People, in general, are stupid. Not you, of course. Anyone reading this blog entry has to be highly intelligent. (Hey, I'll stick with that story if you do, too.) There are some times when I truly wonder how on earth our species has managed to survive as long as it has. I am presuming it has to do with pure, dumb luck.
This morning, I read an online article pertaining to a college football coach being fired. From what I could gather, this person knew about at least one instance of abuse that had occurred and even though he had not been the one to commit the crime, he was fired for not going the extra distance to fully report the incident in question. Whether this is true or not is actually irrelevant to my rant against humanity today.
Now don't get me wrong. If someone had abused my child and I found out later that someone else knew about it and did nothing, I would be livid. If I found out that person knew about others being abused before my child was victimized and the person in the know had not reported them, thus allowing the abuser access to abuse my child, I would want that person's head on a platter. As far as I am concerned, a person who says nothing and allows abuse to occur is just as guilty as the person who committed the crime. What I am saying here is that I do not have all of the facts in the aforementioned case and am therefore not passing any judgment on the fired individual. If he's guilty, I hope he's prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If he truly did everything he could have to stop or report the abuse, then I hope he is cleared. Regardless, he was fired for his connection to the abuse.
What makes me question the intelligence of some humans is the reaction some people have taken over this firing. College students rioted. People actually had the gall to claim the school board was embarrassing them by firing their football coach, yet they were the fools who were throwing toilet paper, hurling rocks, and making a huge mess while disturbing the peace. Who here is behaving in the more embarrassing manner? Who is doing more to shame their school? Who should look back on their behavior and have the decency to feel mortified by their actions? How can someone who is intelligent enough to be accepted into a good college possibly think that rioting was a well-thought out, logical means to protest what they considered to be an erroneous decision?
I seriously hope they used more sense than that if they voted this past Tuesday.
The question I ask my children when they have behaved inappropriately towards someone else is this: How do you think that person felt when you just did that? Well, how do you think the victims felt when they learned people were rioting because someone who knew about the abuse was fired? Not only did those people have to live through abuse, and relive it with each retelling in the news, but they have to suffer from knowing that other people think it was just fine and dandy for someone to know about what happened and still let it continue. What happened to empathy towards our fellow human beings? How would you feel if someone had abused you somehow and everyone seemed to support those who knew and ignored your suffering? "You," in this case refers to those rioting students, not you, my intelligent reader.
When I was in high school, there was another student who did everything in his power to sexually harass me every time he saw me. He mortified me consistently in front of his friends and even in front of one of the teachers. I was forced to go to the principal about it by a well-meaning relative who thought that would grant me a reprieve from the verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse. The other student was a wrestler in a school that prized their sports stars over their other students. The principal told me he would not do anything to go after the offending student unless I could get witnesses to stand up for me. Fat chance of that when they were all his friends or his favorite gym teacher. The principal even warned me that I was not allowed to stand up for myself in any way, shape, or form because that would turn me into the aggressor and I would be suspended or expelled for such actions. That principal was guilty of the same thing this college football coach has been accused of doing: knowing and not doing anything to stop the events from transpiring. How much worse would it have been if that principal was later fired for his lack of a proper response and the students decided to riot over that? A bad situation would have become far worse, and my misery multiplied exponentially.
We have all had times in our lives when we have felt betrayed by someone who should have stood up for us. I feel it safe to assume that even those rioters have had such events occur in their lives. Perhaps the betrayal was not as severe as those acts of abuse detailed by the news report today, or perhaps it was even worse. Regardless, we should, in theory, have the ability to empathize with others who are facing similar circumstances, whether it is the type of abuse or the act of perceived betrayal from someone who neglected to come to the needed rescue. Why riot when even the guy fired admitted he should have done more? All that does is insult those people who have already been victimized.
I feel shame on behalf of my country over the behavior of those rioting students.
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