Lacrosse ugliness at U.Va.

You said that any conviction and you should not be allowed to play college sports any more. That's what you said.

I support a more case-by-case evaluation of situations. I'd hate to see a really good kid pick up a random DUI some night and lose what he has worked his entire life toward. Some people truly deserve second chances. Should Michael Phelps have been kicked off the Olympic team? It's easy now to look at the UVa. kid and say it was obvious he was a ticking time bomb. But we know nothing about what kind of Eddie Haskell routine he was putting out there.

 

(1) Do we know he didn't?

(2) If he didn't ... because sometimes college kids do dumb shit.

 

Lugnuts: You would have been kicked off your team if you got anything below a B in any class?

Worst. Administration. Ever.

 

Being forced to face consequences isn't eternal judgment.

 

I'm not against consequences. I'm against nonsensical, extreme consequences.

 

That's right, Sonner. Public high school. Suburban Atlanta, GA. I'll never forget when my Algebra grade flitted around the 80 mark. Math teacher alerted my coach. Coach warned me. You better believe I got that grade up.

Okay - I'll say something like a jaywalking conviction would be okay to keep you on the team. Sure, there should be some standard. Speeding a small amount over the limit, for example, might not be grounds for dismissal from a team.

DUI? Well someone dear to me was killed in a DUI, so I happen to think there's no such thing as "some random" DUI. My sister-in-law was badly injured by a teenaged drunk driver in the D.C. area. I actually think DUI is one of the worst things you can do. Where I'm from in Georgia, there's now mandatory jail time for DUI #1. So yes, I would say a DUI would be grounds for dismissal from a team.

Can you tell? - I'M SICK OF THE SHIT !!!!

 

I know this is off topic, but damn. Get a C and you're off the team? Hell, my high school athletic department would have been forced to close up shop if we had those rules. I think we had to maintain a certain GPA, but our eligibility definitely wasn't based on any one grade in particular.

D is for diploma, baby!

 

You said that any conviction and you should not be allowed to play college sports any more. That's what you said.

I support a more case-by-case evaluation of situations. I'd hate to see a really good kid pick up a random DUI some night and lose what he has worked his entire life toward. Some people truly deserve second chances. Should Michael Phelps have been kicked off the Olympic team? It's easy now to look at the UVa. kid and say it was obvious he was a ticking time bomb. But we know nothing about what kind of Eddie Haskell routine he was putting out there.
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i'm a believer in "second chances," too, but please, only after some sort of wakeup-call's worth of discipline has been doled out. i concur uva did this guy no favors -- or the victim, in hindsight -- by not kicking him off the team and rescinding his free ride after his first guilty incident.

let the person stew for a year or two before ever revisiting whether to give him the second chance. a person shouldn't have to pay for life for a potential one-time stumble but they sure as heck should have to pay some price. sorry, but there are a hecuva lot more student-athletes ho NEVER have such a misstep.

and i', sorry again, but "good kids" -- when/if they have a one-time drunken stumble that warrants police intervention -- DO NOT respond by making their "first-time/one-time" offense worse by giving the officers a hard time. in my eyes, if an intervention by the cops is met by anything less than polite contrition, we're looking at a douchebag set to explode.

the older i get, the older my children get, the more entrenched in a zero tolerance policy i become. screw the kids that eff up. i care more about protecting the kids who don't.

 

Well said.

 

Plus, it's not like UVa is the only school in the country that has a lacrosse team. He could have played somewhere else.

 

I feel like draconian systems like you advocate don't give one-time offenders enough motivation to shape up, i.e. the whole carrot-stick thing.

 

The wake-up call is that you aren't playing sports anymore. The carrot is that you are still in school and not in jail and have a chance to make something of your life.