Hopefully by now you’ve heard about the incident of Austin Harrouff, the FSU fraternity brother who killed a married couple and ate one of their faces this past weekend. If not, you’re missing out on the latest reason I am ashamed to be from Florida.
What you might not have heard about, however, is the article another writer for The Odyssey wrote in the aftermath. And while it pains me to give this article more page-views, I’ve linked it here.
On the surface, it looks like a harmless swing at social media journalism. And this is likely what the author was aiming for. Beneath that, however, is one of the biggest issues linked to our society’s relationship with crime.
Let’s start with the fact that this article was even written. Why do we have this fundamental need to distract ourselves from the reality of situations? Is it because we don’t want to accept that people can commit such atrocities? That’s what I would like to believe.
If that was true, however, we would’ve seen this kind of article crop up at every atrocity of justice. But did you see a post titled “8 things you might not know about Tamir Rice” by your neighborhood sorority girl? No, but I did see a few about “star swimmer” rapist Brock Turner.
Can we really be so naïve as to believe this is a coincidence? That we can say a child deserved to be gunned down by a police officer because he “looked like a thug,” but we can’t talk about how two high school boys raped a girl without bringing up their “promising careers”? There’s something terribly wrong about that.
This is endemic of a society that champions [usually white] athletes and Greek Life members, at the expense of everyone else. We are supposed to be awestruck, baffled, shocked that a star defensive tackle with good manners could do something wrong. In reality, we should be shocked that any human being could do something so horrific.
If we want to report on something important about this situation, why don’t we ask why three police officers pried him off of the victim’s face while he growled like an animal, but a twelve-year-old can be shot by police because it “looked like he had a real gun”? Clearly Harrouff was aggressive and violent when officers arrived on the scene, why were they able to diffuse the situation without firing any shots?
My point is, if you’re going to purposely distract people from the atrocities committed by “star citizens,” at least own your actions. Don’t lead readers down a misguided, biased path in the name of some twisted attempt at journalism.
Responsible writing is something that is clearly being lost in the recesses of clickbait articles with next to no substance. Imagine the torment that the victims’ families must be experiencing in general, nevermind what articles like this add to the heartache. I’m all for compassion and understanding, but where is the empathy for the innocent people in this situation?
There is one way to improve this article, by starting the list with the most important thing to know: he killed two people and chewed off one of their faces. If this is just in the initial wake of the tragedy, I can only imagine how twisted this story will get by the time this goes to trial.
