Category | Op Ed

Student athletes subjected to unfair monitoring

Published on February 26, 2008 by The Sentinel

    Last week, Sentinel reporter Kelly Blaine filed another stellar
piece of collegiate journalism about a policy in KSU’s Athletic
Department.


 

    The kid is just on fire and I really am a fan, but the story itself is as troubling as her writing is riveting. Apparently our student athletes are subjected to fairly invasive monitoring of their personal and social lives through their Facebook and MySpace accounts.

    I have to say, I really feel uneasy about this. All the arguments supporting monitoring -higher standards for student athletes and representatives of the school- seem to be pretty weak compared to a Constitutional right to privacy. And guess what? Your rights don’t end and should not be abridged simply because you are an athlete. This alarming trend may be symptomatic of both our litigious (that means lawsuit crazy for the 13th graders reading this piece) society and the “fortress mentality” the US has been slipping into since 9/11. “Oh please, Mr. Government, take as many of my rights as you need to, just keep me safe!”

       I understand that the school has the best of intentions, but someone needs to remind you people that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. While I normally agree with the athletic department’s policies, I really have to wonder if this one has been thought out. Honestly, I’d rather people get caught messing up while in college so they can get some help than just have them refine their skills at being sneaky. In the long run, people are going to make mistakes. As educators, coaches, and parents we need to minimize the damage while maximizing the learning potential.

       In my day, Student Athletes were ambassadors of the school because we were the best and brightest, not because the coaches and public relations hacks made it mandatory. Maybe, if there is such an epidemic of inappropriate conduct among our athletes –which I do not believe there is- we should bench the offenders. Maybe we shouldn’t recruit them in the first place. Physically preventing folks from making mistakes is a lot like carrying a baby everywhere; sure, they won’t fall down, but they’ll never learn to stand on their own either.

       And another thing: if the athletes are going to be subjected to this level of scrutiny, why not students in RSOs? Sure, let the faculty advisors of the chess club, the newspaper, student government, S.W.O.R.D., each of the honor’s groups, all the religious groups, and all the other myriad clubs we harbor on campus spend some time monitoring activities online. Hell, while we’re at it, let’s just assign someone on staff to look after each student personally until they graduate. What happened to personal responsibility? Hello? Isn’t this a RED state? I’d expect this kind of 1984, big brother nonsense in Massachusetts, but Georgia? Really?

    Folks, that kind of thing might work for a while, but in my book no one gets credit for doing the right thing if they were forced to do it. When you impede free will like this, all you are really doing is pushing the problems further down the line.