If you reside in the United States, you’re aware that college sports are taken very seriously. Student athletes and sports teams are put on a pedestal and praised for their performance. They have put in years of hard work and dedication to get where they are and what they have now. Their privileges are endless and sometimes viewed as not fair. College athletes get away with federal crimes with little or no punishment at all because of who they are and all the benefits that come with it. In 2015, Brock Turner, former swimmer at Stanford University and member of the USA swimming team, was found sexually assaulting a drunk, unconscious girl outside of a frat party. He was charged with three felonies of sexual assault that equaled to a maximum of fourteen years …show more content…
The sports teams are the ones who bring in most of the money to fund school, so it is a given that the universities and athletic departments will do whatever they can to prevent their high ranked athletes from being accused or prosecuted. According to the Benedict/Crosset study, one in three sexual assaults are committed by college athletes. Not only have the student athletes and athletic departments manipulated the law enforcement, but emotionally damage their victims as well as other victims. The victim of Brock Turner wrote a twelve-page impact statement and in it she stated, “How fast Brock swims does not lessen the severity of what happened to me and it should not lessen the severity of his punishment…The fact that Brock was an athlete at a private university should not be entitlement to leniency, but as an opportunity to send a message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class.” (____). Many cases are unreported because the victim is an acquaintance of their attacker or they’re fearful because they don’t believe they have an equal chance in the justice system because of the athlete’s prestige status. The universities and athletic departments that are