Tribune sports writer Steve Yanda wrote a thought-provoking column last week regarding the alleged sexual assault that occurred at Duke University's campus roughly a month ago.
With all due respect to Steve — his column was well written and researched — I completely disagree with the premise of his argument.
He contends that the root cause of the problem was under-aged drinking. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The events that happened on Duke's campus were not the result of some overwhelming societal flaw. They were the result of the poor choices a handful of college students made.
To illustrate this point: Raise your hand if you have ever consumed an alcoholic beverage before the age of 21. Raise your hand if you have ever done this with a group of other minors. Raise your hand if you have ever been accused of gang-raping and beating a stripper while consuming alcohol as a minor. I'll bet a whole bunch of hands went down, or at least I would hope so.
Yanda's logic is indicative of a troubling pattern in our country today. No one, it seems, is willing to assess blame on the matter of personal responsibility any more.
The first vivid recollection I have of this pattern is the tragic event at Columbine High School some years ago. In the wake of the tragedy an uproar came about because of violence in the media. That must have been what made those boys do it.
More recently our country's battle with obesity has come into the spotlight. Was that the fault of those who chose to eat McDonald's three times a day, seven days a week? Nope. It was the fault of fast food chains for not serving healthy alternatives.
Now, as a scandal rocks Durham, N.C., we're already looking for the scapegoat.
Violence on television made me kill. McDonald's made me fat. Liquor made me rape. It's never my fault these days, it's always someone else's.
This isn't the first time a college athletics team has hired a stripper for a good Saturday night. It's not the first time a college athletics team got together and got pass-out drunk. But it is one of the first times I'm reading about an alleged sexual assault that occurred while a college athletics team gathered for strippers and drinks.
Perhaps the saddest thing about the mess in Durham is whether a rape occurred, and with so many sidebars about the players' pasts and the strippers' pasts I doubt we'll ever know.
The events in Durham have caused us to call a lot about our society into question. Elements of racism, sexism and classism are all present in this debacle. But in my mind the biggest question we'll tackle is the issue of personal responsibility.
Hopefully we can step back and see this for what it really is: an unfortunate event created by four or five people that made poor decisions at a team party. Those four or five people are the ones responsible for this mess and its fall out; not some major societal ill regarding when it's legal to take a drink of beer.