Closer Than It Seems
During the week of September 19th, several upperclassmen of the Sayreville War Memorial high school football team pinned down, groped and punched several underclassmen victims. About two weeks ago, these athletes were suspended for the entire football season because of charges of assault, criminal restraint and hazing. In response to the incident, Sayreville School’s Superintendent, Rich Labbe, decided to cancel the school's football season for the rest of the year despite the school's history of three sectional titles over the past four years and its wide regard as one of New Jersey’s top public high school football programs. The cancellation of the team's season will mark the end of its twenty consecutive playoff appearances, an unfortunate result of the mistakes of a few careless high school student athletes.The school’s lost football season will not be the only area of Sayreville’s campus affected by the charges of these seven students. In fact, the school atmosphere and its reputation will also demote. For the upcoming years, Sayreville will be known as the "sexually harassing team" due to massive publicity of the incident. Furthermore, the students who currently attend Sayreville will reconsider where they want to attend school, including sport recruits who will be intimidated by Sayreville’s current reputation. Overall, there will be a general sense of distrust and uneasiness around the campus which will introduce fear into the lives of the students who attend the school.Not only will the reputation of the school be hurt, the lives of the victims of the incident may also drastically change. Although the school is continuously showing their willingness to provide unlimited support for any of the victims, it may prove unable to help the troubled students. Even with the school’s help, these students will now be frightened to walk through school hallways or gym lockers. And besides, what is the most that a school can offer these traumatized victims?Despite their limited ability, Sayreville administration responded to this case the correct way: by halting all things related to the football team. This way, students, especially ones involved in the incident, will be able to reflect. With reflection and thought, the community of Sayreville and their reputation will have to time to rebuild. In addition, victimized students may use this time to receive help or reassurance from others. Surprisingly, Exeter has been in similar situations. Although sometimes sexual assault cases seem distant from Exeter, past incidents prove otherwise. Multiple assault cases arose in the near past at Exeter, some resulting in the end of student’s Exeter careers. Sayreville’s situation isn’t as far as we may think; we as a community should understand and be wary of these types of issues.