Thanks to some great reporting from the Duke Chronicle, more and more information is coming to the light concerning Rasheed Sulaimon being accused of sexually assaulting two different women. The details that have been reported are troubling, confusing to some, and are part of a situation that should be played out over the course of a full investigation by the law.
Notice that last part? You know, the one most people are going to ignore. It is odd, despite it being very early in this whole process, that nearly everyone on the outside has their opinion already formed on this matter.
First things first: You don’t actually need to have an opinion on something like this, believe it or not. You can just wait for more information to be discovered and released, then maybe start to form an idea of what your thoughts are on the matter. Or, um, you can go the route many have decided to take instead — which is either blindly defend Duke or just do the complete opposite.
I don’t know which side is right or wrong, although that has less to do with their opinions, and more with the fact that there just isn’t enough information out there for me to form an educated thought on the matter. Still, this situation is highlighting — yet again, unfortunately — an ugly truth about people in sports. Basically, a good number people are going to think what they want to think because fandom knows no other allegiances than being more loyal to your favorite team than a person is to paying their taxes.
You can go to the comment section of this article to see the divide between people or simply search the mean streets of Twitter. Not all of the commentors are seemingly out of their minds, mind you, but a good portion of the conversation skews in either of these two directions:
1 – What was Duke supposed to do? They have no legal obligation? Coach K would never do anything wrong! Etc. Etc. Etc.
2 – Duke should be given the death penalty. Coach K should be fired. I always knew Duke was evil. Etc. Etc. Etc.
At the moment there are no ways to tell which of those thoughts are right or wrong. Whenever all the details are out there, though, and the dust is settled, those very people will use that as validation for opinions they formed well before they actually should have.
The fact of the matter is that publicly taking one of those two stances right now seems rather dangerous — especially for people who are Duke alums, fans or dedicated Duke-haters. Considering Duke was in the middle of a lacrosse scandal just a few years ago, one that garnered national attention and immediate strong stances on the matter (most of which turned out to be wrong), one would think we would have learned better by now.
Sigh.
I do get these types of people to a very small extent. Some of the people who would like to shut Duke down are just fans who hate Duke — I am not talking about them; I’m focusing on the people who are backlashing against the university and are just appalled by the accusations Rasheed Sulaimon now faces. While it is understandable to some extent, and all of us would like someone like Coach K or a school official to comment in a more detailed way on the matter, America is — at least supposed to be — a nation in which a person is innocent until proven guilty.
Duke, a private school, even has a responsibility to protect the privacy of Sulaimon. As disgusting as that may sound if it turns out he has done these acts, go back to the principle of innocent until proven guilty. If Sulaimon is cleared, it would be almost as deplorable to realize that the people who were there to protect him hurled him under a bus before due process ran its course.
The loyal to a fault fans are a bit harder to understand. However, Coach K and the university have a reputation of doing things the right way. Now, I’m not entirely sure if that’s a myth built through Coach K’s successes as a coach (very rarely do these legends build behind a sub-.500 coach) or if it is rooted in cold-hard facts, but there’s a reason why many want to give the school the benefit of the doubt. I can’t fully relate, but I imagine that if I thought I knew someone well and s/he was charged with doing something I could not fathom they were capable of, I would react a similar way — I think.
Here is what I am asking begging from all of you: Can we please just wait? There’s no harm in waiting before we start doing all sorts of dragging names through the mud, on either side, or calling for some form of justice that will never live up to the expectations you want.
I assume any of that is unrealistic, of course. Comments to this article or people in my mentions on Twitter will believe that I am somehow defending the opposite side of their stance, and this entire article was meant to be a preemptive attack on their belief systems… which is actually the whole point of it to begin with.
Have a good one, Opinion-Take-For-The-Sake-of-Having-One-Guy. These and other situations that blend severity, complexity, and a process which takes time are not the ones made for you… even though you might think the opposite.
