Anti-Hazing Sessions At Danvers High School Thursday

DANVERS, MA — Danvers High School will host a series of anti-hazing information sessions on Thursday as the school community attempts to grow and learn from high-profile incidents of hazing and incidents of hate in the town over the past two years.

Dennis Goodwin from the Anti-Hazing Collaborative will be presenting the three sessions for student-athletes, coaches and staff, and parents and the community.

The student-athlete session is at 1 p.m., the coaches and staff session is at 4 p.m. and the open session for parents and the community is at 6 p.m. Student-athletes, coaches and staff who cannot attend their assigned session are asked to attend one of the others.

The anti-hazing sessions will include its attributes, prevention, warning signs, and other key discussion points.

The sessions are designed as one way for the school to improve its culture after members of the 2019-2020 boys hockey team were accused of locker room hazing, followed by a lengthy series of racist, antisemitic and hateful incidents involving graffiti and behavior both inside schools and within the greater Danvers community.

In recent months, Danvers High students, staff and parents have been involved in workshops involving the Anti-Defamation League, the district has held anti-racist curriculum workshops with parents and students, and hosted an intergenerational holocaust symposium.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)