EDITORIAL: Major differences between student athletes, regular students
The difference between students paying a tuition bill and those on athletic scholarships shows through.
On Friday, the Office of Student Life handed down a swift, serious blow to the CMU club hockey team, issuing a monumental five-year ban for hazing following a recent team party.
Tom Idema, assistant director of Student Life, said the team was charged with being in violation of sections 3.2.13 (alcohol policy), 3.2.19 (hazing) and 3.2.25 (violations of an RSO) of the Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities and Disciplinary Procedures and suspended from play until the fall 2017 semester.
In recent years, athletes competing on scholarship from CMU have found themselves in the police and court systems on charges of manufacturing and selling drugs, theft, domestic abuse and driving under the influence to name a few incidents.
Such athletes served various suspensions, from being held out of a limited number of games, to being completely removed from their programs.
It’s interesting that those athletes who made irresponsible decisions off the field were punished, yet their teams remained afloat.
It’s concerning that as soon as an RSO holds a party that got reckless and out of control they are given the death penalty meanwhile some student athletes get into trouble and their programs and unaffected in any way,
This sends the message to students that student-athletes with NCAA ties are treated differently.
If hockey played in the NCAA-level at CMU, you could certainly bet they wouldn’t be facing a five-year ban from competing. Maybe there would be suspensions, maybe even a few people released from the program, but they death penalty for five years?
No way.
This isn’t meant to justify what the club hockey team did at all. Maybe there is more to this story that hasn’t been revealed.
But a five-year ban on club hockey comes across as a knee-jerk reaction by the Office of Student Life for a first-time offense and isn’t sitting well with a lot of students and alumni.
According to team captain Ricky Jones, seven police cars arrived on scene to break up the party, though zero tickets were reportedly handed out. The recent party doesn’t seem to compare to some of the more severe cases that have popped up at CMU in the last decade.
It all comes down to this: would this have happened if the club hockey team had students on athletic scholarships would they receive a five-year ban?
