A hazing incident involving Mount Pearl students — in which junior high school graduates were struck on the behind with a hockey stick — cannot be tolerated, a youth advocacy group says.

'We need to recognize it as a crime,' Andrew Harvey says of a weekend hazing incident in Mount Pearl.
(CBC)

A group of high school students cornered some Grade 9 students against a fence in a wooded area in the Admiralty Wood subdivision on Friday night.

The older students used the broad end of a goalie stick to "paddle" the younger students, in a hazing ritual that marked their graduation to high school.

One of the students involved in the incident would not give an interview for broadcast, but said many of the students who were struck have not told their parents or authorities for fear of being beaten again. The student informed his mother on Monday that he had been beaten.

He said the older students, who were in Grade 10, warned younger students that more hazing will follow on Thursday, the last day of classes.

"We need to recognize it as a crime," said Andrew Harvey, an organizer with Mount Pearl Youth Action Team, a community group that works with the city council on youth issues.

"It's a crime against our young people, and we can't accept it," said Harvey, adding that "the proper law enforcement officials are on it right now."

Meghan Drodge, another member of the Youth Action Team, said hazing has been a recurring problem through the years.

Meghan Drodge said she would like to see a program aimed at preventing hazing incidents from happening next year.
(CBC)

"I'm annoyed at the disrespect that some students would give to other students," said Drodge, who would like to see a school program set up to ensure it doesn't happen again next year.

The two high schools in Mount Pearl both have strict policies against bullying and violent behaviour.

The principals of Mount Pearl and O'Donel senior high schools said they are taking the hazing incident very seriously, and said they will pursue disciplinary action if the older students are caught.

They said, however, that students who had been assaulted should come forward to aid Royal Newfoundland Constabulary investigators.

Drodge said in past years high school students have used ping-pong paddles and canoe paddles to hit younger students on their behinds.

Girls use a less violent — but still offensive — means of hazing, said Drodge.

"They get them with coloured bingo dabbers — on their forehead, on their nose, their cheeks," said Drodge, a high school student, who hopes she can help bring future classes of Grade 9 and Grade 10 students together.

"It really comes down to the attitude that exists between junior high and high school students, and we're here to change that," she said.

Numerous hazing incidents in recent years

Hazing incidents have become common in Newfoundland and Labrador schools in recent years.

Last year, for instance, a student in Gander was injured so severely in a paddling incident that he had trouble walking.

In 2004, several students in the Goulds neighbourhood of St. John's were suspended from St. Kevin's school after a boy was assaulted.

In 2003, 18 students at Regina High School in Corner Brook were suspended after younger students were rounded up, forced to strip to their underwear and then thrown into a pond.

In 2002, six Clarenville teenagers were charged with assault with a weapon after some Grade 8 students were hit with sticks and branches.