By Lee Ann Ricca, Client Services Coordinator, Abiding Care Pregnancy Resource Center, Medford, Wis.
Every now and then, I hear a story that convinces me that no one has any values or standards, or even any common sense anymore. In the first week of April, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported the story of the huge controversy in Mercer stemming from the actions of two high school volleyball coaches, one a teacher and other a school board member. The MJS reports that in August 2015, the two women drove the girls volleyball team to a tournament in Crivitz. En route, the “older” girls picked out a film to watch on the way, “50 Shades of Grey.” Although the teacher says that she originally objected, in the end she relented, rented the film, and the junior and senior girls watched it in the vehicle. The justification for this was that everyone in the car was either 17 -- the age limit for an R-rated film -- or had already seen it.
But is that the point? What if the girls had brought along a hard-core porn tape and said that they had already watched it? Would the coach/chaperone have let them watch it again? What if they had wanted to smoke pot, or even regular cigarettes on the grounds that they had all done it before? Would that have been okay?
Where is the judgment of an adult who doesn’t just tell the young women in her charge that the movie they chose was entirely unsuitable and that they have to pick a different one?
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