Ohio State Sexual Abuse Case

[Mavric]

 

[Moiraine]

Quote

"OSU had actual notice of and was deliberately indifferent to the fact that Richard Strauss, M.D., an OSU employee, tenured faculty member, and the Associate Director of OSU's sports medicine program, sexually assaulted and abused hundreds of male OSU student-athletes and other male OSU undergraduates for over nineteen years," the lawsuit filed on Wednesday states. "Moreover, OSU officials aided, abetted, and actively concealed Strauss' sexual predation on OSU's students."

 

[knapplc]

This should serve as a really good life lesson for fans of all teams.

 

There were tens of thousands of posts by Ohio State fans condemning Penn State and then Michigan State fans for their schools' roles in the abuse scandals. Now it's happening there. 

 

We should denounce abuse. But we should be cautious in how we condemn fans of those schools, because we could be next.

[Ulty]

7 minutes ago, knapplc said:

This should serve as a really good life lesson for fans of all teams.

 

There were tens of thousands of posts by Ohio State fans condemning Penn State and then Michigan State fans for their schools' roles in the abuse scandals. Now it's happening there. 

 

We should denounce abuse. But we should be cautious in how we condemn fans of those schools, because we could be next.

 

I thought about this a lot when the Penn State scandal was going on. Joe Paterno's god-like status to that university was a major component of it. There are only a handful of coaches who have ever been similarly deified by their fanbase, Tom Osborne being one of them.

 

I would only hope that most of us, facing the facts of such a terrible situation, would not be so blinded by our fandom that we would not stand up for doing the right thing. But we got a small taste of it during the 90s regarding how situations like Lawrence Phillips, Christian Peter, Riley Washington, etc were handled. Those situations are not equivalent to the kind of widespread sexual abuse in these other cases, but it would not be difficult to see us doing mental gymnastics to justify what our own school and our own coach had done (or allowed) in such a case.

 

At least today, there would be more of a willingness in most places to take the right course of action, despite blinders worn by fans. With the Urban Meyer scandal last summer, a lot of OSU faithful seemed to easily come to terms with the fact that he should have been fired. Compare that to PSU a few years earlier, where there was still a sickening groundswell of support for Joe Paterno until the end. 

 

I understand how it is to be a die-hard fan, but I would still condemn anyone who turns a blind eye to sexual assault or child abuse simply because of their fandom. If that sort of thing happened at Nebraska, I would be heartbroken, but I would also be the first to say that the right thing needs to be done, no matter who needs to be investigated, fired, arrested, etc.

 

 

 

On a side note, I was working out at a hotel gym in Columbus, OH last weekend, and a guy walks in wearing a Penn State shirt. I felt a sudden compulsion to smash his face repeatedly into his treadmill dashboard, but I refrained. If I was a PSU fan or alum, I think I would have gotten rid of all my shwag long ago, and certainly never put it on in public.

[knapplc]

1 minute ago, Ulty said:

On a side note, I was working out at a hotel gym in Columbus, OH last weekend, and a guy walks in wearing a Penn State shirt. I felt a sudden compulsion to smash his face repeatedly into his treadmill dashboard, but I refrained. If I was a PSU fan or alum, I think I would have gotten rid of all my shwag long ago, and certainly never put it on in public.

 

I don't think I would give up my Husker gear, or stop being a fan, if something like this were to have happened at Nebraska.

 

University of Nebraska Athletics comprises hundreds of people and hundreds of student-athletes. If a Sandusky-like atrocity were to happen here, most of those employees wouldn't be complicit, and most likely none of the athletes.

[Calvin]

I wouldn't stop being a fan either.  You can't just turn that off.  But if my school knowingly turned their backs on these types of atrocious things, I'd be conflicted about showing my "pride".  I would still wear red to support the current players and staff, but wouldn't flaunt it as much.