(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — The latest former Northwestern University football player — who plans to file a lawsuit against the university — spoke Wednesday about the racist bigotry involved in hazing incidents he endured.
Ramon Diaz, 36, played football at Northwestern from 2005 – 2008. He was an offensive lineman. He said he still thinks all the time about the sexual and racial abuse he suffered.
“My experience playing football at Northwestern University haunts me to this day,” said Diaz. “I never will forget the mistreatment that I experienced for those four years.”
One such mistreatment mocked his Latino heritage. Upperclassmen shaved the words “Cinco de Mayo” onto the back of his head. He said everyone standing around watching laughed.
“No one stopped it,” he said. “I think that’s worth repeating again and again. No one did anything.”
Diaz is now a clinical therapist working on a doctorate. He said coaches had promised his parents that they’d be like surrogate parents for him while he was at Northwestern. Instead, he said they were “perpetrators disguised as coaches to groom, exploit and violate the human dignity of many of their players of color.”
Diaz hasn’t watched football in at least 10 years, he said, all because of the abuse he suffered while on the Northwestern University football team.
He said the abuse caused him to try to kill himself with painkillers in 2007 while he was still a student-athlete at NU, but he added that he could not speak out back then.
“I could not afford to say anything that might jeopardize my scholarship,” he said.
Regarding Northwestern’s announcement that it’s planning a second independent investigation into hazing allegations in the athletic department, attorney Parker Stinar said the results of the first investigation should be made public.
“They can still move forward with Mrs. [Loretta] Lynch’s investigation of the entire athletic department — whatever she’s commissioned to do — but why can’t they release the investigation that’s already been conducted, and why can’t they do it before the football season starts?” Stinar said.
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