One of the two high school students convicted of rape in the Steubenville case has served his sentence and is now
For some, Richmond’s reinstatement to the team earlier this month was a disturbing signal that the celebration of football victories still prevails.
“The message that it sends is that Steubenville High School doesn’t care about rape,” Alexandria Goddard, a social media consultant who helped generate attention to the original case, writes in an e-mail to the Monitor. The district has failed to say specifically what steps it has taken toward “addressing the issue of rape culture,” she says.
On the other hand there’s such a thing as rehabilitation, and remorse, and progress.
Yes but on the other other hand, playing football isn’t a human right. Football is all mixed up with glory and machismo and aggression, and all too often with not giving a flying fuck about some little girl who got drunk at a party.
At a recent meeting of the Steubenville City Council, a local citizen reportedly objected to [Ma’lik] Richmond being given the privilege of participating in football.
Council member Kenneth Davis defended the school’s decision.
“Who are we to condemn this young man, when he stood up publicly with tears in his eyes and apologized?” Mr. Davis said in a phone interview with the Monitor. “I’m not taking what he did lightly, but he was 16…. Football gives you structure in your life…. If I didn’t have football in my life as a kid, I could be a street hoodlum myself.”
Ok wait – what kind of “structure”? If it’s a kind of structure that doesn’t encourage boys to understand that they don’t get to rape people, what good is it?