New lawsuit provides most detailed account to date of alleged Northwestern football hazing

A fourth former Northwestern football player filed a lawsuit against the school Monday, accusing it of negligence while providing the most detailed account to date of the alleged hazing that occurred within the football program.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of former Wildcats quarterback and wide receiver Lloyd Yates in Cook County Circuit Court, includes new information about the hazing acts that allegedly occurred within the team, including claims that members of the coaching staff were aware of those acts – and, in some instances, subjected to them as well.

According to the lawsuit, assistant coaches were "ran" by players "on more than one occasion." The complaint defines "running" as incidents in which a group of players forcibly held down a nonconsenting individual and "[rubbed] their genital areas against the [person's] genitals, face, and buttocks while rocking back and forth."

“During a training session during the Fall of 2015 or Spring of 2016, a strength and conditioning coach was ‘ran’ by members of the football team, on the field, in front of the entire team and coaching staff,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit does not provide any additional details about that incident. It also does not identify the coaches who were allegedly subjected to the hazing acts, nor any of the players who allegedly participated in them.

"We were all victims, and I want to make that clear," Yates said in a news conference Monday. "No matter what role − if you were being hazed, or on the perpetrating side − it was just a culture that you had to find a position within."

In response to a series of questions about the lawsuit, including claims that coaches were also hazed, Northwestern vice president for global marketing and communications Jon Yates wrote in an email to USA TODAY Sports that the school is conducting a review of Northwestern athletics and its anti-hazing measures, while "working to ensure we have in place appropriate accountability for our athletic department."

Northwestern president Michael Schill also wrote in a letter to the campus community Monday that he is "committed to supporting our student-athletes and to re-building any damage our athletic program may have experienced."

"That commitment includes creating processes and safeguards so that what happened in football can never happen again at Northwestern," Schill wrote. "That commitment also includes celebrating, defending and caring for both students and staff who are unfairly implicated by a broad brush."

Northwestern previously comissioned an outside investigation, which substantiated allegations of hazing within the football program including "forced participation, nudity and sexualized acts of a degrading nature." The full report has not been made public.

Former Wildcats head football coach Pat Fitzgerald, who is not named as a defendant in Monday's lawsuit, was fired in the aftermath of that probe. Through statements released by his attorneys, he has denied having any knowledge of hazing within the program.

Mounting lawsuits

Monday's lawsuit is the fourth known complaint filed against Northwestern over the hazing scandal, but the first with a named plaintiff, Lloyd Yates.

It is also the first lawsuit that has been filed by well-known civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Steven Levin, who said last week they represent more than a dozen former Northwestern athletes and have had discussions with more than 50 other potential clients. Crump referred to the lawsuit in a news conference Monday as the start of "college sports' #MeToo movement."

Another group of lawyers, led by Pat Salvi and Parker Stinar, previously filed three John Doe complaints against Northwestern.

Yates, who played on the Wildcats football team from 2015 to 2017, alleges he was “ran” by 12 to 15 upperclassmen on the Northwestern football team at an off-campus preseason camp, known as Camp Kenosha, in August 2015. He alleges the incident occurred in the common area of a dorm building and caused him to feel “embarrassed, ashamed, dehumanized, powerless, dirty and anxious,” according to the lawsuit.

Yates also claims he witnessed teammates being pressured to participate in "naked events," such as rope swings, pull-ups and one-on-one drills. He was called to do a naked quarterback-center exchange, according to the lawsuit, and "felt forced to do the drill, for fear of retaliation and not belonging to the team."

"It's like a brainwashing culture, that was just so normalized," Yates said. "And it's just wild to think back, and look at the complaint, to look at what we put up with and what we had to go through, and just how it was so normal."

In addition to negligence, Yates' lawsuit accuses Northwestern of willful and wanton misconduct and violating a gender violence statute in Illinois. He is seeking damages of more than $50,000 for each count.

New context, details

Monday's lawsuit does not identify any of the victims of the alleged hazing acts, with the exception of Yates, nor does it name the players who facilitated or orchestrated those acts.

It does, however, provide context and new details about the alleged hazing.

The lawsuit claims the acts were often carried out by a group of upperclassmen who dubbed themselves the "Shrek Squad."

"They would dress with either no shirts or shirts with holes cut out over their nipples. Some would wear thongs," the lawsuit alleges. "The 'Shrek Squad' would flicker the lights, and chant 'Shrek is love, Shrek is life' while screaming, clapping and yelling."

Much of the lawsuit focuses on instances of "running," which it describes as a means by which older players could "assert their dominance" over younger players. Some of the targeted players were perceived as being overly confident, according to the complaint, while others were not contributing meaningfully to the team, sometimes due to injury.

The lawsuit alleges the "Shrek squad" would play a siren noise from the 2013 movie "The Purge" prior to acts of hazing, claiming that the noise would have been audible to members of the football coaching staff.

"Frequently, after a night of hazing at Camp Kenosha, the coaching staff would comment and scold the players that they had been too loud the night before," the lawsuit states.

Other alleged hazing acts include naked events and "the car wash," in which a player had to walk through rows of naked teammates in the shower. The lawsuit also describes the "Gatorade shake challenge," in which young players were pressured to chug protein shakes sometimes until they vomited, and "The Trading Block," in which coaches and players traded insults in a large-group setting.

"The insults often involved exposing personal details of the coaches and teammates lives, on some occasions exposing infidelity in committed relationships or questioning sexuality in front of the entire group," the lawsuit alleges.

USA TODAY Sports previously reported that at least one coach, Northwestern associate head coach and safeties coach Matt MacPherson, witnessed players doing naked pull-ups. MacPherson did not reply to requests for comment last week.

Additionally, Yates' lawsuit claims that team nutritionists were aware of the "Gatorade shake challenge" because they "would vigorously and loudly monitor the distribution of Gatorade shakes on the days in which these challenges would occur."

The lawsuit further includes new allegations of racial discrimination by members of the football coaching staff, including a claim that an unnamed white coach saw a Black player with new headphones and asked, "You stole them beats, didn’t you?" The lawsuit does not specify when the incident occurred, the parties involved or any additional details.

Contact Tom Schad at [email protected] or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.