NMSU head ‘sickened’ by MBB hazing accusations
New Mexico State’s chancellor says university personnel interviewed members of the guys’s basketball group Saturday in the wake of hazing allegations that prompted him to suspend the program and place the coaching personnel on paid administrative leave.In a letter to the campus community, Dan Arvizu, the chancellor of the New Mexico State University system, stated he chose to stop briefly guys’s basketball to guarantee that hazing wouldn’t become the norm within the program.
“The most essential job I have as Chancellor of the NMSU System is to ensure our students are safe and safeguarded from harm,” Arvizu said. “That’s why I was so heartbroken and sickened to find out about these hazing accusations. Hazing is a despicable act. It humiliates and degrades somebody and has the potential to trigger physical and psychological damage, or perhaps death. Sadly, hazing can enter into a company’s culture, if left unchecked. NMSU policy strictly prohibits hazing, in all kinds, and it’s something we just will not tolerate.”
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Arvizu said the males’s basketball program, which canceled the Saturday game at Cal Baptist and suspended all team operations pending an investigation, would stay sidelined “up until additional notice.”
“We took this action after receiving reports of alleged hazing events within our men’s basketball group,” Arvizu said in the letter. “Our players and coaches were in California at the time, preparing to play Cal Baptist. To guarantee we fully understood this situation, we canceled that game, called the group back to Las Cruces and positioned the training staff on paid administrative leave. Once our student-athletes arrived on campus, they were met and interviewed by university workers who are specially trained to perform examinations into these sort of matters.”
A few hours before the letter came out, 2 Aggies, Shahar Lazar and Kent Olewiler, announced on social networks that they were leaving the team.Neither had played
this season. This was forming up as a redshirt year for Lazar, a freshman who concerned Las Cruces from Israel. Olewiler also took a roundabout course to Las Cruces; he was a favored walk-on who was not noted on the Aggies main roster.Lazar stated he was leaving because, “I don’t believe the program that I initially dedicated to aligns with my beliefs and core values.”Olewiler said just,”my recruitment is 100%open.”The suspension of the program Friday came 3 months after NMSU forward Mike Peake shot and killed a University of New Mexico student in what authorities called self-defense. Both the school and the Albuquerque district lawyer have released separate investigations after coaches and staffers were found to be in possession of multiple pieces of prospective proof in the shooting, including the gun, after the incident.Head coach Greg Heiar advised his group to leave town after the shooting and go back to campus, even though local authorities had actually asked to talk with three NMSU players who were with Peake, who was injured. On Friday, the school said the most recent claims are not tied to the Peake incident.The WAC, in a declaration, said the league is “monitoring “the NMSU situation.New Mexico State is 9-15 and 2-10 in WAC play.The Associated Press added to this report.