Mykaela Johnson
Period 1

The current event I chose for the week of August 24-28 is covering the firing and accusations against athletic coaches at the University of Illinois. The article, which includes a 4-minute video, was updated on Friday, August 28th onto CNN's website. The video discusses the accusations against multiple coaches of the football and female basketball teams at the university. The mothers of some of the female basketball players were interviewed and asked questions about how they feel about the occurrences. The players and their mothers said the coach divided the team during practices, making one team predominately black. They say he treated the mostly black team poorly and judged their character based on their "culture", which the players and their parents found racist. The secondary team was called "the dog pound." In the video, a news reporter speaks with the head of the athletics department, Mike Thomas, who said he was very troubled by all the accusations. The coach of the women's basketball team, who was the center of most of the bullying, left the school by mutual consent. However, the parents of the players are still not satisfied because they fear for the next girl who has to face racial bullying and segregation. 

The video and article later says that former football players also claimed to experience bullying from their coach, Tim Beckman. CNN was told by some of the players that they were forced to play injured, faced physical attacks from the coach, or the coach threatened to take their scholarships, against school policy. Tim Beckman still continues to lead the football team into summer practices and the fall season. Two law firms are now investigating misconduct and asking for $10,000,000 in damages among other things.

Although I'm not huge in sports, I chose this current event because it seemed important to share. There is a lot of major events that occur in our world everyday, and I could've picked anything else, but I didn't because although no one died or ended up severely damaged, I still think it's important acknowledge problems like this. Something like this could happen to anyone and it could end much worse. I commend the girls for speaking up and having the courage to tell what happened. Obviously, racism and segregation has appeared in history before. However now people are finding the courage to speak up and out about their experiences which is causing a change. As opposed to the past, everyone has equal rights and the right to freedom of speech, which allows people who have experienced these things to have power and stand up for themselves when necessary. Hopefully, being able to vocalize these issues without punishment will keep history from repeating itself. 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/28/us/university-illinois-coach-fired/index.html