The novel Our Guys, written by Bernard Lefkowitz, is a very dynamic story about the heinous actions of a dozen middle-class athletes, from a small New York suburb, against a defenseless mentally handicapped girl. Lefkowitz describes a brutal gang rape involving a baseball bat and broomhandle, which took place in this unsuspecting town, by these upstanding young group of boys, as the town would describe them. Lefkowitz looks at the incident which took place and then examines the “jock clique” sub-culture that allowed such atrocities to happen, and spawned the scandal to cover it up.
The town of Glenridge is at the surface not any different than any other surburban American town. Like most towns it has its “cliques” and the “jocks” are at the pinnacle of the town. Idolized by the students and a sourse of pride for the entire town, however the Glenridge boys were not like most high school athletes. The “Jock clique” formed at a very early age,and invaded their surroundings taking over where ever they went, whether it be school, games or around town, protected by the “boys will be boys” attitude held by the rest of the town.
The boys started showing signs of beligerance as early as elementary school, with a common ignorance for authority. The group was later easily passed through middle school to relieve the teachers of another year enduring the “problem” class. Once in high scholl the boys became the leaders of the school, andpride of the town. In Glenridge sports were valued higher than academics, turning these young men into heros, and everyone else into nobodies. There was not anything anyone could do to derail this movement, nor did they try to.
Glenridges attitude towards women was very outdated. Women were regarded as mothers and wives, their jobs weere to make the men of the town happy. They were treated as objects and rarely held positions of authority-there were not any women mentors, therefore everyone lokked up to their fathers and saw that men were the supreme beings. Most of the boys did not even have any female influences other than their mothers; infact only two of the boys involved had sisters, Bryan Grober and Phil Grant. Thes boys were raised in dressing rooms by males and taught to respect the institute and brotherhood of a team. That if they respected their sacred bond they could do anything. Nothing was more important than the team or eac...
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... athletes to do as they please. However he does not do a good job of being non-partisan. He leads his readers to believe the only group of people who would do such things are “jocks”. This bias is not true. The newspapers report that University fraternities, and secret societies are as likely, if not more likely, to commit these very same acts. He also leads the reader to believe that all athletes and athletic teams are similar. The impression he leaves about the majority of teams and their members is prejudicial and unfair. It is very unfortunate and disheartening that members of a community that were so highly reguarded, would commit such acts. It is even more disturbing to hear about the scenario leading up to the rape, and the community which produced these troubled young men. It is more important to look at why the events took place rather than who committed them, because ultimately the only innocent person involved is the victim, a mentally handicapped young girl, named Lesli Faber.
This book shows that the community is to blame when tragedies like these occur, and that if it happened in Glen ridge, what is to stop it from happening in our own back yard by “our guys”?
High school sports can have a tremendous effect on not only those who participate but the members of the community in which they participate. These effects can be positive, but they can also be negative. In the book Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger shows that they are often negative in communities where high school sports “keep the town alive” due to the social pressure. In this way, Friday Night Lights gives insight into the effects of high school football being the backbone of a community, revealing that the fate of the individual football players are inadvertently determined by the actions of the townspeople.
The town of Joes, Colorado was founded in 1906. Just about everyone in the town had someone in their family with name of Joe, and that’s how the town got its name. The Boys from Joes is an incredible story. It’s about a group of ten small town boys who weren’t expected to go anywhere in basketball, or achieve their goals.
Botstein begins his essay by listing examples to assert that the American high school is obsolete. He describes high school as if to someone who knows nothing about it, so as to better expose the failings of the institution. Current or former high-schoolers remember the team sport culture, but might not realize its harm without Botstein’s detached and somewhat analytical description.
Ethical Rules on Sport’s Justice. Dallas: East Dallas Times, page 21. 2008. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Print: Harry, Patrick Hayes.
If Brooks wants to inspire adolescent boys it essential for Brooks to select a successful person. No boy is inspired by a second string football player or a tennis player who consistently loses in the semifinals. No boy goes to a b...
In S.E. Hinton’s book, The Outsiders, children born on the wrong side of town grow up to be juvenile, teenage hoods. In this book, these teenage delinquents are the Greasers, whose only "rival" is the Socials, or "Socs," as an abbreviation. The characters within The Outsiders unmistakably choose a remote. lifestyle of juvenile delinquency and crime. Ilanna Sharon Mandel wrote an article called, "What Causes Juvenile Delinquency?" This editorial presents many circumstances that can be applied to the main character, or protagonist, Ponyboy Michael Curtis and his brothers, friends, and neighbors. Their behavior may not always lead them to the right side of the law, but it is the cause of juvenile delinquency that gets them in. trouble.
Summer camp is an important annual experience in many children’s lives. Some kids choose to continue with camp long past their camper years and become counselors. A program, the Camper in Leadership Training (CILT) program, exists within the camp structure as a leadership program designed to educate kids, aged fifteen through seventeen, on how to become effective counselors. Each session typically concludes with a closing campfire, which the male CILTs extinguish after the females have left by urinating on the embers. This folk ritual, affectionately known to the CILTs as “pissing out the fire,” is employed by the male CILT folk group as a strategy that allows them to reassert power, to reaffirm the solidarity of the all-male group, and to regain their masculinity, which has been altered within the camp environment, before leaving the shelter of that environment. During this transitional period, the CILTs anticipate returning to the larger social world and are socializing themselves accordingly. These kids’ experiences with gender identity at camp mirror Barrie Thorne’s point that gender is socially constructed and highly contextual (Thorne 10). This folk ritual allows these boys to regain their gender identity, the identity largely accepted by the outside culture, as they prepare to re-enter mainstream society.
The high schools are made up of cliques and the artificial intensity of a world defined by insiders and outsiders. (Botstein pg.20) The insiders hold control. over the outsiders because of good looks, popularity, and sports power; the teacher. and staff do nothing to stop them, the elite.
...uide boys and girls through a difficult transition period. During her childhood she loved to have influence upon her younger brother. Her need to influence carried on to her adulthood. Story telling was an essential part of her class. It was her conscious way of helping her students to deal with the confusing and threatening world around them. As a child her imagination was a comfort zone for her. She provided her students with that atmosphere. As a child she dreamed of a different world, on she described as “On that presented opportunities for courage, boldness and self sacrifice (pg 550).” Teaching was an ideal job for the protagonist to attain as it allowed her to remain influential and child like.
Just a few pages into the book, words had already begun to jump out at me, capturing my attention. “The kids in Newark, black and brown, speaking Spanglish, hoods over their heads, wheeling their stolen cars over to the local chop shop -- they were aliens in America. Strange, forever separate and separated from the American ideal. But these Glen Ridge kids, they were pure gold, every mother’s dream, every father’s pride. They were not only Glen Ridge’s finest, but in their perfection they belonged to all of us. They were Our Guys (page 7).” This is a story about White Privilege, I thought. After reading the next two pages, I changed my mind. “...I wanted to understand how their status as young athlete celebrities in Glen Ridge influenced their treatment of girls and women, particularly those of their age.....I was especially curious about what license they were permitted as a clique of admired athletes and how that magnified the sense of superiority they felt as individuals (pages 8-9).” Oh! This is a story about jock culture, I thought.
First, I would like to discuss some of the issues that were discussed in the WNBA article, “We’ve Got Next”. This was one of the best articles that we have read this semester. It shows a lot of issues, like stigmatization of women and men in sport, and how the media and the general population regard them so differently. The article made great comparisons between the different ways men and women play basketball, claiming that women play more for the team, and use great skill and tack, while the men are out there to increase their status, and are in essence putting on a show. This very well may be the fact, but it is the social reasons given for this that I find hard to believe. Society believes women to be more of the caretaker and the person who makes sure everything is even, before all other things. the person who is selfless in the face of a general goal. These rationalizations appear in the...
Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” is a story about a girl that struggles against society’s ideas of how a girl should be, only to find her trapped in the ways of the world.
Munro, Alice. "Boys and Girls." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 6th ed. New York: Norton, 1995.
The scholars expounds that Black athletes were commodities on the playing field to help win games and bring in revenue to their respected schools. However, the schools were just as eager and willing to leave their Black players behind and dishonoring the player as a part of the team. Therefore, not compromising the team’s winning and bring in profits for the school. Sadly, Black athletes at predominately White institutions (PWIs) who believed that they were bettering the live of themselves and their families members by going to college and playing collegiate sports to increase their post secondary careers. However, these athletes were only “show ponies” for their schools. Unfortunately, Black athletes had allegiance to their school; however, the school turned their backs on the athletes to protect the profit and notoriety of the school and the programs. Money and respect from White fans and spectators were more important to the PWIs than standing up for the respect of their Black players. Racial bigotry in sports was rampant and it was only going to get worse.
For many years gender inequality in sports was still present, even after the women's right movement, Title IX was passed in 1972 (Sandys, 2007). Title IX banned sex discrimination in any education program that is federally financed. This was supposed to correct the imbalance of treatment between the sexes of college students. Since the passing of the federal gender-equality law, universities started to offer a chance for many of women to participate, that was not previously offered before (Adams & Tuggle, 2004). Now that more women have jumped into the sports arena, many institutions are giving the appearance of offering more sports to females (Hardin & Shain, 2005). Equal opportunity for women in sports would provide better psychological and sociological development that would derive from the impact of sports participation.