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Here is the article from CNN today:
NORTHBROOK, Illinois (CNN) -- Some high school students captured on videotape assaulting some younger students in an off-campus hazing ritual will be suspended from classes, a school board member told CNN Monday.
Earlier, Glenbrook North High School Principal Michael Riggle said students who have been identified as perpetrators had been suspended from extracurricular activities, but had not been suspended academically because the hazing fell outside the school's jurisdiction.
Authorities said they could file criminal charges against the students as early as Monday.
Legal experts said the charges could range from simple battery to aggravated assault. Amateur video shot at the scene indicated there might have been premeditation because some of the attackers had baseball bats, authorities said.
Additionally, parents who may have bought alcohol for what was supposed to be a touch football game between the junior and senior girls also could be charged, Northbrook Deputy Police Chief Michael Green said.
Witnesses said the game between the Glenbrook North students never got under way. Instead, what began as some light hazing quickly escalated to violence, sending five junior girls to the hospital for treatment before their release.
Two of the injured said Thursday they had no idea the seniors would go back on their promise of not physically harming them during their initiation into the senior class.
"I was strangled and choked, and I was kicked in the head repeatedly," said Lauren, a junior. Another junior class member, Marina, said she was "repeatedly kicked and punched," adding, "They kicked my tailbone to the point that it fractured."
A videotape of the May 4 incident shows several students huddled together on the ground at an area park while others throw objects at them, including large plastic buckets.
Witnesses also reported urine, feces and fish guts were thrown and others said they had been forced to eat mud.
"Basically it started out as a fun hazing like our initiation into our senior year," a junior girl who had been injured said. "About 10 minutes into it everything changed -- buckets were flying ... people were bleeding. Girls were unconscious."
Principal Michael Riggle said the situation might have turned ugly in part because of the presence of alcohol. Videotape shot before the attacks began shows a number of girls chugging beer directly from keg taps while being held aloft by teenage boys.
Students who have been identified as perpetrators have been suspended from extracurricular activities, but have not been suspended academically because such a move falls outside the school's jurisdiction, Riggle said.
Back in 1979, there were problems with powderpuff, or touch football, games, he said, and the school discontinued the games, which had been used as fund-raisers. Ever since, the matches have been organized by the students.
The principal said that two days before the event, the administration attempted to elicit information about it in hopes of heading it off, but students "were not forthcoming" about what had become "a covert activity."
In fact, details were kept so secret that many of the participants did not know until an hour before the game took place what the time and location would be. The time and location of the game changes from year to year, though this was the first time that it had such a violent outcome, Riggle said.
The Cook County sheriff's department and the county's Forest Preserve District police are investigating the incident, which happened on Forest Preserve property near Northbrook.
Glenbrook North High School is in Northbrook, a suburb north of Chicago. The principal agreed with a reporter's depiction of the school's students as being mainly "upper middle class," adding that some 85 percent go on to four-year colleges.
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