-The Chad Washington case is just that, a case. It's "in the system" and thus beyond any of our control. I hope justice is done. Unless you were an eyewitness to the incident, commenting about the case is really an exercise in futility. But I will post updates, of course.
-The problem with the Twitter comments is complex and troubling. First off, let's remember:
1) These are very young people and here's a newsflash: young people in college say and do a lot of stupid things. Based on what I've seen in recent years, more and more young people are almost PRIMARILY doing their "talking" online. Their ability to tell the difference between public and private conversation is pretty blurry.
2) But since everyone knows that, the fact that the athletic department didn't strongly suggest or order all the athletes to keep their Twitter and Facebook accounts private, (some individual coaches I suppose could have ordered this), is beyond me.
No doubt, that's a policy that will be pursued from now on.
To tell you the truth, I was following a lot of the football players' accounts in hopes of simply continuing to follow the program. I thought I was catching about 90% of the Tweets, but I obviously missed a great deal of the offensive comments. Had I seen them, I can promise you I would have used whatever back channel contacts I still have in the athletic department to warn them about this and hopefully something would have been done. But again, monitoring these students is certainly not my job nor my place.
3) At least one of the athletes who wrote some of the offensive Tweets has apologized and said publicly that his Tweets do not reflect who he is.
According to this site, Thomas Callahan has made this statement:
"These tweets were not intended to be taken seriously and in no way reflect my personal views or morals."
I just wanted to make sure that statement got out there.
3) And below is a letter just sent via email to the entire campus from Dianne Murphy and Head Coach Pete Mangurian:
Dear students,
In addition to joining the statement sent to you earlier by Columbia’s undergraduate deans, we feel that it is important for us to address the campus community directly and independently.
Our athletics program is greatly disappointed by the language and sentiment expressed online by a select few Columbia student-athletes.
These comments are not representative of the more than 700 Columbia undergraduate students who participate in our athletics program, or the coaches, administrators and staff who serve the University and our campus community.
Columbia Athletics is steadfast in its support of, and appreciation for, diversity on campus and in the world around us. Personal expressions of racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and any other form of bigotry are abhorrent. This is disheartening and embarrassing for everyone involved. We respect and support the University's goals and ideals of acceptance and tolerance of all members of the campus community.
We are addressing this inexcusable behavior with the individuals involved. We will also address this with each of our 31 varsity teams. All of our coaches, administrators and staff understand and appreciate how important it is for everyone on campus to communicate and work together in a civil and respectful manner.
We are working closely with our campus partners to make sure that we are diligent and proactive in our response to this matter. The athletics program is committed to providing additional resources to continue to educate our student-athletes about the importance of respect, civility and inclusivity in everything we do. Moving forward, we will continue to reinforce these important values that are so vital to our University community.
On behalf of the members of the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education and the Columbia Football program, we offer our sincere apologies to members of the greater Columbia community.
19 comments:
The Mangurian/Murphy letter looks good. Callahan should probably say a bit more. And when I say "a bit more," I mean "a LOT more."
Callahan has a problem with Jews. As a result, I have a problem with Callahan. I find it tough to find his apology to be anything more than formulaic. To think that my financial and emotional support is going to a program which tolerates a player who refers to this City as "Jew York" and uses an F bomb to describe how he feels about a supposedly growing Jewish population frankly disgusts me. It doesn't mean that I'm thin skinned. It means that I am deeply and profoundly revolted. On the other hand, I read with great interest the very excellent piece by Anthony Villamagna, which hopefully represents the mindset of the vast majority of our players.
Unless you actually know Tom Callahan as person, not what his Twitter account says, please reserve judgement on him. I know what his twitter account says, but people need to realize that this is a Twitter account, and while he should have been more careful about what he posted and who/what else he was representing as a member of the Columbia football team, I know that those insensitive tweets he wrote were merely attempts at comedy for his twitter followers, a.k.a. his friends. His friends who followed him on twitter were black, white, asian, jewish, etc., and they knew that his tweets might as well have been coming from a comedian if they were on Twitter. I know Tom as someone who, IN REAL LIFE, is accepting of all races, religions, and creeds. If anything, this situation shows a problem in the culture of this generation of kids growing up. This is the way that kids talk to each other all across the country, and a kid like Tom shouldn't be crucified for trying to be funny by making inappropriate jokes on a twitter feed.
It's still not clear, and has to be, why these tweets were not seen and/or acted upon by the AD and coaches. Pete has tweeted many times, so is well aware of that medium.
People who attend the CA receptions (SF, LA next week?) can at least ask.
Excellent letter from Dianne, some good will come of this.
I think that's right. We do want to hear more right now. But before we do, we have to ask ourselves how far we're willing to go when it comes to accepting what we expect to be statements or acts of contrition. If these players were older, I think I'd have less sympathy for them. And I also think we're dealing with young people who don't really get that communication online is not really communicating the same way as when you're just with friends in private or semi-private places. No excuses here, I'm just asking everyone to consider what they are looking for as far as contrition.
Also correct to say that one's Twitter account is not who a person really is. It does NOT excuse hurtful things written on the feed and it should be dealt with, but "saying" something on Twitter is a lot different from saying something and believing it in non-cyber life.
The point about the dept. not doing a better job of monitoring the Tweets is a good one, but allow me to defend the dept. at least a bit by saying that's a lot of work.
However, as someone whose work the dept. has EXTENSIVELY scrutinized and responded to way too often over the years, I can say it can be done and perhaps the dept. should have spent less time scrutinizing me and more time following its own endorsed athlete Twitter accounts.
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2013/05/09/not-homogenous-group
Interesting article by Anthony Villamagna (didn't he quit the team last year?) in defense of the football team. Hopefully oldlion is right and this reflects the views of the team.
This is excellent by Villamanga, I will post it in the main body of the blog now.
He was injured for most of his CU career, btw.
If the roster is correct and the dates published are correct, some of these messages occurred before these young men were in college. In fact some were dated back to 2011 and 2012. Regardless of time, Tweets of that nature are inexcusable.
Anthony Villamagna did not quit the team. He was declared physically unable to perform. He is a terrific young man.
2 things:
I do not believe any tweets before these people came to Columbia are useful in this situation. These kids are exactly that, KIDS. They were in high school when they tweeted some of those things, and I do not think that's fair.
Also, please leave personal judgement out.
@oldlion: You do not know Tom, you merely see his tweets, which while they were tasteless jokes, they were meant as jokes. Anyone who knows Tom personally knows he has the reputation of being the class clown, and his jokes were meant to get a laugh. Which you can see he did successfully, considering he had many favorites and retweets on his tweets. I think they were wrong, but still meant as a joke
Here's an idea. Select 100 non athlete male students and follow their tweets back through high school. Bet they won't be any different than the athletes'.
Jake, your a smart and rational dude. I ALWAYS enjoy reading your blog.
No one has ever done stupider things than I did in college. It's impossible. It's record that will never be broken. Looking back now, I appreciate the people at CU and elsewhere who eventually "led me in the correct path." I hope, believe, expect, and even demand that someone will do the same for these ballplayers. I know we're all looking forward to seeing how that takes place.
Mitch S. '68CC
Great points guys. I was a rather narrow minded kid from PA when I arrived at CU. I kept all of my conservative values but I was much more open minded about many things, including others being permitted to have their own opinions and values by the time I graduated. I would think that my comments on many things would have changed quite a bit over the four years I was at CU.
I've been in countless social situations where an acquaintance had a beer or ten and then made a few comments involving, say, Jews which he never would have uttered in a sober state. I recognized that the comments were made while wearing beer goggles, but never did I equate that mitigating factor with the alternate state of the comments having never been uttered.
I treat Twitter remarks the same way. These kids are sending informal comments to friends that they incorrectly assume will remain private. I give them full credit for being smart enough not to say the same things in public but, at the same time, I don't just pretend that the comments weren't made.
When I return to the office on Monday morning, I don't forget what my co-workers said on Friday night. I give Tom Callahan full credit for being smart enough not to say his anti-Semitic remarks in a public forum, but I do not confuse that with the delusion that he does not believe what he wrote.
every year the first year athletes sit in a required social media awareness program as a part of NSOP. In this presentation the presenter "shocks" the audience by pulling screen shots of various athletes' facebook and twitter accounts and putting them on the screen, showing them that if someone wants to get info on them one can, and that "private" doesn't always mean what they think. The athletes are reminded to be responsible and that at a place like CU being athletes makes them targets. They are also told this in team meetings.
Most of the athletes get the message, one team, who thinks the rules don't apply to them because of their coach, apparently does not.
Above poster, are you describing an event that actually took place? What is NSOP? Are you implying that Coach M. is at fault, and if so, why?
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