The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Language still an issue
Jerry Hinnen
PUBLISHED: March 13, 2008
In the fall of 2006, I wrote a column for this space headlined "Swearing should stop." The swearing in question was the occasional foul-mouthed chants and less-than-gracious taunts I'd heard from various area student sections, particularly the Saline students' frequent use of a euphemism for cow excrement (you know the one ... rhymes with "full spit") to express their disagreement with an officiating decision at football games.
Advertisement
I wrote then that I personally don't have much of a problem with teenage profanity when used in a backyard game of pickup hoops or a late-night Xbox session, but when we're talking about a community event with children roaming all over the place? Yes, then it's an issue.
Not surprisingly, it's still an issue. Teenagers will be teenagers will be teenagers, and nothing in newsprint is going to change that. (Believe me, I'm not laboring under the illusion that a local weekly newspaper anywhere is going to be a must-read for the Myspace set, much less that the advice said paper is offering would actually be taken to heart.)
But I feel forced to tackle the topic again after the Saline students descended another level on the class-o-meter at a recent Hornet hockey game I attended.
Saline was taking on Bedford in the second period when a Mule player was checked into the goal, caught the crossbar in his stomach, and appeared to have the breath knocked out of him. As the Saline player was escorted to the penalty box and the Bedford player slowly skated back down the ice, doubled over at the waist, the Hornet student section took the opportunity to question the Mule's, um, intestinal fortitude by chanting (loudly) at him an exceedingly vulgar term for a particular part of the female anatomy.
Let's put aside for a moment the issue of how much sportsmanship and class is shown in taunting an opponent who -- whatever you might suspect about his intestinal fortitude -- appears to be injured. The answer there is "not a whole lot," but there's a bigger problem here: namely, that a word that vulgar, a word if my mother had ever heard me use would have had me eating soap for a month, was being chanted so casually (by students of both sexes, I might add) exactly five rows in front of a boy who looked to be about 7 years old.
I was stunned. I'm still stunned. I'd like to think I'm a fairly easygoing guy who's not the type to scream "Think of the children!" after every Super Bowl halftime show or appeal to "common decency" every time some disc jockey lets a four-letter word slip on his morning drive-time show.
But there's a point at which someone really should think of the children, a point at which some shred of common decency really should be kept intact. And the public use of the word that the Saline students were chanting that night goes way, way beyond that point. It needs to be stopped.
How? I don't know. Tossing 30 to 40 kids out of a sporting event they paid for when 99 percent of them were just following the lead of their buddy next to them seems unfair, not to mention logistically difficult. Likewise, trying to fairly pin down a chant's "leaders" seems all but impossible.
And let me make clear that I don't mean to make an example or scapegoat of the Saline students (not every one of whom participated, to be clear) at that hockey game. Virtually every student section I've shared an arena or stadium with this year has done something less than appropriate (and at the very least, the Saline students weren't risking provoking violence, which can't be said for the Dexter student who walked all the way across the gym with a giant fake flyswatter to "swat" the visiting Hornets fans at a basketball game). This isn't an isolated incident; it's a widespread problem.
But it's a problem that some kind of action needs to be taken against. Saline's students are some of the area's best when it comes to their enthusiasm, attendance, intensity -- all those good things that make up "school spirit." It may very well not be my place to say, but my thoughts are that it's time more of that spirit was applied to making sure Hornet athletic events fun and welcoming for everyone — 7-year-olds included — and just a bit less toward making them difficult for Saline's opponents.
Not all stories are guaranteed to appear
online. The Web edition contains a reasonable
sampling of the print edition stories.
For the most complete news coverage, we invite you to
subscribe
to the print edition of the paper.
Expanded
Web
Coverage
Staff Blog, "Inside The Newsroom"
TOP JOBS
