Getting a handle on these college scandals

There are so many issues that are rising in society today but the most important one is the major problem in colleges today. Those issues include domestic violence, rape, and illegal recruitment of high school athletes. According to Anna Libertin in her article “The Truth About Domestic Violence on College Campuses” six in every 1,000 students will be sexually assaulted on college campuses.                 The three schools that have stuck out the most in these cases have been The University of Mississippi, The Ohio State University, and Michigan State University. The University of Mississippi or as most people call it Ole Miss was involved in illegal recruitment in which coaches and administration would pay out a total of $20,000 dollars including extra benefits to get certain athletes to come to their school. They were also involved with providing them the entertainment of strippers. Shown in Dennis Dodd’s article “How Ole Miss’ sloppiness turned a straightforward investigation into a scandal.”

The idea of this happening just to guarantee themselves the all-star recruit they need to have a good team is disgusting and just flat out low. The only thing that makes it worse is that these athletes are actually accepting these forms of bribery because they think that no one will find out and that money determines their future. In reality, their decisions and actions is what determine their future.

Although this isn’t a crime it just goes to show that most athletes don’t have the morals we would think they would have, especially with them trying to make a name for themselves.

At the same time we have cases that aren’t quite similar but relatable in the way that it happened at their schools. Those are The Mississippi state scandal and a scandal at The Ohio State University. This scandal involves Urban Meyer, the Ohio State’s athletic administration, and assistant coach Zach Smith.

The only difference between these two scandals was that at the same time this was going on an assistant coach and his wife were involved in a domestic violence or sexual violence case. This case involved a girl named Courtney Smith who was the wife of Zach Smith (Buckeyes Assistant) who domestically abused her back in 2015.

She was alleged to have been assaulted and beaten by her husband and left with bruises all over her body from her neck down to her arms. Although Smith informed Urban Meyer’s wife right after the incident happened, Urban claims that he was never kept in the loop and had no idea about the abuse Smith was facing from her husband.

The head coach claims that if he was informed of everything he would have fired Zach a long time ago, although Urban was accused to have deleted text messages about the case and was reported that he has known since 2015.

Urban Meyer covered this up because he wanted to protect the identity of the school as well as Smith’s identity but also avoid the repercussions that he would’ve been surrounded by. If Urban Meyer fires Smith right on the spot once he found out he would have risked having a bigger media fallout, judgement of his team, and faced more judgement of himself.

Another example of this is displayed in the Larry Nassar case at Michigan State University, where he was convicted of sexually assaulting the gymnastics team while he was treating them for injuries or sickness.

Michigan State did not do a good job at all with handling this situation. They may have gotten rid of Larry Nassar but the only thing they really did for the women was pay them settlement money to get rid of the whole issue. According to “In Larry Nassar sex-assault case, NCAA exonerates Michigan State” an article released by PBS the school reached a 500 million dollar settlement with hundreds of women and girls that were assaulted by Nassar. The Article also states that the former gymnastics coach Kathie Klages was accused of lying about the girls complaining to her that they were being assaulted.

This scandal should shed some light on to some people and show them that it isn’t okay to ever assault someone in way they’d get hurt as well as it not being worth risking ruining two lives or more in any of these situations.