GHOSTS OF EDITORS PAST: Task accomplished?

For the past three years, I covered the men’s hockey team for The Daily Free Press. This inevitably meant that whenever anyone wants to know anything about the team, they end up asking me.

Whenever anyone has asked me for my insider opinion on the Boston University men’s hockey team within the last nine months, I haven’t known what to say. As most of you probably know, the team found itself at the epicenter of a scandal beginning last December when two players were arrested within 10 weeks of each other on charges related to sexual assault and drunken behavior.

After the second arrest, BU launched a task force to look into the culture of the team. They wanted to know if there was something about BU hockey as a whole that caused these incidents to happen twice in one year.

On Wednesday, that task force released its conclusions, and to sum them up, there is nothing about the BU hockey culture that caused players to sexually assault other students. In addition, the task force found that academic standards seem to be a bit lower for the hockey team than that of your average student and that the hockey team hosts a “culture of sexual entitlement” since hockey players seem to have a lot of sex without being involved in emotionally committed relationships.

Essentially, the task force is telling us that BU hockey players are just like athletes at every major college with a competitive athletic program. Then the task force suggested a bunch of changes the team could make in order to improve itself as a part of BU.

Some of these changes are good ideas. I do think BU hockey players need more education on what constitutes sexual assault and how to avoid situations in which they may be accused of sexual assault. Clearly, that message did not get through clear enough last winter. I think a peer-mentoring program would be fantastic for the freshmen hockey players. They become celebrities on campus overnight, and they need to be taught by the right people how to handle the spotlight.

However, when it comes to nightlife and some academic suggestions, I think the task force is kidding itself.

The “culture of sexual entitlement” is a joke. It’s not the hockey players who feel they are sexually entitled — it is the majority of people within the age bracket. Go to the bars around BU. Go to the BU (or MIT) frat houses. Tell me that the majority of people in those places aren’t looking to hook up, and then tell me that the “culture of sexual entitlement” is in any way unique to the hockey team. It’s part of college (not solely BU) culture, part of the 18-to-24-year-old age bracket’s culture, not part of the hockey team’s culture.

And, yes, academic standards for hockey players are not as high as those of other students. However, this is a concept commonplace throughout college sports. How many of the football players at USC could have gotten in without their talent on the field? How many of the basketball players at Duke earned a 2020 (the lower end of Duke’s requirements) on their SATs?

Ostensibly in response to the hockey team’s lack of commitment/lowered academic standards, the task force suggested eliminating the option for student athletes to enroll in the Metropolitan College. I’d like to remind everyone that hockey players are not the only BU athletes enrolled in MET. There are plenty of basketball players, soccer players, etc. who will graduate with a degree in MET. To the best of my knowledge, the basketball and soccer teams have not had an issue recently with sexual assault. And it’s not just athletes who take classes in MET. Plenty of BU students take MET classes. Why can’t athletes? Is MET really to blame for last winter’s arrests?

No. What happened last winter is something that happens on every college campus in America today. It is unfortunate, and we as a university should learn from it and try to be better individually and as a whole, but drastic change is unnecessary. Eliminating MET or accusing the hockey team of being any more sexually entitled than anyone else is ridiculous. Teach them how to handle the spotlight, remind them that no means no and move on.

At the end of the day, I still believe this task force was all just a way to show that BU was doing something about the arrests, and it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about the average college-aged male.

If you were to ask me today for my take on BU hockey, here’s what I’d tell you. The BU hockey program is one of the best in college hockey. The team has a coach who really cares and a group of players who are committed to being the best players and team they can be. They are a team worth rooting for.

I would encourage you to go to hockey games, cheer with your friends and support these guys. That does not mean you have to worship them, and in fact you shouldn’t. Do not act like these players are gods (or sex-crazed, dumb jocks) because they aren’t. They are 18-24 year-old guys, and they often act their age. You can find some of them at bars or partying on weekends, and you can also find some of them singing along to Lady Gaga, eating twice their body weight at the dining hall or hanging out with their girlfriends (because, yes, there are some hockey players in emotionally committed relationships).

Underneath all that hockey gear, they are students just like you. Let’s treat them that way.