Vols Hold Domestic Violence Workshop; Education Must Continue
By Zach Ragan
On Wednesday, Tennessee’s football program held an extremely important workshop — one that was centered on domestic violence.
Domestic violence, over the last year, has finally been brought to the forefront, due to a rise in incidents that involve high profile athletes — both professional and collegiate.
It’s unfortunate that domestic violence awareness is in the spotlight only because of these incidents, but at least folks are finally being educated as to how serious of an issue domestic violence is across the nation.
Tennessee hasn’t been immune to domestic violence.
Butch Jones dismissed running back Treyvon Paulk from the team last season after he allegedly punched his girlfriend at a party (though Jones left the door open for Paulk to rejoin the team, something that, at least in my opinion, would be a terrible idea).
The Vols also dealt with former running back Marlin Lane being accused of sexual assault (charges were never brought). And of course there is the ongoing aggravated rape charges against former linebacker AJ Johnson and indefinitely suspended defensive back Michael Williams.
All of the above is in addition to a troubling recent report from the Knoxville News Sentinel that highlights the fact that reports of sexual assault involving Tennessee students rose by 80 percent from 2013 to 2014.
The Tennessee football program, in light of the national attention surrounding domestic violence, and the recent sexual assault/domestic violence issues at UT, made the right move by bringing in former Vol Freddie Scott to talk to team 119 about domestic violence.
Scott is the founder of the M 46 project, which is described as a father engagement initiative helping men to love and lead their families.
Here are some tweets from Scott’s time with the Vols on Wednesday.
Tennessee, along with the rest of the country, has to do a better job of educating young men on how to handle themselves, how to treat women and how, essentially, to be men.
There can never be enough education on a subject like sexual assault and domestic violence.
Wednesday’s workshop was a great start for the Vols, but the education absolutely can’t stop there.
Domestic violence awareness and education must be an ongoing lesson. It’s clear that we haven’t educated each other nearly enough on this subject.
And who knows if we ever will.