I apologize for making another Demar Dorsey thread and right off the bat I should say that some of what I’m going to say would have fit into other threads. Anyway, for those willing to indulge me…I sometimes work with kids from bad neighborhoods and I work all the time with adults from those neighborhoods. I’ll be the first to say that it would be a mistake to not hold people responsible for their actions because of their environment. A point that can’t be skipped over, though, is how they should be held responsible. Judging from the tone of the Freep and others, Demar Dorsey should be unable to go to college because of his actions as a teenager (or have one of his hands cut off?)…A person advocating this has to think through what that would mean for Dorsey and society. You’d have a kid who was making bad decisions in a bad environment and then condemning him to stay in that environment. What we’re likely to get out of that is a career criminal and a community that has to endure him (and/or someone who society has to pay to keep in prison)…Is it not better, if a person has shown that they see the error of their ways, to allow that person to escape their circumstances? Dorsey says that he wants to put his past behind him and that he’s coming to Michigan as one of the ways of accomplishing that. It’s true that he wouldn’t be able to be at Michigan if he wasn’t a football player, but what’s so bad about that? He has a special talent and he’s being given the chance to use. I’m not one to wrap myself in the flag, but that’s the goddamn American way right there. The history of this country if full of people who started off on the wrong foot and then did great things…The most important thing I want to say (preaching to the choir, I realize) is that a knee-jerk inclination to punish others shouldn’t be made into a false god for whose sake one gives up on people. People are imperfect and sometimes they need help and the chance to start over. Unless someone thinks Demar Dorsey is a threat to Ann Arbor – and that sure seems like a stretch to me – then I don’t see how they can argue that he shouldn’t be given the chance to better himself. That’s what college and the beginning of adulthood should be...Dorsey is the kind of kid people need to root for the most.
JUST LEAVE ALREADY
I, for one, can't wait to see Dorsey play. I am already a huge fan of his and applaud RR and UM for showing everyone that second chances are a good thing.
Welcome aboard Demar, and I can't wait for you to prove to those asshats at the freep just how wrong they are.