Hazing, Assault Charges Leave Black Mark On Texas A&M -- Drill Team Barred After 60-Count Indictment; Parents Say Behavior Isn't New

COLLEGE STATION, Texas - The accusations started flying back in March, when a puffy-faced Texas A&M University freshman showed up in the office of the commandant of the Aggie Corps of Cadets.

Travis Alton clearly had been beaten.

The blame, however, has been passed around in the months since Alton, a member of the Corps' elite, all-freshman Fish Drill Team, came forward.

His $25 million lawsuit describes a series of beatings between January and March. It alleges Alton's head was taped like a mummy and he was forced to cut his shoulder with a knife. Misdemeanor assault and hazing charges were filed against nine students, and disciplinary hearings were planned for 16 more.

The six sophomores, two juniors and one senior were trainers for the drill team - 41 determined students who emerged from a pool of about 250 to fill the boots of national champions who marched before them. Several of their predecessors performed at the beginning of the movie "A Few Good Men."

This month, the school suspended the drill team.

Although the precision rifle unit could return by fall 1998, any interruption in the team's 50-year-old legacy is a bruise for the tradition-rich school.

"I just see it as part of the university's identity," sophomore cadet Raven Brooks said. "I think it's going to be missed and it's going to be weird not seeing it next year."

Ironically, the drill team exists because of hazing. The outfit was formed in 1947 at the former Bryan Air Base, where all freshmen - "fish" in Aggie language - were moved to keep them safe from upperclassmen. Back then, A&M was all male and all military. Today, there are only 2,200 cadets, including about 80 women, among the school's 42,000 students.

After Alton, three other freshmen also spoke up about hazing, leading to a 60-count indictment, the suspension of eight cadets and the expulsion of one person who was just a semester short of graduation.

"There was nothing done to the freshmen that wasn't done to the sophomores that wasn't done to the juniors when they were freshmen," said Peter Hoffman, whose two sons pleaded no contest to assault and hazing charges. "The kids are going down like they committed first-degree murder."

A&M President Ray Bowen disputed that argument.

"If other students did the same thing, that would not validate what these students did," he said.

Ann Hanson, mother of expelled senior Jason Hanson, said A&M was too willing to let the cadets take the fall.

"They're letting these young men take a lot of the brunt for something the university should have dealt with," she said.

On that issue, the accused students and the victim agree.

Along with the nine students and the university, three administrators are named in Alton's lawsuit, which claims a former commandant, a vice president and a staff adviser knew about hazing in the corps.

New commandant Maj. Gen. M.T. "Ted" Hopgood insisted he knew nothing of hazing within the Fish Drill Team before Alton appeared in his office March 24. In April, he sent a letter to the entire corps, calling hazing "the moral equivalent of rape in that it is an act in which the powerful prey upon the powerless."

Hopgood denied the problem is widespread, even though in his one year at A&M he already has disbanded two other outfits because of hazing - one case in which students had to do calisthenics in a steamy shower room and another in which they were whacked on the buttocks with an ax handle.

"I think the majority of our cadets conduct themselves in accordance with the regulations," Hopgood said.

Alton's lawsuit, filed last month in federal court in Galveston, suggests otherwise.

"There is a long history of toleration and refusal to deal with the reality that hazing is a way of life in the corps and specifically in the `Fish Drill Team,' " the lawsuit alleged.

Hazing in the corps was exposed in 1984 when a 20-year-old sophomore died of heat stroke after unauthorized, middle-of-the-night exercises. Three cadets pleaded guilty to hazing charges.

In the Fish Drill Team case, three cadets have pleaded no contest in exchange for probation and community service. The criminal cases of the others are pending, and no date has been set for a civil trial.

Alton has returned to his parents' home in Tyler and plans to attend another school this fall. His mother, Jill Alton, said the family has no comment.