America! This grand place where you can make your dreams come true and live a marvelous and fulfilling life, right?! Perhaps this is true for some groups of people, or maybe this is what some people tell themselves, but our country has drifted far away from the glory it was once known for. Our country is surely not the only one in this world that is corrupt and twisted, but for now I will be focusing on the country I was born and raised in, and the current events in this country that make my blood boil.
Normally I am not very much in the loop with current events due to their tendencies to make me feel hopeless, upset, disgusted, etc.; however, one top trending event that has the world buzzing is the “All-American Stanford swimmer found guilty for assaulting an unconscious woman”. Upon reading a headline that was worded as such, I assumed that the boy received a fair punishment for his crime, so I did not look any further into the story. The next headline I saw was along the lines of, “All-American swimmer sentenced to six months in prison for assaulting an unconscious woman”.
The story goes that a 23-year-old woman made the decision to drink a significant amount of alcohol at a local party in celebration of her sister visiting home. She came across the swimmer at the said party and somewhere in the night ended up passed out behind a dumpster. There are holes in the story because the woman had a BAC of three times the legal limit, and does not remember any of the details. The swimmer also had a BAC of two times the legal limit, but claims that he knows much more about the story and that, overall, he is not to blame because she liked it.
This was a 20 year-old-man who followed/saw/found an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, and rather than being an All-American rock star and calling an ambulance, he decided to have his way with her. He admitted that he wanted to “hook up” with someone that night, as if this was his goal. No matter who it was or whether or not they wanted it, he was going to get it with someone. That sounds like a person with sound judgement who deserves to further his career and glory, right?
A minor charged with robbing a cab driver gets more prison time than this adult man who made the decision to violate an unconscious human being. Is this country really trying to tell us that taking money from another person is more heinous than literally inserting oneself into another human being who did not provide any form of consent, let alone being conscious during the fact? In what world is this an appropriate and just sentence?
The judge in the case said that a harsher sentence would, “have a severe impact on him.” Many other local people who have been on the news to discuss the case have also made comments such as, “What this guy did was wrong but both men and women need to be much better informed on the effects of alcohol. Alcohol is a drug. Its effect on the subconscious mind precipitates this kind of unfortunate occurrence.” No matter how much alcohol either of the people drank excuses anything that happened in this situation. Alcohol cannot be an excuse in something like a bank robbery, because although the person’s judgement may have been impaired they still made the CHOICE to commit a crime.
If you google “Brock Turner mugshot” all that comes up is this suit and tie picture of him smiling, not a frowning, guilty photo of a rapist. Let me leave you with this: imagine if the swimmer assaulted a man or a child, or if the swimmer was not white, or any other slight differences that would have made a world of difference in this case, and then ask yourself: is this a just system?
