The act has been committed.
The judgments will follow.
Over the weekend, a cellphone video emerged that appeared to show Jeffery Simmons, Mississippi State’s most highly-prized football recruit this winter, striking a woman last week in Macon.
The video appears to identify Simmons — a teenager who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 250-plus pounds — as the person repeatedly pummeling the woman with his fists as she lay on the ground.
On Monday, the Macon Police Department announced that Simmons will face simple assault and disturbing the peace charges.
Each of the charges is a misdemeanor subject to up to six months in jail and up to a $500 fine.
That judgment will be made over the course of time, as will the decision Mississippi State will make in regard to Simmons’ future with the university.
At this point, Simmons is neither a student at MSU or a member of the Bulldogs’ football team. There is sentiment among many MSU supporters that it should stay that way. His offenses, though considered misdemeanors by the judicial system, are simply too disturbing and thus, too great a stain on the university’s reputation to permit any further association with the player.
Conversely, there are those who say that as troubling as the incident is, the best path for Simmons’ rehabilitation may rest with the guidance offered him through his association with the university and its football program. Simmons would not be the first to benefit from the college experience, where young people learn not only academics, but how to function within a larger, more complex society.
MSU officials must weigh the costs and benefits of each choice and make that judgment.
The remaining judgment requires no lengthy deliberation.
The court of public opinion opened from the moment the video first emerged.
There are two things which viewers of that video were likely to have found especially disturbing. First, the attack itself. The arguments that could be made in Simmons’ defense — immaturity, heat of passion, defense of family, momentary lapse in judgment — seem laughably irrelevant, so vicious were those images.
Second, and in some ways even more gut-wrenching, was the scene itself. It shows a crowd of people, perhaps dozens, including many children.
The most haunting of those images comes near the end, after the fight has been broken up. A small boy, maybe 3 or 4 years old, is shown standing just a foot or so from the victim, who remains on the ground. The child’s demeanor suggests that the event which he has just witnessed has left no real impression on him. He does not seem at all disturbed, frightened or traumatized by the brutality of the incident.
Desensitized is a word we often associate with such a response: What you are exposed to most often becomes familiar and, over time, accepted.
But what sort of world do we live in where such an act of violence seems to barely register on a young child?
At some point, judgments by the courts and university will be made and the consequences will follow.
But two questions should haunt our consciences because they are the most important and unresolved questions.
The first: What does the future hold for children such as that child in the video, whose environment appears to already have conditioned him to world of senseless violence?
The second: As a society, what can we do about it?
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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