Football Max Melton & Chris Long Suspended
- Thread starter Tango Two
- Start date
Thanks for the input. I have met both in the Blue Lot and had no issues.
If you seem him at the OSU game, wake him up from his nap and tell him I said "hi" and give him a hug for me. 🙂
Making a random stranger walking down the street bleed without their consent is pretty unethical and illegal.
Unethical speaks to a morally wrong decision or action. Hard to tell if what they did was unethical or not without knowing their intentions. If they intended to harm, then yes. If they were naïve or stupid to the fact that they could hurt someone - then no.
I'm a bleeding heart as you know but if you can gain admission to Rutgers you should know hitting someone with a paintball at close range will cause harm.
Listen I am not saying toss them from school or even from the team based on what we know. But I am saying it is very serious and they should be out at least through the hearing in November unless a judge determines it was not them that did it before that.
Nothing unethical? Really? 🙂
Imagine you walk up to a stranger and, for no legitimate reason, punch them in the stomach. There's no bruising, no bleeding, just a bit of momentary pain, maybe a loss of breath for a few minutes. Is that ethical behavior? Or imagine you (assuming you're a guy) walk up behind a pretty girl you've never met before and pat her on the butt. Is that ethical behavior?
What Max and Chris are accused of doing is at least as bad as punching a stranger in the stomach or patting a stranger on the butt. Perhaps even worse given the bruising and bleeding.
I would argue that touching anybody, directly or indirectly, without their permission, is unethical.
Nobody can be this dumb can they?
First, you don't even know if what they did is criminal, have they had their day in court? You seem to be very comfortable gathering a few tidbits from the media and then becoming prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner in regards to these young men. Is that ethical behavior? Is assuming their guilt on a anonymous sports board where you can hide beyond an alias, ethical? How about letting us know who you really are and opening yourself up to scrutiny, to me that sounds much more ethical, wouldn't you agree?
They were not naive to think that firing at close range wouldn't hurt anyone. The act by itself is intent to scare and injure
While intentions may mitigate the degree of of the ethical breach here, they cannot absolve the attackers entirely. It's still unethical.
It is never ethical to touch somebody without their permission, except in extreme situations where doing so might save their lives or otherwise assist them and/or when the person being touched is unable to give permission. It's likewise unethical to shoot stuff (paintballs, bullets, BBs, potatoes, even water balloons) at innocent people who are not willingly participating in an activity where permission has been implicitly or explicitly expressed. Call it touching from a distance.
I think people are confusing ethics with how big a deal people generally view a thing. And those two things aren't the same thing at all. People overlook ethical breaches all the time. Shooting at me with a gun will prompt an entirely different response than tossing a water balloon at me. Doesn't mean there wasn't an ethical breach in each case.
You appear to not be following the thread very closely. I've been arguing harder than anybody that we don't know if they did what they are accused of all along and people should wait to see what happens. I've also argued that even if Max and Chris did it, they will (and should) get off, legally, with a slap on the wrist.
Having said all that, SOMEBODY apparently shot these people with paintball guns. And that behavior is unarguably, undebatably, unethical. Your statement that it wasn't unethical is ridiculous. It doesn't matter who did it.
If the three kids who got shot turn out to have made up the whole thing, then they're the ones who've done something unethical. That still doesn't mean shooting somebody with a paintball gun isn't unethical.
Who I am, and who you are, and who Max and Chris are for that matter, is totally irrelevant to a discussion about the ethics of a particular action.
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Yes, it would. And the manner of the response, and other things. It's not nearly as simple as he's admitting.
I'm really curious about the close range thing.
What is close range? In my mind close range for a paintball gun is about 5 feet or less.
These paintball shots were supposedly done from a car, and the victims were at specific addresses (such as Tillet, or Quad 3, etc.). I'm not really seeing how the range could be very close. Can someone explain?
If these guys were not on the team I’m sure people would not be so forgiving
20 pages of this. Impressive.
What happens if those kids are acquaintances or classmates with the players and they did it because they thought it was just good, clean horsing around, is that unethical? it's stupid, but not unethical. Again, you are trying to hard, let it play out and let's see were it goes.
You are the one trying too hard. Constantly making excuses for the players. It is certainly unethical under any circumstances to shot at people at close range with a paintball gun at unsuspecting people.
Probably not.
If they turn out to have done what they are accused of (something I'm far from assuming at this point), then legally, I feel pretty sure they'll get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. And I'm okay with that because it's what most people would get, assuming no prior issues, athlete or otherwise.
Again, if they did it, I hope the coaching staff and parents collaborate to create a longer lasting and somewhat painful lesson here. This is a hugely teachable moment. Basically, I'd ground the players where they can only attend classes or other academic school functions, or football practices and games. And a huge heap of very public community service in around the RU community. That might not sound like much, but it'll hurt kids that age.
And, after reading some of the posts about the ethics involved here, I might require that they get an A in a course in ethics. 😃
LOL..were you the guy driving down the street, patting the college ladies on their tushies?
Nor used for something other than its intended purpose.
Wasn't it three separate, lone instances? What's the chance all three incidents just happened to be people they knew? And by the way, their actions were enough for the police to be summoned. I do agree, let it play out and see what happens. I smell a downgrade in charges and/or a plea bargain.
I didn't mean to run over and kill the nun pushing her baby niece in a stroller while doing donuts on a wet public road with lots of pedestrians. I was just horsing around. Totally ethical, right?
You are trying to judge the ethics of the behavior based on the result of the behavior rather than behavior itself. It doesn't really work that way. If somebody shoots a paintball gun from a car in the general direction of people out walking around in the neighborhood, that is still unethical even if the paintballs never actually hit anybody.
The law takes into account the degree of harm in the charges assessed and the sentencing handed down. Ethics and the law are related, but are not the same thing.
If whomever shot these paintballs did so in a deserted field, on property they owned, aiming at trees with nobody around, and a trespasser came out of the woods behind the targets and got hit, then you can claim that there was no unethical behavior by the shooters. That's not the situation here.
While currently in the process of raising 2 teenage boys I never underestimate their proclivity for lack of situational common sense. So I can't agree with you regarding getting into College/Rutgers as requiring having common sense. They are 2 separate things in my book. I also recall my own lapses in judgement between the ages of 15-25 (which includes my days at RU). I don't feel its inconceivable at all for kids of that age who now might spend a significant amount of free time hanging with their friends on-line playing GTA who would not have the common sense to think of the implications of a paint ball drive by.
It's easy for us middle aged folk to point fingers based on the wisdom we've gathered with age. But I'm guessing that many of us were no angels growing up. I blew up sh!t with fireworks, shot sh!t with wrist rockets and BB guns and got into quite a few fist fights & tussles. In present time none of that would be acceptable. Simple fact is that kids these days grow up much more sheltered than we did and also don't have the luxury of experiencing the degree of learning from mistakes that we did - because there is a much higher degree of zero tolerance penalties & policies.
Melton and Long are already suspended and will likely stay that way pending investigation. Schiano appears to be the type who understands how to handle this situation and it's impacts on the victims, his players, team and Rutgers. To leave their status with the team in his capable hands is ok by me. But those on here saying that they are bad seeds and who want to banish them without investigation, due process nor understanding intent is just silliness to me. I also probably need to better understand what the close range distance was in this instance.
ps......if it helps in defining common sense - my understanding of the definition of "at close range" is somewhere between ~10-15 meters (about 33 - 50 feet). People might be misconstruing this with "point blank range". Would like to see the actual distance as to me it's relevant to the degree of intent/boneheadedness level.
Just about every person I knew in college did something that they knew was wrong. If we got caught we knew there was a price to pay. As the saying goes - don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
Melton and Long knew what they were doing was wrong but they took their chances and got caught. Be it decided upon PTI and a short suspension from the team or more severe penalties, I trust the authorities to make good decisions about what do do with Melton and Long once all the evidence is in.
Melton and Long knew what they were doing was wrong but they took their chances and got caught. Be it decided upon PTI and a short suspension from the team or more severe penalties, I trust the authorities to make good decisions about what do do with Melton and Long once all the evidence is in.
I can neither confirm nor deny those accusations!
I have to absolutely credit my RU brethren. A 20 page discussion and debate about the legality and morality of this incident. Somehow I don’t think this would have taken place on the Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia or Clemson message boards.
Yeah and it's the crime vs. time thing that is in question. There are kids doing years in prison for getting caught with a joint in some states while many others consider it legal.
Reefer Madness was replaced by 60 percent of people saying ok for recreational use.
Point being doing the time for the crime has a lot to do with time, location, and circumstances.
LOL. You must be drinking tonight. It was one of the worst posts I‘ve seen in a while. It would be hard to be more wrong than he was throughout the post. Was like wrong multiplied by illogical raised to the power of asinine.
You are probably one of the most judgmental and pompous individuals I have ever come across on one of these boards. I am sure that is not the first time you have heard that in real life. Come down off of your golden perch and try to have some empathy and understanding for kids who did something wrong and deserve some punishment, but don't deserve to have their lives destroyed by some arrogant and righteous a-hole on an anonymous sports board who doesn't have the ethics or guts to tell us his real name and open himself and his family to the same type of horrendous scrutiny and condemnation these poor kids are facing thanks in part to your postings.
You clearly haven’t got any clue at all about my actual position on “the kids”. I haven’t judged them in any way. Yet.
I have, on the other hand, tried to explain to you that your references to and understanding of ethics, as ethics can be applied in situations like this, is objectively incorrect. It’s not a judgement. You simply don’t understand ethics and I’ve been trying (and failing, apparently) to help you understand.
You are trying to insult me based on your entirely incorrect interpretation of what I’ve been writing. And while you probably won’t understand this, until you insult me for something I have actually done, the insults will continue to miss the mark.
And I do so love being insulted. So up your game and figure out what’s going on around you and then I’m sure you‘ll find something accurate to insult me with. There is so much to choose from.
I’ll give you a starting point. I totally suck at explaining ethics to a person who mistakenly thinks I‘m judging Max and Chris. I‘m awful at it. The worst ever.
Okay, you go next... let me have it and don’t hold back. All I ask is that you be accurate. You can do it!
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I started RU when I was 17- which is probably less and less common these days. And not to say I was perfect and didn't do stupid crap, I sure did. But by 17 I knew you don't touch strangers without their permission unless you're acting in defense. Unless these people were shooting at them (doubt it), were in on it (doubt it) or it's a misidentification (seems unlikely) it's pretty stupid. I could forgive a lot of stuff nearly all young people experiment with- alcohol, drugs, social media. This is different, at least to me.
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