Illustration by Phil Freeman for The Current
On the morning of Feb. 28, members of Texas A&M University-Commerce grabbed all of the copies of the student newspaper, the East Texan. Why? They were interested in being the first ones to read the cover story—the first and only ones. The headline for that issue of The East Texan was “A&M-Commerce football players arrested in drug bust.”
The players who were caught on video taking the newspapers even stole all of the issues out of the campus police station.
At best, this comes off as an ill-advised prank; at worst, it is a criminal act. Simply put, it is a desperate act of censorship.
As if the players’ actions were not bad enough, this is what head football coach Guy Morris said to campus police in response: “I’m proud of my players for doing that, this was the best team building exercise we have ever done.”
While the university sent out a press release stating that they will punish those responsible, they have so far made no mention as to when or what they will do.
There is a problem with how the university is handling the incident.
They seem to want to use it as a teaching moment rather than treating it like the criminal act that it is.
But this should come as no surprise.
If the same act were to happen on any campus in the U.S., the leaders of the school would want to shuffle it away as soon as possible.
Using it as a teaching moment for all those involved does nothing more than show the football players that they can show the same aggressive behavior against people they oppose off the field as they do against people on the field. The aspiring journalists at The East Texan got a real-life dose of the lengths that people will go to silence bad press.
The reason that the Coach Morris said that he approved of some of his players’ actions is that he believed parts of the article false.
If that was the case, why would he give his approval of throwing the papers away instead of doing the sensible thing and bringing charges of libel against the paper? Rather, the football coach and some of his players come across as simple goons.
What the football team’s actions did do was turn what was once a local school newspaper story into a national story.
Something that would have been talked about on campus for a week has propelled the coach and the team into the spotlight for careless remarks, censorship, theft and, oh yeah, that pesky drug bust. The coach’s attempt to rally around his players’ actions has done nothing more than embarrass himself, the team and the school.
Texas A&M University-Commerce president Dan Jones summed up it nicely: “We will emerge from this incident with a better understanding of one another.” If we are understanding things correctly, Coach Morris seems to condone theft and censorship, and the leaders of Texas A&M look the other way when uncomfortable situations occur on their campus.
In addition, the Texas A&M University-Commerce athletics director wrapped up the incident perfectly when he was asked if he thought that the players acted alone: “I don’t think they are smart enough to do this on their own.”
We at The Current could not have said it better.
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