Personally I do think some people have honor and character, but I still don’t believe in lumping people together and saying derogatory things about that group…On that matter I would also not paint any particular group of people based on one trait with accolades…for example you could say that one governor (or senator or high school teacher or Jewish person or Methodist) has honor and character but it wouldn’t be accurate to say anyone who is a governor of a state has honor and character. When people start posting on and on about how fraternities should be abolished or about how football players are rapists I find it bothersome, but I certainly don’t think of it has rhetorical gymnastics…I think of it as people making bigoted statements.
Just as we don’t know the plaintiff, we also don’t know the 5 defendants. The 5 defendants all have been disciplined. They may possibly be basically good guys (and I’m sure their parents love them) that did some stupid , questionable stuff (based on the allegations- it will be interesting to hear what the defendants and the other first year recruits have to say if it ever gets to trial) . I just don’t know . I have no idea what their true character is, although some of you already seem to have concluded that they are bad guys and should continue to be punished… The other guys in the first year class stuck around, Michigan was willing to take two of the defendants. I would hope these guys have some redeeming qualities. I think most people are not willing to write them off just yet.
Sorry @sevmom but after reading those emails it’s hard for me to think of them as “good” guys. Both of my teenagers are varsity athletes so I certainly do not paint athletes in general with any broad strokes. But just looking at those emails, which are there in black and white, I think there was a very bad element on this particular team. It ended up affecting the whole team dynamic. The complaint alleges one of them was the “ring leader” and the rest followed along probably out of fear of ostracism. One had the courage to stand up and he has been labeled by some posters as the “misfit”. I don’t see it that way at all. Young men who think it is ok to allegedly abuse their teammates, chew goldfish and stomp them to death do not get a pass. They have issues. They need help not excuses for their behavior from adults.
And after thinking about it, I don’t blame the coach – he also coached the girls team and they had a record season.
So, if you think one was a "ringleader, " why group the others in with that ? I do doubt that all 5 of these guys have such bad character that they have no chance for redemption.
I didn’t say I thought there was a ringleader, I said that is what the complaint alleges. My point is that the one athlete who had the integrity and courage to stand up and tell the coach the truth when asked, is being painted as the misfit. Isn’t this what all parents teach their children - to resist peer pressure to do something that they know is wrong? It appears that in order to be a member of that team you had to violate the honor code of UVA.
I have no clue if the plaintiff is a “misfit.” I have said the family has the right to file a suit. And UVa did respond to the concerns so I’m sure there are already changes within the men’s program.
No, I would say ‘it appears that in order to be pals with the other guys on the team you could potentially end up violating the honor code of UVA," everyone on the roster is a member of the team. Any underclass person under the age of 21 at any college who even drinks one beer is probably violating their college honor code and/or the athletic code as an example. Plus, everyone involved was a "member’ of that team but there could be people, I suspect, that were not at the swim house that night so may not have violated the honor code that night. I think it is wrong to say the entire team is rotten. The complainant has identified these specific guys and the timing of his suit coincided with the beginning of ‘open contact’ season for the coaches so in that aspect he retaliated against UVa. I don’t think the timing was anything but calculated on the complainants legal team.
If true, so what?
HarvestMoon1 , You seem to somehow have access to all these emails. The only ones I have seen are the Mr. Mean type ones, that seem stupid, sexist, and lame. You seem to have access to ones that anyone might find threatening and would fear for their life and no one would take as a joke. Those are the ones I would like to see .
He did not list every guy on the team in the complaint, he did not list the coach, he did not list the college. He listed only those specific guys. He couldn’t really file a complaint against the college because the college did what it was supposed to do, but he could time the suit to do the most public image damage with potential high school swimmers. That’s what. But it is not correct to say that in order to be a member of UVa’s swim team you had to violate the honor code.
What is puzzling to me is how this thread has gotten so much traction. Most people seem to have no connection to UVa. It definitely is not a perfect school. Swimming is a non revenue sport with fairly small rosters but some of the women may be on track for Olympic trials.The Rolling Stone article may be making it an easy target. It had been in the spotlight and despite things like just just winning the College World Series ,athletic and academic honors for many of the students, this is what CC seems to want to focus on. Plus, it is PUBLIC and there has even been comment on that. These are 5 guys in an undergrad population of about 14,00 people Stanford has a band hazing incident going on now. Maybe you should move on to that.
This thread is not about UVA to me . It’s about hazing.
I agree but some people have seemed to want to make it into that.
Band culture overlaps with drug culture on the Venn diagram.
@sevmom I don’t think anyone has made this incident about UVA. My feelings that it is not about UVA have been made quite clear in my posts #315, 192, 202 and 359.
What I perceive in your posts and those of @momofthreeboys is a lot of waffling. I am not even quite sure after 31 pages of posts what either of your positions are. You both seem to want to blame Marcantonio. I agree with another poster that the blame is being place in a very passive aggressive way. The young man is described as not “fitting in”, “doesn’t get along or fit in with the group”, it is alluded to that he tattled and the question is posed “at what point does 1 kid’s desire get to impact 20 other people?” This leads me to believe that you both think this incident was OK and that Marcantonio was the problem not the alleged hazing or the boys who allegedly instigated it. But then when pressed you seem to retreat on certain behavior and say well of course that is not right… Which is it?
I am on record as stating that I think with the exception of the overnight in the amphitheater the emails and the events in the Swim House that night are totally and unequivocally unacceptable. Let’s assume for the moment that what was alleged happened, and the emails are what they appear to be. Which of the following are acceptable to either of you as an individual or as a parent:
–emails that threaten teammates with a “dry ice *ildo.”
–emails to teammates that use the salutation “dear *hit *unts”
–written questionnaires that degrade members of the women’s swim team
–answer to a questionnaire that states he would “abort” a female swimmer by cutting off her arms and legs and putting her in an oven.
–Instructions for a scavenger hunt that requires the “first years” to steal from the university, their teammates and retail stores.
–elephant walk
–eating and stomping to death gold fish
–putting “first years” in a bathroom with the radiator turned up high in August and directing them to finish all the alcohol in the room within an hour.
Here is a $25 million lawsuit.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nycs-baruch-college-hit-suit-fraternity-hazing-death-n357621
Criminal charges are expected…the criminal justice system moves very slow.
I don’t really get the fascination or disgust with the goldfish. People eat live oysters. People kill other fish and eat them. People eat live bugs and kill them by stomping on them.
I think some of these initiation rituals start small and get bigger and bigger every year. In my high school we had the year end ‘senior party’ and it was a contest to try to drink more 1/2 barrels than the class before. Bigger party, better party? One guy I know joined a frat and the year before the pledges had all had to bite the head off a live chicken. The frat put a stop to that, but this guy had heard about it and insisted he do it too, so he did in an unofficial initiation. He was an idiot. I think that’s how the FAMU band hazing got out of hand. Year one it was X, year two was X+1 and soon it was all out beating of new members with the theory being “I did it, you can do more, it will be worse.”
I don’t eat live oysters, but one difference I see between them and goldfish is that the pet industry routinely douses their fish with chemicals that are not approved or considered safe for human consumption. After all, they aren’t intended for human consumption. They are also generally being kept in very unsanitary conditions. I usually see dead fish floating in the tanks of the vendor where these fish were probably purchased. Also, they weren’t simply eating the fish. They were torturing them. These are vertebrate animals. So many disgusting behaviors on the list in post #455.
“I don’t really get the fascination or disgust with the goldfish.”
IMHO, it’s because it’s meant to be disgusting. People eat oysters voluntarily because they find them delicious (and they are understood to be food). No one wants to eat live goldfish. We aren’t snapping turtles. It’s a way of torturing people.
Food taboos don’t have to be logical. My sister had a client with a troubled child who was eating roaches that she found in her apartment. It wasn’t clear that that was dangerous, but it was a disturbing symptom because roaches aren’t food in our society. They are symbols of filth and loathing. That was the point. It doesn’t matter that fried insects are commonly eaten in Mexico, Thailand, etc. This child, in our cultural milieu, was expressing her misery this way. And in our cultural milieu, you make the first years eat live goldfish because it’s a sickening, upsetting thing to do.