Sunday night, a string of texts lit up on my phone. As soon as I saw the short UF Alert number, I knew — dreading it, but knowing it — another case of battery had just been reported to the police.
That night, I dreamed that a stranger and I got in a fight with the perp.
I’m definitely not a violent person or one to get involved in fights. The fact that I — a man, some would say — am internalizing fears and frustrations like this makes me cringe when I wonder what the women on this campus must be facing.
On Monday, TMZ released video footage from inside an elevator in an Atlantic City casino. The graphic video shows a man and a woman enter.
He slaps her once; she lunges at him and then he hits her even harder — her body slams against the elevator wall.
Now that she’s unconscious, the door opens and the man drags her, limp and unresponsive, out of the elevator.
The man in that video was Ray Rice, who, until recently, played for the Baltimore Ravens. The woman was his wife.
In response to the video, the Ravens released Rice from his contract with the franchise. The NFL has suspended the running back indefinitely.
These consequences, although lenient, would have been acceptable had this brutal assault happened this weekend. But the revolting truth is that the events in the elevator happened six months ago.
Why, then, did it take six months for the Ravens and the NFL to do anything other than give Rice a slap on the wrist?
The scandal broke soon after the assault happened in February, when TMZ released video footage from an external camera that showed Rice dragging his fiancee’s unconscious body out of the elevator.
That, along with the fact that criminal charges were filed against Rice, was enough for most reasonable people to demand that the Ravens and the NFL take action against him.
Unfortunately, that action was severely and unjustifiably delayed. Palmer declined to testify at Rice’s indictment, so he got off with court-supervised counseling. In a surprising turn of events, Rice and Palmer married the next day. In May, the Ravens tweeted “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.” The tweet has since been deleted.
Amid public outcry, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell opted to suspend Rice for the first two games of the regular season. The Ravens declined to take any action whatsoever. These mild disciplinary actions were announced after a private meeting where Janay was graciously allowed to tell her side of the story in front of Rice and four other men, two of whom were Ravens officials.
Many dedicated Ravens fans did not seem troubled by Rice’s behavior during two of the Ravens’ open practices. In fact, many fans cheered wildly whenever he appeared on the stadium’s Jumbotron. One of these cheers ended in a standing ovation.
Regardless of the NFL’s misguided behavior, Rice is ultimately the one at fault. However, this situation was mishandled to the point where it seems that the NFL was willing to protect Ray Rice until the public relations nightmare became too much to handle.
The fact that it took the NFL six months to take action against Rice, despite the presence of clear, incontrovertible video evidence, speaks to a larger problem in our society.
That problem is also evident here at UF where many of our own friends and acquaintances, particularly females, must fear leaving their homes at night.
It’s amazing to see our community come together and help protect its female members. However, the recent string of assaults and the Rice situation demonstrate that we still have much more work to do to eliminate the pervasive issue of violence against women.
Alec Carver is a UF journalism sophomore. His columns usually appear on Thursdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 9/10/2014 under the headline "Rice incident latest national example of violence against women"]
