The whole Penn State mess hits close to home here. My life is filled with coaches and athletes. We discussed the likely scenario if one of our coaches encountered child assault in the locker room. Consensus is that calling the cops would be the 3rd thing to happen. After 1. Grabbing the child and moving him to a safe location and 2. Beating the crap out of the perpetrator. So many of the adults in my life are coaches and I honestly cannot imagine them protecting one of their fellows in this case. I'm personally not a violent person, but I know these guys well enough to know that violence is how they would respond to that kind of abuse of power.
I see every single day the relationship between coaches and the children they guide and I can't even express how sick this matter makes me. My experience has been watching boys learn, grow, and succeed under the caring guidance of coaches. The contrast to what I see happened at Penn (and other places of course) just makes me sick.
Sorry, hard to be coherent.
How is it that Westboro has the money for going on their snazzy and classy family vacations still? When I don't?
They are all lawyers. And amych is right, they aren't really a church. My hometown is Topeka so those guys get under my skin, and I've gone by many of their protests. It was funny when we drove by one and Em asked "Why do they say God hates flags?"
ION, if I have a bad cold I should probably reschedule tomorrow's dentist appointment, right? (I'm getting a cavity filled.)
ION, if I have a bad cold I should probably reschedule tomorrow's dentist appointment, right?
I would say yes. You could be contagious and your breathing is probably already impaired from your cold.
I think they'd probably send you home even if you went, tommy.
Cool. Now I can reschedule without feeling guilty.
Thing is, I am faculty in higher education and I am not around children on campus very much. When I am, the kids are related to my students or colleagues. I am one of the people who is unlikely to witness such abuse first hand.
So I think it probably wouldn't make sense to designate us as mandatory reporters, but my point earlier and raised again in this thread is that we should not have to be designated "mandatory" in order to call the cops and make sure a complaint is filed.
I call 911 if I see a car smoking on the side of the freeway. I have called 911 when I drove behind a suspected DUI. I believe in alerting authorities when I think a major crime has been committed or people are in danger. I sure as fuck would call 911 if a child was being abused.
I rescinded an offer of admission to a prospective student who sexually harassed a current student during a visitation weekend.
I don't have to be a mandatory reporter to do all of these things.
In the comments sections of local newspapers, there are people saying that Paterno had "no standing" to call 911. Since when do people think you need some kind of legal standing to call 911? Legal standing comes in much later.
