Staff Reports
Two former East Lake High School students claim they were subjected to racial and sexual taunting during hazing rituals at East Lake High School while playing for the team’s varsity baseball team last year.
The students, Jay King and “J.N.”, in a lawsuit filed in Pinellas County Court Jan. 24, claim they were taken to a wooded area behind the school’s baseball field to participate in an “Oreo Run” in which the players were instructed to place an Oreo “in one’s buttocks” and race other players.
Losers of the race had to eat the used — and potentially soiled — Oreo cookies.
“When Plaintiff J.N. broke free from the attempt to force him into participating in the Oreo Run, he desperately ran through the muddy, wooded area behind the school, and was chased after by other players, yelling verbal insults at him and trying to grab him,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit alleges they only stopped after King threatened to call 911.
No teachers or coaches were present during that incident, according to the lawsuit.
The players claim they were further bullied and retaliated against after they refused to participate.
The two former students also claim the team’s assistant coach, who is not named, called them the N-word to their faces. Other claims include teammates who allegedly exposed their genitals to other players making sexual thrusting motions on one another.
The players say East Lake High School failed to supervise the team and its coaches adequately. The actions, they say, caused anxiety and depression as well as insomnia and lowered self-esteem. The two students later transferred to other schools.
Pinellas County Schools spokeswoman Lisa Wolf said in an emailed statement the district “fully investigated the incident both internally and externally and found there was no negligence on the part of our staff.”
The students and their parents, Charlie King of New Port Richey and Shannon Norwood of Tarpon Springs, are suing the Pinellas County School District seeking damages in excess of $15,000.
In addition to trauma inflicted on the students as a result of the alleged incidents, the lawsuit claims the parents also incurred financial costs associated with moving their children to other schools.
