, who asked to remain anonymous but wants to make the incident known.
The controversy at one of Canada's top universities has cast a spotlight on the normally hushed-up world of hazing and initiation rituals in college sports. According to the McGill Tribune, the ritual involving "Dr. Broom" is an annual rite at McGill.
In the wake of the scandal, McGill has started an investigation and principal Heather Munroe-Blum has accepted a recommendation to strengthen university anti-hazing policies. One player with the McGill Redmen has been suspended indefinitely and five others were suspended for one game last Saturday.
"Hazing is inconsistent with the university's values and it will not be tolerated," the university said in a statement.
Two suspended players, reached by phone yesterday, said they had retained lawyers and had been advised by the university not to comment.
The football recruit, whose father is a former CFL player, said he began to hear ominous warnings from team veterans about "Dr. Broom" on the second day of training camp in August.
He eventually asked veterans what the taunts meant. "They said, 'It's really bad; you go through a horrible thing,' " he said in a phone interview yesterday.
On Aug. 27, the last day of training camp, he said all the newcomers were told they had to go to the campus dining hall. Veterans announced they'd be subjected to their "examination" that night.
Toward the end of the meal, he said, one of the veterans entered the room clutching a broom. "The veterans were shouting 'broom, broom, broom,' " he recalled. Meanwhile, two rookies were singled out to simulate oral sex on one another in their boxer shorts, he said.
After being ordered to take off their shirts, he said, everyone was ordered outside, told to hold hands, and sing as they skipped down to the gym.
"They [the veterans]were taunting us, saying, 'Look at the fairies. Look at the gays,' " the rookie recalled.
He added that all the rookies were ordered to the campus's darkened squash courts and told to hold a penny on the wall with their nose.
"They said, "Drop the penny, and it's another inch with Dr. Broom,' " the teenager recalled. "Then one by one, they took us out of the room. I was taken out to another room."
In the second squash court, six football veterans were present while another group was in the stands, pelting him with large exercise balls and jeering. The rookie was told to take off his pants. Three times, he said he refused. Finally, he was threatened.
"One of them said, 'Do it or we'll do it for you.' I said 'No, I wasn't raised that way.' They said it doesn't matter."
The rookie said he relented, dropping his pants but keeping on his boxer shorts. He said he was put on his hands and knees and told to bite down on a dog chew toy made of rope. Then they began counting down as they held a broom handle.
"They were poking me on either side of my buttocks cheeks," he said. "Then, they made contact with my rectum with it. They were kind of pushing back and forth and applying pressure."
He was not penetrated with the broomstick, but it did hurt, he said.
"I felt complete heartbreak that my supposed teammates could do this to me."
He said he got up and left, still in shock.
"I felt completely betrayed by the people I'd just spent 10 days with, and furious that McGill would let people like this into their university and put them in positions of leadership. They're veterans. They should know better."
The rookie's parents are angry that the university athletics department made no effort to reach out to their son, apologize, or deal with his experience. They pressed on with their complaint, and it was finally taken in hand after it reached the principal's office, about 10 days later, they said.
The rookie's father said he never experienced anything like the McGill ritual during all his years in the CFL or on college teams.
Earl Zukerman, a spokesman for the McGill athletics department, said some rookies refused to take part in the initiation rite and were kept on the team. Although students are told not to take initiations too far, "you can't follow them around with handcuffs, watching what they're doing every minute."
The 18-year-old rookie said he isn't ruling out going to police. "If it takes me filing a police report to make sure this never happens again, then I'll file a police report."