Very Bad Things

I'd like to be serious for a moment and discuss the sexual assault trial of former Gopher football player, Dominic Jones. Just before the beginning of the trial, there was a message board thread at GopherIllustrated.com discussing the subject. As these things go, the discussion was pretty heated as posters started bickering about legal procedures, morals, and the typical douche-bag male response to rape allegations: "The girl was probably just upset because he didn't call her back the next day or something."

If you want to get yourself good and pissed off, go to their message board and find the thread labeled "Dominic Jones". Actually, I sort of helped get this thread going early on by posting this article and drawing comparisons between the defense attorney in this trial to Gordon Bombay before he was sentenced to community service and had to coach a kids in hockey team in the movie The Mighty Ducks. After reading the ensuing flame-fest, I calmed myself and posted this response below:

Wow, if this doesn't get your blood boiling on a Tuesday morning. Forget all about the lawyers, judges, and football team for a second. Put yourself in this situation as one of these guys. You're hanging out in your apartment with 3 other guys and two girls. One of the guys starts a drinking contest and gets the two girls to play along. One of these girls ends up taking 8 shots of straight vodka filled to the rim of the shot glass. This guy then retreats to his bedroom with the other, not-so-full-of-vodka girl.

This leaves three guys sitting with one very, very drunk girl. Imagine you are one of these guys. At what point would think it would be a good idea to take turns having sex with this girl? Would you be the one to suggest it to everybody? Would you do it if somebody else came up with this idea? How about if this lady "consented" and asked you to do this? In your clear-minded, stone-sober state, would you want to go "run the train" on young lady who you just watched knock down 8 shots of vodka?

Hypothetically, let's say you would. Afterwards, you have to call in her friend to help her to the bathroom where she can't even keep balance while sitting on the toilet. Then after hauling her to the couch and letting her pass out, would you think it would be a brilliant idea to call up another one of your friends and tell him that you have a girl at your place who's "putting out"? Then to cap off your night of genius ideas, you decide to record your friend on camera when he comes over and performs these acts on a girl who couldn't even walk a couple hours ago.

That was just a quick recap of the case report. Again, I ask you to forget all about the legal processes, football suspensions, and all the previous bickering and flaming in this thread. Does this sound like something you would do and feel good about? Does it sound like something that you would be OK with your friends doing? Would you just shrug it off if this happened to your daughter, sister, or any other female you care about?

So that was my lecture I gave to a bunch of strangers online. I should have really been more self righteous and arrogant, because my post really didn't get any response. Apparently you have to be a complete ass if you want attention on an internet message board.

Anyhow, the trial is going on right now and there are some new tidbits of testimony that come out each day. Still, nothing new has been revealed to make me believe that Dominic Jones is innocent. He may be proven not guilty, but that still doesn't make you innocent. He made the biggest mistake of his life that night, and he will have to carry that with him every where he goes. And to Keith Massey, Alex Daniels, and EJ Jones (the other players mentioned in the case report): fuck you guys, too. The only reason why you all aren't on trial is that the aspiring porn director, Alex Daniels, didn't pull out his cell phone video camera earlier that night.

Booze and sex is a very dangerous combination. I've had my nights where I decided to combine the two, and I'm very fortunate that nothing bad happened. But it could have.