There is no reason that Badger alumni and current students have to see their arrested athletes splattered all over the television and newspaper front pages. It's even getting to a point that it is not even becoming news anymore; it's almost expected.
I feel sorry for the athletes in this campus that are hard-working students who have done nothing more than attempt to excel in their sport and in the classroom. This ranges from the starter for the hockey team to the backup for crew. I feel sympathy for these students, because a few student-athletes are damaging the reputation of this school.
Wait-not damaging the reputation of this school and its athletic department, more like keeping up with its incredibly low standards- but that's another story.
I understand that we should not attribute one's actions to the whole group, but it's hard not to. In the past four months, two football players and a basketball player were arrested on separate occasions on major offenses. As you watch the news on a nightly basis, this almost seems to have become a normalcy on campus.
I opened up the story on ESPN.com about Dwayne Smith being arrested, and in the last paragraph there is mention of Boo Wade and his arrest last month. How much bad press does this university have to receive before it takes action?
There have been no convictions of these recent arrests yet, so it cannot be assumed that what these people are guilty. However, I'm sick of the bad press this campus is getting because of rape charges, battery allegations and the like. Even if they are not guilty, how does one get oneself into the kind of situation in which they are being arrested in the first place?
Head Coach Barry Alvarez said Monday in a press release that, \If the allegations [against sophomore running back Dwayne Smith] prove to be true, this type of behavior is simply unacceptable. The intent of our student-athlete discipline policy is to emphasize the seriousness of incidents of this nature and establish a level of conduct that student-athletes must maintain to keep their privilege of competing at athletics at the University of Wisconsin.""
I hope Barry sticks to his guns on this one. For every one student-athlete who brings these kind of charges and allegations onto the campus, there are another 200 or more upstanding student-athletes that are getting their name tarnished for being a part of this athletic program. It's not fair to those athletes to have to play second fiddle because one person finds himself in a police mugshot in the paper.
We have a policy for a reason... and hopefully it is not just to be continuously overturned.
Josh Salm can be reached at jdsalm@wisc.edu.
