Carmel High School's basketball Senior Day was ruined—ruined!—by shameless tabloid reporters snooping around in the stands for salacious gossip. Oh, and the fact that three of the four seniors were kicked off the team for alleged forceable sodomy.
It all starts with an incident on a bus ride home from a game on January 22, in which senior members of the basketball team are accused of getting on a freshman bus (that they were not allowed on), luring at least two of the younger kids to the back of bus (while coaches were riding up front) and assaulting them "in the behind." During their investigation, police discovered a separate locker room incident with "sexual accusations" and worst of all, there is the belief that the school administration was trying to cover it all up. (No charges have been filed against anyone, but the investigation is still ongoing.)
Some players say they were threatened with suspension if they talked to the media and the security camera footage taken from the bus that night has mysteriously vanished. One parent spilled all the details he heard from his son on the freshman team, but only anonymously, because he's afraid of what the community would do to him for blowing the whistle.
Naturally, the basketball mad locals are quite intrigued by this tale and Fox59 in Indianapolis (Carmel is an affluent suburb on the northern border of the city) has been rather aggressive in their coverage. But not as aggressive as the "citizen journalist" high school dweebs who tried to intimidate professional reporter Kimberly King with their scary cellphone cameras. She was nonplussed. (Though she did have to apologize to one of them for telling him to "keep his pants on.")
Students booed King and her crew while trying to cover the Senior Night festivities after a fourth player was suspended just hours before the game. One of these geniuses even launched an always effective Twitter campaign to prove how tough he is. No one is really sure what happened that night or what kind of culture has been allowed to persist in the locker rooms at Carmel High, but one thing is clear—high school kids continue to believe that their shit doesn't stink even though all evidence suggests that it does. Real bad.
I'm not sure when the preferred form of bullying graduated from spit balls and soul-destroying ostracism to "digital insertion with their fingers" into other kids' anuses, but it's good to know that today's teens are even more cruel and stupid then they were in my day. Believe me, I would punch my 16-year-old self in the face if space-time allowed it, but I really hope I was never that much of a prick.
[Thanks to Bob Cook at True/Slant for his info gathering on this.]
Carmel hazing update, plus more high school athletic scofflaws [True/Slant]
4th Carmel athlete off the team [Indianapolis Star]
Father of a Carmel basketball player talks to Fox59 about a school bus assault. [WXIN]