Duke lacrosse players, NOT involved in the sex scandal of a few years back have recently decided to sue the school and the town for emotional distress, according to reports.
This is CRAZY.
I love the black eye that Duke got out of this, but SERIOUSLY, what emotional stress did the Duke PLAYERS suffer that they didn't bring on THEMSELVES?
Did I miss something where the PLAYERS decided to throw the party that ended so poorly? It wasn’t like they went to this party and got trapped. They PLANNED the party.
I am curious how the conversation among the party planners went:
Duke LAX player one: "Hmmmm, hey guys, maybe we SHOULDN'T have a party with a black stripper invited to “dance” for a bunch of aggressive white guys."
Duke LAX player two: "Don't worry about it. I am SURE we will act like gentleman and not make her feel threatened at all to want to FAKE being sexually assaulted/raped"
Duke LAX player three: "You are TOTALLY right. We WILL be on our best behavior, no doubt! We are all responsible and no player on the team underage will consume alcohol either!"
I know ultimately they were found NOT guilty or the charges were dropped or whatever, but you DON'T SET YOURSELF up for that stuff. I recently had a conversation with a former college athlete about scholarship players and he tried to defend these stupid athletes. The ones that receive a scholarship (that, true, they work hard for), and represent the university they attend.
In my opinion if you have something to LOSE (like a scholarship), BE EXTRA CAREFUL. You aren't afforded the opportunity to be a normal student because you are on scholarship. You are representing the school! Don’t walk down the street drunk and possibly get suspended and let down your team, coach and school. Don’t throw a party you KNOW is maybe not the right thing to do. You want to see strippers, go to a strip club.
And to top it off, The SCHOOL AND THE NCAA both were going to let the guys NOT charged transfer, with ZERO penalty, to another school. If they did that, they could STAY ON SCHOLARSHIP. OR, lest we forget they were allowed to STAY at Duke ON SCHOLARSHIP.
COME ON!
If you are one of the players and you didn't want to have that stigma, YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE GONE TO THE PARTY! Or if you went and you see stuff happening, try and end it. Or at the very least you could have LEFT. And when you leave, have WITNESSES SEE you leave. Call the coach when you get HOME and without telling him what happened, you still let him know you are in for the night. Then when this story breaks the next day, he will know YOU weren’t involved.
These players at Duke are looking for easy money. Who doesn’t have emotional distress? I think EVERYONE does at some point in their lives. Now having to live through being wrongly accused in a rape case is a little more than the average person, but remember... the people suing are the OTHER members of the team that WEREN’T accused. Their stress is something that I believe they could have avoided AND I believe they were offered a chance to avoid it by transferring out WITHOUT having to sit out a year before being able to play. (And PS, the team didn’t look all that distraught as they advanced to the NCAA championship game before losing in the finals.)
Guys, quit looking for a payday. The guys accused, I can believe, but you other fellows? PLEASE!
And to top it all off, as I am ALLOWED to have my own opinion about the matter.. where there is smoke there is fire. Just because the charges were dropped, that doesn’t mean you were completely innocent. You did throw the party. I remember OJ was found not guilty, but does that mean he was innocent?
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