In America, college football stars like Jameis Winston can do no wrong | Diane Roberts

Florida State Seminoles quarterback Jameis Winston (five) throws the ball as he is watched by Syracuse Orange defensive back Darius Kelly (18) for the duration of the game on 21 November. Photograph: Melina Vastola/USA Right now Sports activities

Just since an athlete performs miracles on the field does not indicate he is a saint off of it. The story of Jameis Winston is but one more instance of how quickly a town – and frankly an total nation – want desperately to side with a football star.

In December of last yr, a pupil at Florida State University told police that she had been sexually assaulted by Jameis Winston, a supremely talented quarterback and candidate for the Heisman Trophy, college football’s premier honor. Practically nothing was accomplished. She claims a cop warned that her life would be created “miserable” if she pursued charges. Tallahassee, in which the university is located, is a “big football town”.

The cops claim she stopped cooperating with them, which she disputes. On 12 November this yr, the case was turned above to the State Attorney’s workplace: media retailers had sniffed out the story, and the regional police realized that carrying out absolutely nothing about an assault allegation towards a common football player might seem like a cover-up. A forensic check was (ultimately) carried out, revealing that Winston’s DNA matched that discovered on the victim’s garments. His lawyer says the sex was consensual. Her attorney says it was not. The State Attorney is still investigating.

School football’s most passionate adherents are not, even so, waiting till the information are in. They are assured Jameis Winston, this self-effacing, effectively-mannered Alabama boy with the the sweet smile and the golden arm, would by no means do this kind of a thing. The younger woman should be mistaken she must be jealous of his “real” girlfriend, a basketball player at Rice University in Texas she must be some gold-digger desperate for focus. The web heaves with conspiracy theories: her lawyer graduated from the University of Florida, the hated arch-rival of Florida State University. Probably someone at the University of Alabama – Florida State’s most likely opponent in the nationwide championship game – put her up to it. Heck, maybe it really is Barack Obama’s fault.

In any situation, the youthful girl, also a student at Florida State (or she was until she left campus earlier this 12 months) is obtaining trashed all more than the place: on sports activities sites, in newspaper comment sections, in bars exactly where followers hang out. She’s getting named a “ho”, a “liar”, a “groupie”. FSU is on the cusp of greatness, an undefeated season. What if this chick goes and ruins everything?

Given that the allegations grew to become public, supporters have taken to holding up homemade signs at Florida State games: “We Support Popular Jameis”, “Jameis is Innocent,” and “In Jameis Christ We Pray”. The neighborhood paper has quite significantly abandoned any pretense of even-handedness in favor of cheerleading. The executive editor sighed in print that he wished the story would go away, but considering that some horrid “nationwide media outlet,” which does not “care a whit about our local community, our university, our group or the younger man numerous of us – me included – have discovered to care about,” is covering it, his paper greater had as nicely. Their “coverage”, nonetheless, consists of daily assurances that the evidence towards Winston is thin, dissertations on how hard it is to show sexual battery, and lamentations over the unfair way the “drive-by” media depicts “our local community”.

The 1 honorable exception, a column by veteran writer Gerald Ensley, wrestles with the unpleasant disparity amongst Winston’s charm and the youthful woman’s claims. It elicited howls of outrage from readers threatening to cancel their subscriptions, insulting Ensley, and wishing the newspaper would not even mention the scandal. It’s been 14 years considering that Florida State won a national championship: the Seminoles have got a huge game against the Gators Saturday, then the Atlantic Coast Conference championship then, maybe, the nationwide championship in January. Even several fair-minded seekers right after of justice are hoping that possibly the State Lawyer will both wait a couple of months – or declare the situation closed.

The total issue seems, as one particular magazine opined, like “To Destroy a Mockingbird in reverse”. Now the local community rises up to defend Our Football Hero. It’s a theme that is playing out all also often in the US, even at higher schools like Steubenville, Ohio where a teenage girl discovered herself fighting towards not just her football enjoying aggressors, but school administrators and the town at massive who were fast to side with the male athletes.

Give Winston’s partisans credit for holding company to the ancient principle of presumption of innocence: Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat. As a lot of point out, he hasn’t but been charged, a lot much less located guilty of something. But neither has the woman who says she was raped. Winston’s receiving the really like she’s getting known as a slut. In this culture, playing top-tier football confers a layer of privilege not accorded ordinary guys, specifically ordinary younger African American guys. Rather of a hoodie, perhaps Trayvon Martin must have worn a letter jacket.

In America, college football stars like Jameis Winston can do no wrong | Diane Roberts

Letters: Gove"s wrong choices over call for social work reform

It is heartening to hear Michael Gove acknowledge that his life was transformed by means of the ability of the social workers concerned in putting him for adoption (Gove calls for radical reform of social function, 12 November). Like David Cameron’s recognition in his conference speech that social operate is “a noble and demanding vocation”, Gove’s statement is in welcome contrast to the vilification of social staff in which politicians and the media too frequently indulge.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion, nevertheless, that Gove’s praise amounts to little more than a cover for attacking the social science and ethical basis of the occupation. He suggests, for illustration, that “idealistic college students” are currently being encouraged to see services users as possessing been “disempowered by society” and as “victims of social injustice”. In fact, the promotion of agency, self-determination and independent residing continue to be at the heart of social operate education and social function practice, not least in relation to current personalisation agendas. Social operate is an proof-primarily based profession, nevertheless. When very respected investigation scientific studies such as Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Degree present the extent to which inequality contributes to social difficulties – and when even a former Conservative prime minister laments the lack of social mobility in the United kingdom – then social staff need to have to recognise this in their practice. The alternative is the sort of victim-blaming and scapegoating of bad and disabled men and women that as well often characterises existing government attacks on folks on benefits.

The main issue dealing with the social work profession at existing is not dogma, but decreased funding, minimal political priority, excessive caseloads and expanding consumer demand. When the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates that austerity policies will push an further 200,000 kids below the poverty line, and when much more than half a million individuals are forced to depend on meals banking institutions, then to propose that social difficulties are largely the result of people making “the incorrect alternatives” underlines the extent to which the world inhabited by Gove and his public-college colleagues is a really various one from that inhabited by most of us, specially those needing social function help.
Professor Iain Ferguson University of the West of Scotland
Professor Susan White University of Birmingham
Emeritus Professor Ann Davis University of Birmingham
Professor Brid Featherstone Open University
Professor Vivienne Cree University of Edinburgh
Professor Nigel Parton University of Huddersfield
Professor Imogen Taylor University of Sussex
Professor Mike Fisher University of Bedfordshire
Professor Brigid Daniel University of Stirling
Professor Tim Kelly University of Dundee
Professor Ian Butler University of Bath
Emeritus professor John Harris University of Warwick
Professor Peter Beresford Brunel University
Professor Michael Lavalette Liverpool Hope University
Professor Stephen Webb Glasgow Caledonian University
Professor Jim Campbell Goldsmiths, University of London
Professor Ravinder Barn Royal Holloway, University of London
Professor Jane Tunstill Royal Holloway University
Professor Jonathan Scourfield University of Cardiff
Professor Margaret Holloway University of Hull
Professor Jonathan Parker Bournemouth University
Professor Aidan Worsley University of Central Lancashire
Professor Nigel Thomas University of Central Lancashire
Professor Hugh McLaughlin Manchester Metropolitan University
Professor Brian Littlechild University of Hertfordshire
Professor Kirsten Stalker University of Strathclyde
Professor Shula Ramon Anglia Ruskin University
Professor Nina Biehal University of York
Professor June Thoburn University of East Anglia
Professor Roger Evans Liverpool John Moores University
Professor Jan Horwath University of Sheffield
Professor Elaine Sharland University of Sussex
Professor Kate Wilson University of Nottingham
Professor Marion Brandon University of East Anglia
Dr Terry Murphy Teeside University
Mo McPhail Open University (Scotland)
Linda Walker University of Dundee
Mark Smith University of Edinburgh
Di Bailey Nottingham Trent University
Ailsa Stewart University of Strathclyde
Neil Quinn University of Strathclyde
Beth Weaver University of Strathclyde
Evelyn Vrouwenfelder University of Strathclyde
Barrie Levine Glasgow Caledonian University
Vasilios Ioakimidis University of Durham
Di Bailey Nottingham Trent University
Simon Cardy Sophisticated social work practitioner, Wolverhampton

• Possessing run into near-catastrophe with training reforms based on striving to create the circumstances he benefited from, it really is alarming that Michael Gove is making use of the same recipe for social perform. Possessing worked in both schooling and social operate in excess of forty many years, I know that assuming every person responds as you do is generally naïve and stupid. We all have our personal preferred methods of studying and developing, and the skilled worker has to uncover the appropriate strategy for every single personal. Allow individuals who understand the perform define the required expertise, whilst Gove meets his political obligations to supply the needed assets. A excellent starting up stage would be to uncover out the dimension and complexity of the caseloads of the social staff he admires from his previous. As resources grow to be more and more scarce, every worker takes on far more cases. At the very same time, authorities ration assets by taking on fewer consumers all round. Whilst this can sound like an try to rebalance, in actuality only the more complex and time-consuming cases are left. I wonder how significantly time social employees get these days to invest on placements that are going nicely.
Roy Grimwood
Industry Drayton, Shropshire

Letters: Gove"s wrong choices over call for social work reform