I think, as has already been suggested, that judgement and resulting punishment be based on fact. Did anyone learn anything from the Duke Lacrosse mess? The whole world was pushing to immediately execute college athletes and a coach was forced to resign; mostly because he believed his players, and said so.
In the end, it was B.S. A damn Prosecutor was disbarred..disbarred for Christ sake!
If the player's guilty, he should be punished. That punishment should be consistent with punishment any other student would get for the same transgression. No more, no less. Athletes should not be favored by the justice system. Nor should they be treated more harshly.
Unfortunately in the court of public opinion, reasonable thought is left at the door.
The sooner all the facts are out in the open, the better as far as I'm concerned. Did the player hit another person with something other than his own fists? Big question - I'm no lawyer or cop, but reading the statute, the rest of the stuff is minutiae beyond the difference between a fist fight, and fight that involves some sort of object used to hit (or defend). What is this other pending court charge about? Another important question.
The facts now are that McQuillan has not 1, but 2 court dates now for different things in the next 2 months. What's going on with this guy? Somebody needs to figure it out.
It's pretty clear to me, that establishing more than 1 court date is not the kind of leadership is not the quality of leadership that Diaco preaches that he wants. It's certainly not what I want in a senior captain type of player.
If these court dates are products of unfortunate circumstance, and the UCONN police booking a football player on this kind of charge without there having been an object of some sort other than fists involved or something, is not a hypothetical that I find hard to believe, and whatever the automobile charge may be - if it's a DUI and he's going for accelerated rehab, vs. and unpaid parking ticket - these are circumstances that need to be sorted out.
I think that the sooner it all gets a spotlight shined on the facts, the better, and until then there is no choice but to suspend the kid internally. I have no idea what kinds of actions that means, but the scholarship certainly has to be weighed.
I understand your point Fairtides about athletes being the same as a general student, and I agree with that in the strict sense of law and order, but the counter/ and my opinion is that scholarship athletes need to be held to a higher standard at least internally within the university.