People spend their lives believing they fit in with the wrong group. For example, someone might dress similar or play the same sports as another person, yet it does not mean they should feel obliged to hang out with those people. Some people simply have different interests besides one similarity. For this reason, one person’s decisions can spread across an entire group of people. Depending on the situation, the decision may not have been a good one, and it will result in making the group of them look silly and be taken less seriously. The image people can create for a community itself is detrimental. Due to one miniscule mistake, the news can disperse countrywide as fast as a wildfire.

About 10 years ago, the Duke lacrosse team was accused of raping two women and the impact it has had on lacrosse is awful. The problem was that they did not commit these crimes as they were false accusations. The news spread across campus rapidly, and the next thing they knew it became national headlines. An enormous proportion of people immediately became biased against the team itself. The world immediately created an identity for the team and lacrosse itself, as a whole. Overall, the athletes were defining themselves as a less serious group and giving any type of relation to the team a worse appearance. All different groups of people faced collateral damage from this occasion. The school faced immediate issues, the coach of the Duke lacrosse team was forced to step down, the team lost an entire year of lacrosse, and the it hurts the image of the school.
Shortly after the accusations, the school was forced to make the decisions on what to do about the team; as they were under a lot of heat. In the end, they made the wrong decision forcing the coach of the team to step down and the way they handled the situation as a whole. This incident strongly damaged the appearance of the school while they were trying to improve it. This causes other universities across the nation to fear allowing lacrosse, the fasting growing sport, become a sport their school because of this decision. They don’t want to deal with the issues the lacrosse players can bring to their school.

Mike Pressler, the coach of Duke lacrosse at the time was driven out of his job. The only school who reached out to him was Bryant University where he is still currently coaching. Everybody immediately turned away from him because he is expected to be in control of his players. He understood the pressure and risks he faces signing up for his job, and he handled it as best as he could. The reason he chose to stay at Bryant College is because they were the ones who gave him open hands and welcomed him in during his most difficult of times. The player’s decisions impacted their coaches career because of who he chooses to associate with. So, the coach without his own control  is creating an image or definition for himself by coaching these boys.

After the incident, many of the players moved on to new places for a new beginning. They made the right decision by doing this because the university immediately turned away from them. Some players even created an organization against false accusations and unjust treatment in trials. The problem was, the media chooses not cover these types of things. The media is only looking for the headline news about murders and rapes.

Therefore, they hear the verdict and move on to the next case. The people didn’t have that different of a belief after this. They just remember them as some drunk, foolish lacrosse players. The big issue with that is the sport itself is seen as one for jocks who drink and make naive decisions. In conclusion, the players are defining themselves through only what makes the news. As a result, they are not given a second chance to prove that they are decent people in society.

The school was faced with the issue of their image. People lost interest in the school hearing about the people around it and the people on campus. The town Duke is in, Durham, is not the nicest town for a college. As a result of the rape case, many applicants feared going their and it damaged the school’s funding substantially. This case drew many people away from the school because they had the “drunken” lacrosse players.
The moral of the story was society defines people based on the groups they belong to. Lacrosse players have difficulty being respected and taken seriously because of a single decision. People of all groups are given labels such as nerd, druggie, jock, player, etc. The words can get more and more negative causing mental and emotional harm to people. This is because society labels and decides who a person is based off one decision. People should not turn away from a person because of one decision, it should look to immediately give assistance and advice to those people, so it does not happen again. To reiterate, people are defined by the associations they are a part of and the decisions that even one single person from the group makes.