Punished For Doing The Right Thing

Yesterday the Boston Herald posted an article about Erin Cox, former captain of North Andover High School‘s volleyball team. Erin got a phone call from a friend who had been drinking at a party. The friend asked Erin to come get her and drive her home. Erin went to the party to pick up her friend. Unfortunately, at that same time,  police from Boxford, Haverhill, Georgetown and North Andover showed up.

The article reports:

They arrested a dozen underage drinkers and warned another 15 underage youths that they’d be summoned to court for drinking.

Erin Cox was one of those told she’d be summoned for drinking — even though she wasn’t, even though Boxford police Officer Brian Neeley vouched for her sobriety in writing in a statement Erin’s mother, Eleanor, took to court Friday. She filed a lawsuit hoping to reverse the high school’s punishment: Erin was stripped of her captain’s position and suspended, mid-season, for five games.

“Don’t drink,” we tell our high school kids. “And don’t go to a party where kids are drinking,” we tell high school athletes, or you, too, could get suspended from the team.

Erin Cox understood all this, as well.

“But I wasn’t drinking,” she told me. “And I felt like going to get her was the right thing to do. Saving her from getting in the car when she was intoxicated and hurt herself or getting in the car with someone else who was drinking. I’d give her a ride home.”

Erin did the right thing. She may have saved someone’s life that night. The school needs to rethink the punishment–it doesn’t fit the crime.

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