Clemson agrees to fund anti-hazing program in lawsuit settlement

Clemson University has agreed to spend $40,000 to create additional anti-hazing programs as part of a settlement with a former soccer player who alleged she was seriously injured in a hazing incident, a university official said Tuesday.

Neither the university nor its current or former employees named in the suit filed by Haley Ellen Hunt paid any money to settle her claims against them, according to Chip Hood, Clemson’s general counsel.

“The claims against all current and former employees were dismissed with prejudice last Friday in exchange for mutual releases,” he told The Greenville News in an email.

But the athletic department did agree to fund a program “promoting healthy relationships among Clemson athletic teams and their members through education and other activities related to the prevention of hazing," he said.

Hunt has settled with all but one defendant, and the case is expected to go to trial this summer, according to court documents and an attorney for the plaintiff.

Former Athletic Director Terry Don Phillips, former Assistant to the President Marvin Carmichael, and Kyle Young, an athletics department administrator, were among the defendants in the case.

They were sued along with three coaches and 16 former members of the women's soccer team.

The only remaining defendant is one of the players, Maggie Murphy, who has requested that the case be remanded from U.S. District Court back to Pickens County court, where it was filed originally in September 2014.

Hunt alleges that she suffered serious head injuries during a hazing ritual in August 2011 in which she ran at full speed into a brick wall face-first while blindfolded and made dizzy by being spun around.

She claimed that such initiation rituals were “a longstanding tradition” on the team and that coaches were guilty of “knowingly permitting and assisting” the upperclassmen players in carrying out the rituals.

The coaches – Eddie Radwanski, Siri Mullinix and Jeff Robbins, denied that.

Hunt also claimed she was taken captive by teammates and put in the trunk of a car and driven around and forced to get out and perform "humiliating and demeaning acts" several times.

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