Public School Forces Football Team To Forfeit Game Because Some Players Are Sexually Active

Kenwood High School, in Baltimore, Md., is full of young men who like to do what young men like to do: have sex and play sports. But because some of them did one, no one's allowed to do the other.

Here come the quotes, since no one's being too forthcoming on what actually happened. "Several" members of the Kenwood Bluebirds JV team had a "sexual encounter" with a female student. A district spokesman called it "inappropriate behavior and poor decision-making," but there was no crime, and by all accounts the encounter was consensual. As a totally reasonable response, the school has kicked the offending students off the football team, and is forcing Kenwood to forfeit their next game.

"Principal Martin, at his beginning of the year address to students, made it very clear that Kenwood students — as all our students across Baltimore County — are ambassadors of their school, and the behavior that was exhibited by these students in question was not behavior that was indicative of the quality of the student and the behavior that we would expect from our students," the district spokesman said.

I don't know what happened here, but as freaky-deaky as those 14- and 15-year-olds may have gotten, it seems overkill to punish the entire team for the totally legal actions of a few players. If it were a Catholic school, with morality stipulations and absolute power, it would be one thing. But Kenwood is a taxpayer-funded public school who should be answering to state and county laws, not the puritanism of a few administrators.

Sexual encounter leads to J.V. football forfeit [Baltimore Sun] Football Players Sanctioned In Incident With Girl [WBAL-TV]