This article won honorable mention in the 2019 Michigan Interscholastic Press Association spring awards ceremony.
When people are young, their futures loom in front of them. The pressure of making grown-up decisions is often overwhelming: applying to schools, choosing a college, moving away, deciding on a major and career path.
At a young age, we are expected to make life-altering decisions that we must carry with us for the remainder of our lives.
Of course, a dissenting opinion on this topic is that kids always have the option to change their minds after the fact. But those retractions have consequences both financially and mentally.
Transferring schools or switching majors sets students back along their path to graduation, forcing them to reassess the requirements in order to continue down a different path.
And these choices impact a person’s future.
However, when someone else makes a decision that changes the trajectory of our future, the impact should change theirs too.
Whether that is the influence of a parent making an executive decision about a specific class; or a counselor not allowing a student to drop a credit; or even a student deciding to commit a crime- those instances are critical.
With the recent confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the question was raised about how long a person’s actions should follow them.
Kavanaugh demonstrated questionable behavior in high school, some of which he confirmed and some of which he denied.
Following his national story led The Roar staff to discuss the question: how long should one’s actions follow them?
As an editorial staff, the answer to the question is fairly simple: The actions of a perpetrator should follow them for as long as they impact the victim.
The victim of an act is the only one who can truly speak about the impact of the event in the most raw form. There are no facts that can take away from how an assault made someone feel. There are no shoulds or shouldn’ts for how long this person can hold onto the assault. Only they know when they are ready to forgive or speak up.
If a victim is impacted by an assault for their whole life, then the perpetrator should suffer the consequences for just as long.
Herein lies the issue with the climate of today’s society and the catalyst for us to answer this question.
We hear what we want to hear and believe what we want to believe. We pick politicians’ reputations over human well-being and emotion. We can easily be removed from any kind of struggle by choosing not to think about it just because we didn’t experience it. This habit of disregard has lead to a lack of consequences for some perpetrators of assault.
It’s too easy to look away, to avert your eyes from the uncomfortable sights of those struggling. If we have never experienced their situation, it’s almost painless to ignore it and move on. This is where the world is at fault. We are too removed from struggles that we haven’t experienced. We need to start thinking about the impact they have on the victims, rather than the perpetrator.
Oh what has happened to our american freedoms. It seems that nowadays people are eager to overturn long treasured laws and morals of our republic. First the right to life (and the pursuit of happiness), then the right to bear arms, (2nd amendment), and now our freedom from false judgment. It used to be that people on trial would be innocent until proven guilty. Obviously this is no longer true. In fact, it appears that it has become exactly the opposite. Until brett kavanaugh could prove that he was innocent, he was assumed guilty and kept from holding a public office. Let me very clear THIS IS NOT A CASE OF SEXUAL ABUSE THAT WENT UNPUNISHED. This is angry, and frightened, democrats doing everything within their power to keep kavanaugh from getting sworn in. He stands against almost everything that they stand for. He is breaking no laws, however, by holding these opinions. So they do what they do every time a white male who disagrees with them attempts to take a political office. Slander him with false accusations and throw a giant social rights riot until everybody finally gives in and the accused is kept from office without any evidence. Watching the kavanaugh hearings, I almost started sobbing a several points. The first being when kavanaugh was questioned and he is calm, collected, states exactly what happened with no discrepancies, and is sympathetic of the witness. (He told the NY Times that he prayed for her every night of the trial, and that she would regain her senses and see that what she’s doing is wrong) Then Christine Blasey Ford gets up and gives a confusing, unsubstantial, story, that she doesn’t seems to know much about, and then assumes that Kavanaugh will be punished for a crime she didn’t commit. She must not think that highly of our court systems. Seeing that the liberals control the media they painted her a poor, victimised, young woman. Instead we see a confused lady who doesn’t even seem to know what she is trying to prove. It is literally her word against kavanaugh’s, and people want him locked up because of her proofless claims? Again the liberals, for this case only, want GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT. This is getting ridiculous. I am tired of all this fake news. Liberals can return when they have some substantial claims.