I would be lying if I said I know absolutely anything about college sports. Scratch that, anything about sports, in general. I know the basics: football involves a touchdown, baseball involves three strikes, soccer involves a goal, and so on and so forth. But, it doesn’t take any understanding of sports to understand that Baylor University's Football program should undoubtedly receive the “death penalty.”
FYI, for those of you who, like me, do not know much about sports, the term "death penalty" in regards to sports refers to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's power to ban a school from competing in a sport for at least one year.
On Wednesday, May 17 of 2017, a former volleyball player, identified as Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit against Baylor University, alleging that eight football players lured her to an off-campus apartment, drugged her, gang-raped her, and videoed the gang-rape. It didn’t stop there, however: days after the alleged gang rape, Doe claimed that “Baylor football players sent several text messages in which they attempted to paint a completely different picture of what had happened that night. One football player told Doe that it was consensual and that she ‘wanted it.’"
If you have even half of a heart or brain, it is impossible to not be simultaneously angered and sickened by the aforementioned but, unfortunately, it gets worse. The alleged rape of Jane Doe is not an uncommon or isolated occurrence. Court documents state that the rape is part of a ‘hazing ritual’ that occurs when the Baylor football team allegedly ‘initiates’ freshman recruits by having them gang rape semi-conscious girls.
Jane Doe’s lawsuit comes a year after “Elizabeth Doe” filed a lawsuit on the basis of an alleged rape that occurred on the Baylor campus by Baylor athletes. In fact, Jane Doe’s lawsuit is the seventh Title IX lawsuit to be filed against the school. But that's not all: reports say that 52 rapes had been committed by 31 football players from 2011 to 2014 at Baylor University. 52 rapes in 4 years. And who knows? Those are only the incidents that have been reported, it is completely possible that there are so many others.
The bottom line is, how many more rapes is it going to take for some sort of action to be prompted?
Since the lawsuit against Baylor University has taken place, many people have taken to all forms of social media to voice their opinions. I was shocked, to say the least, to see that people were actually defending the football players and the program at Baylor.
How can we defend these people? Or this program? Quite frankly, I don’t even know how we can defend this university. All of the above have created an environment in which repeated rape is normalized instead of condemned. 52 rapes in 4 years. Court records state that when Jane Doe’s mother contacted the assistant coach of the football team and gave him a list of some of the players who attacked her daughter, he confronted several players about it, but when the players termed the situation “fooling around” and “a little bit of playtime,” the coach did nothing more and failed to report it, even though mandated to by federal law.
The repeated rape at Baylor University by its football players and the negligence as a whole by the staff of the football program points to the fact that the program should, in fact, receive the “death penalty.” However, many feel as though the “death penalty” would not be a fair punishment to the football players not involved.
Shall we have a conversation about fairness? Because a young woman who goes off to college with the intention of receiving an education and fulfilling her hopes and dreams but instead is left with scars that will never heal and insurmountable pain does not seem fair to me.
Where is the fairness in the Baylor football program just “moving on” while these victims more than likely will never get a chance to do the same? There is none.
Sports programs are not more important than women and to be quite honest these men should be in prison instead of practice.
Of course, the answer to this issue goes far beyond the football field and far beyond the “death penalty.” But as a whole, humanity needs to start taking responsibility for the role we have had in this atrocious tragedy and the many others just like it. I mean c’mon, when did it become okay for young men to gang-rape women as a “bonding experience?”
In order to start to take responsibility, the first thing that has to be done is the enforcement of the death penalty on the Baylor University football program.
