A fourth lawsuit was filed Monday against Northwestern University as the school grapples with allegations of a pervasive hazing culture and a toxic environment that extended beyond the football team and into other sports including baseball, softball and volleyball.
The hazing scandal that has rocked the school this month includes allegations of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. The plaintiff in Monday’s lawsuit, 26-year-old former Northwestern quarterback Lloyd Yates, recently told the Tribune in an exclusive interview he has been haunted by nightmares and anxiety since he joined the Wildcats in 2015 and graduated in 2018.
Yates is being represented by attorneys Ben Crump and Steven Levin, who have said that they will be filing suits on behalf of at least 15 former student athletes with similar experiences and that they are in conversations with at least 50 others. Crump and Levin are suing Northwestern on Yates’ behalf seeking monetary damages to cover damages and costs incurred from negligence, willful and wanton conduct and gender-related violence.
The Crump legal team scheduled a midday news conference to discuss the lawsuit.
“I was conditioned to think this stuff is normal, and this was what goes on in college football, this is what goes on in these locker rooms,” Yates told the Tribune earlier this month. “And I think Northwestern has a bit of work to do to make things right, and make sure that this culture doesn’t exist.”
In a statement, the school has noted they launched an investigation into hazing allegations after complaints late last year. A letter to faculty from university President Michael Schill released last week stated that the school would hire an outside firm to “evaluate the sufficiency” of the school’s accountability measures.
Former Northwestern athletes say they were forced to participate in sexual acts and receive punishments that inflicted physical and psychological trauma. In Monday’s lawsuit, Yates alleged that as a freshman he experienced hazing in the form of “running,” whereby a group of a dozen or more upperclassmen would forcibly hold down and take turns dry-humping underclassmen.
The ordeal left Yates feeling “embarrassed, ashamed, dehumanized, powerless, dirty and anxious.” According to the 52-page complaint, the practice of ‘running’ was “a form of punishment, conformity, humiliation and a way to ‘put players in their place’ when others felt that they were becoming too cocky or stepping out of line.”
Other instances of hazing Yates and his teammates allegedly experienced and witnessed included “rituals” whereby they would be forced to perform exercises and drills while being fully naked in front of others, and the “Gatorade Shake Challenge” whereby players would be forced to drink as many protein shakes as possible in a given window of time, often causing physical discomfort to the extent of sickness and vomiting.
Attorneys for the players claim coaches knew and even participated in some instances of hazing and abuse. In the aftermath of the allegations, former head football and baseball coaches Pat Fitzgerald and Jim Foster were fired from their respective positions in the span of three days.
Fitzgerald’s attorney, former federal prosecutor Dan Webb, has repeatedly denied the longtime Wildcat coach knew of or participated in the alleged hazing and abuse, calling the allegations “broad-based” and “imprecise.” He has also emphasized that an investigation conducted by the university found Fitzgerald had no knowledge of the hazing.
“Moreover,” Webb wrote in a statement, “the facts and evidence will show that coach Fitzgerald implemented and followed numerous procedures and protocols to ensure that hazing would not occur, and he repeatedly emphasized to Northwestern’s student-athletes that hazing was forbidden and, if anyone was aware — or was the victim — of hazing, that they should immediately report it so that he could stop it.”
But former mentees like Yates have contested these claims, while still pointing their fingers at a larger institutional problem rather than at a specific individual. Yates has also said some of his teammates and fellow athletes have dealt with suicidal thoughts as part of the fallout from the toxic culture entrenched in university athletics.
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“The abusive hazing was so entrenched in the Northwestern football culture that even some of our coaches took part in it. So where would we go to complain?” Yates said in a news release Wednesday. “The hazing was well-known in the football program. It was no secret. We were all adversely impacted by the hazing, especially when it came to our mental health. We were physically and emotionally beaten down.”
The first lawsuit against the university, which was filed in Cook County court Tuesday, alleged that Fitzgerald and other university higher-ups knew about and covered up sexual misconduct as well as racial discrimination. The anonymous plaintiff, a Black former player, is being represented by attorneys Patrick Salvi Jr. and Parker Stinar.
Since then, two other anonymous athletes represented by Salvi Jr. and Stinar have filed lawsuits against Fitzgerald, the university, former athletic director James Phillips, now commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and other defendants affiliated with Northwestern.
Levin said his and Crump’s clients are seeking more oversight and accountability in Northwestern’s athletic programs to prevent hazing and abuse from occurring in the future.
“The revelation that our clients have had to endure humiliating, deeply damaging emotional, physical and sexual abuse is both shocking and inexcusable. For many scholarship athletes, leaving was not an option,” Crump said in the Wednesday news release. “It’s time for a reckoning at Northwestern and colleges across the country where this kind of behavior has been excused for too long.”
Crump has represented students from Ohio State University and Michigan State University who have alleged sexual abuse and assault by authority figures on their campuses. A national survey Crump conducted in 2021 alongside his co-counsel and sexual abuse prevention nonprofit Lauren’s Kids found 1 in 4 current and former college athletes say they have endured inappropriate sexual contact from a campus authority figure.
Read the lawsuit below:
