OT: ND Student Assistant Dies in Freak Accident

I'm going to hold off on putting this one on Kelly. I'm no fan of his, but I don't think the head coach is directly involved in decisions like this. If it turns out that the staff is to blame, then he might be the one to take the fall, but I doubt that he directly ordered him to go up there despite the wind.

But you're right in that it could get ugly before it's all over. State authorities are already investigating the incident. There's no question that this kid shouldn't have been up there in that kind of weather, so if he didn't go up by his own choice, heads will roll. 

I haven't been out of basement of the law school since before noon, so I guess I was basing my comments on the weather from this morning.  Shows what I know.

not funny.

Your post doesn't offend me because it is a logical thought and from a third person perspective makes a lot of sense.  However, as a safety director, I can tell you that it doesn't work that way in the real world.  People will put themselves into all sorts of situations because they don't want to be the guy too scared to do his job.  If he is directly pressured to do something dangerous under threat of losing his job, his employer would be guilty of a willful offense and could face jail time.  More common, though, is the indirect pressure of not wanting to be perceived as a coward.  This would be especially true if there were multiple towers set up and multiple people in them.  Each of the people are probably scared, but no one wants to be the one to say something so none of them do.

Look, you're 20 years old, you have a job that a lot of kids would give their eyeteeth to have, and you're working in the service of a storied college program.  I can completely understand why it might be hard to stand up to the head staff and say "no, I'm not doing this today" even when your senses are telling you it's foolish to proceed. 

We can argue all day about what he should have done or whom he should have said no to, but why go there?

I think young people often have a tendency to think, "no, that can't really happen to me". The fact that he joked about it on Twitter might indicate that he didn't actually expect anything to happen and that he was simply making light of what he saw as just some stressful working conditions. If he really, actually, sincerely thought that he might be putting himself in danger by going up there, he probably wouldn't have done it. The reality is that college students often don't have the perspective on life and mortality that only years of experience can instill.  

Obviously, you know nothing about this line of work or the people who do it.  A young kid working for a football program like this most likely has a just-get-it-done attitude, a ton of guts and would rather be tarred and feathered before admitting he was too scared to get up that lift. 

I tell the media director sorry, we're filming from the field today. Put it on someone in your department with authority.  If you want me to risk my life for this, Athletic Department, it's on you.

I'm guessing the kid figured it wasn't his call, and that he might lose his job (or at least get chewed out and cause a scene) if he asked not to go up.

There's a nice post on NDNation about this:

http://www.ndnation.com/boards/showpost.php?b=football;pid=146604;d=this