COLLEGE’S EPIC FAILING
Youngstown State has effectively told women on campus they aren’t as important as the university’s football team
A young woman, around 20 years old now, who was at the center of a national story filled with violent, horrifying details is somewhere reflecting on the fact that the two young men who raped her four years ago are not just moving on with their lives.
They are getting the chance to follow their dreams and being put in positions to be leaders and role models in the process.
Yet again, college football is failing.
If you’re a great athlete who can help a team win games, your behavior off the field doesn’t matter.
That’s the message Youngstown State projected this week when it allowed Ma’Lik Richmond to join its football team.
His former high school teammate, Trent Mays, has joined the football program at Central State University (Ohio).
These two young men have no place on a football team.
The NCAA is taking steps — albeit tiny ones — when it comes to its member organizations dealings with sexual assault.
The group must stop allowing men who are convicted rapists to participate in athletics. It has to end. To recap on Richmond and Mays, the two were arrested after sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl for hours in the basement of a home in Steubenville, Ohio, when they were both players on their high school football team.
They repeatedly assaulted the girl, who was incapacitated by alcohol. They documented the rape in text messages, photos and videos and posted it on social media.
Convicted and served time
Both athletes were tried as minors and both were convicted and served time in juvenile detention centers.
And now, after being locked up for short stints, both will follow their dreams of playing football at the next level.
Richmond will sit out for one year, according to the school.
Youngstown State coach Bo Pelini said he met with Richmond and learned about the case before determining that he deserved a chance to play.
Pelini, as well as the rest of the staff and administration at the university, made the wrong decision.
The argument that arises any time something like this comes up is always that these young men deserve second chances.
Second chances don’t have to mean athletic participation, scholarships and the advantages that come along with being a college athlete.
Being one of the very few athletes who have the chance to play at the collegiate level is a privilege and should be treated as such.
Standards of a person’s character should count as well as his or her athletic ability.
It’s a shame that the woman who was abused by these men has to watch as they move on while her life was forever altered by their actions that night in 2012.
It’s sickening that people like Pelini can’t think of her and other victims like her before deciding to put men like this on their football teams.
Richmond was 16. He was old enough to know that raping a girl, photographing her naked body, assaulting her and effectively bragging about it on social media was wrong.
A slap on the wrist
He spent 10 months in juvenile detention and has to sit out one football season.
That’s basically a slap on a wrist for someone who committed a horrific crime.
The NCAA has a Sexual Assault Task Force. That’s progress.
But it’s not enough progress yet. Things must change. There should be blanket regulations — the same way there are for academic fraud and recruiting violations.
If you can be kicked off a team for cheating on a test, you should certainly be dismissed for sexually assaulting someone.
The NCAA’s hands are tied in its current setup. The organization is led by member presidents.
Each NCAA member university should be taking a stand on these issues. If they all did, rules and regulations would change.
If there were black-and-white rules, the trickle-down effect would be immediate.
When there are clear violations, young athletes would be forced to think twice about their decisions. We aren’t even close yet, unfortunately.
According to the National Sexual Violence Research Center, one in every five female college students is raped. Youngstown State has about 6,000 female students.
By allowing Richmond to play for its football team, the university has effectively told those women on campus that winning games is more important than they are. College football is failing. It has to stop.