A former volleyball participant has filed a lawsuit alleging hazing happened inside Northwestern University’s girls’s volleyball crew. The Weber Arch at Northwestern University is pictured in 2020, in Evanston, Ill.

Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/TNS/abacapress.com by way of Reuters

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Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/TNS/abacapress.com by way of Reuters

A former volleyball participant has filed a lawsuit alleging hazing happened inside Northwestern University’s girls’s volleyball crew. The Weber Arch at Northwestern University is pictured in 2020, in Evanston, Ill.

Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/TNS/abacapress.com by way of Reuters

A former Northwestern University volleyball participant has filed a lawsuit in opposition to the college, alleging college officers did not correctly handle a hazing incident that happened two years in the past.

The participant, who’s recognized within the lawsuit as “Jane Doe 1,” is the primary feminine athlete from the college to return ahead amid reviews of hazing within the school’s football program.

In a 25-page lawsuit filed Monday, Jane Doe alleges she skilled “hazing, harassment, bullying and retaliation” as a member of Northwestern’s volleyball crew.

The lawsuit names Northwestern University, its president Michael Schill, former president Morton Schapiro, the varsity’s board of trustees, college vice chairman for athletics and recreation Derrick Gragg, former college vice chairman for athletics and recreation James Phillips, and head volleyball coach Shane Davis as defendants.

Doe is in search of no less than $50,000 in damages and a jury trial.

According to the lawsuit, the previous athlete says she sustained an unspecified damage in March 2021 whereas operating suicides — a conditioning train that includes sprinting totally different lengths throughout the courtroom — as a type of punishment for allegedly breaking the crew’s COVID-19 tips.

Jane Doe says Northwestern volleyball coach Shane Davis and an assistant coach knowledgeable her she would face a “punishment” for breaking the COVID-19 tips and the following day, the coaches allowed the crew’s captains to decide on her punishment.

As she ran the suicides, the volleyball teaching workers, crew members and trainers watched, the swimsuit says.

After the damage, the college responded by conducting an investigation, throughout which it suspended the crew’s coach and training workers, Northwestern officers advised NPR in an announcement.

Jane Doe additionally alleges that following the investigation and thru December 2022, she “never once played in a volleyball game” — whereas coaches singled her out and made her write an apology letter to trainers with no justifiable cause.

Doe additionally alleges she was not permitted to journey with the crew, regardless of beforehand having performed so.

In an announcement emailed to NPR, Northwestern University spokesperson Jon Yates mentioned the varsity is working to make sure it has “appropriate accountability” for its athletic division.

“Although this incident predated President Schill’s and Athletic Director Gragg’s tenure at the University, each is taking it seriously,” Yates mentioned.

Attorneys Patrick Salvi II and Parker Stinar, who’re representing the unnamed former athlete, inform NPR {that a} petition to proceed the lawsuit with out naming her continues to be pending.

“Here, we have a university where many brave young men and women are standing up for themselves, and we hope it’s a sign of things to come, where student-athletes are not abused in the pursuit of wins for the school but treated like the human beings they are,” Salvi mentioned.

Salvi and Stinar have additionally filed three lawsuits over alleged hazing within the soccer program.

On Monday, outstanding civil rights lawyer Ben Crump and members of a Chicago regulation agency together with a former Northwestern student-athlete announced yet another lawsuit involving the soccer program.

The lawsuit is the primary of what is anticipated to be a sequence of filings on behalf of a number of Northwestern gamers, Crump mentioned. The hazing allegations come weeks after former head coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired by the college.

Earlier this month, Northwestern additionally fired head baseball coach Jim Foster after reviews of a poisonous tradition throughout the baseball program surfaced.

Chicago radio station 670 The Score reported that Foster additionally allegedly made racist statements and discouraged gamers from reporting their accidents. When requested about this allegation by the radio station he denied all allegations, calling them “ridiculous.”

A Northwestern athletics spokesperson declined to remark concerning the investigation and Foster’s termination.