Is it hazing to "TP" a house?

[hoosier]

CENTENNIAL
Toilet paper pranksters flush with trouble

Twenty cheerleaders have been barred from a William Tennent football game for rolling toilet paper around players cars.

By ALISON HAWKES
Courier Times

Of course the William Tennent High School (in PA) cheerleaders will be at the football team's first home game this Friday.

Only they won't be waving pom-poms and leading the crowds in chants. They'll be sitting in the bleachers.

On Friday a group of 20 girls from the cheerleading squad received Saturday detention and were barred from performing in two games - tonight's soccer match against Council Rock-North and Friday night's football game against Central Bucks East - because they rolled the homes and cars of the school's top football stars with toilet paper and spelled out their jersey numbers in shaving cream on their driveways.

It's an age-old tradition at William Tennent that the cheerleaders have a sleepover the night before the first football game of the season - in this case an away game Friday against Norristown.

In the middle of the night, they head out to the homes of the team's top football players - like the quarterback and a linebacker - and roll toilet paper around the house, in the trees, and all over the players' cars.

The goal isn't to cause property damage, just a mess.

On another night the football players get the cheerleaders back.

But this year a player's parent complained. And the administration put its foot down, calling the tradition a form of hazing.

"Some fun is good," said Assistant Principal Donna Dunar. "But we just want to make sure it doesn't have the overtones of being insulting or demeaning. I consider that to be hazing - just the business of toilet-papering people's property."

Every year, Dunar said, students are warned about hazing. Coaches talk to their athletes about not doing it. And there's a policy in the student handbook that warns students of "appropriate disciplinary actions" if they haze. The handbook defines hazing as "any activity that recklessly or intentionally endangers the mental health, physical health or safety of a student for the purpose of initiation in or affiliation with any organization."

The hazing policy stems from a 1998 incident involving a former varsity wrestler who sued the district because he was physically abused during a hazing incident while the district did nothing.

The new policy lists forms of hazing, such as beating, forced consumption of alcohol, prolonged sleep deprivation or conduct that could result in extreme embarrassment.

Rolling a house with toilet paper is not on the list. But Dunar said it is a form of harassment and the punishment is appropriate.

"It wasn't too hard, but it wasn't too soft," she said.