I’m preoccupied with the idea of personal responsibility. Sartre had a wonderful notion of “bad faith” that I can best explain through illustration:
Gorjus is having a bad Wednesday morning. I feel so bad! he says. But why should I? Just because I stayed up late drinking beer with Woody & Steve doesn’t mean I should suffer.
Ah-ah, kiddo. Yes it does. Similarly the well-known “why did I make a bad grade?” Well, did you study? “No.” Ah. Bad faith, then.
Although I am a fierce advocate of the rights of citizens to sue for redress, there are rare cases that seem a little weak. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Johnson, 39 S.W. 3d 729 (Tex. App. 2001), tells such a story. The plaintiff sued the giant corporation because . . . he had a stack of papier-mache reindeers pushed on top of him.
Now wait, you say. Perhaps they fell from a great height, or they were huge, and you’re just poking fun at this man’s injuries. Well, no. He got a cut on the arm. I’m not sure where he drug up his Hutz of a lawyer, but the conversation might have gone something like this:
Reindeer victim: Mr. Hutz, I really think that Wal-Mart owes me. I mean, I was hurt. On their property.
Hutz: Well, let’s see, fellah!! Wereya hurt?
RV: Well, not really. I did have this, uh, cut on my arm . . .
H: Oh, that’s just dandy! What about—well, are you emotionally distressed?
RV: Pardon?
H: You know, are you scared of reindeer now? Or perhaps . . . Christmas itself?
RV: Itself? Um, no, not really . . .
H: What about problems with the ol’ block and tackle?
RV: Um, I don’t fish, Mr. Hutz . . .
H: No, my good fellah! I mean the man downstairs! The ying-a-loon! The bomp in the ba-domp-a-bomp!
RV: Are you . . . Mr. Hutz, have you been drinking?
H: Yes. And I’m sorry but I must now ask you for fifteen dollars. I am out of gin.
For every case like that, however, there’s two dozen where a person was hurt because of the ignorance of others or shoddy products. Or where a seventy-nine year old grandmother gets third-degree burns over sixteen percent of her body because of scalding liquid. Oh, wait! That one’s supposed to be frivolous. Just like cigarettes don’t kill you.
Most things aren’t as clearcut as little paper reindeer or third-degree burns. What if a group of drunk kids flips their car over and get killed? Is it their fault, or the fault of their fraternity? Back when a lot of us were still at State, two Sigma Chis got killed in a drunk driving accident. They were just babies. They were underage. And they had been drinking at a fraternity function.
So who rightfully shoulders this blame? The family has filed suit, and I can’t say I blame them. The poor kid driving had to pay for his sins—not just with the loss of his friends and life but with a felony charge. I’m glad he got good Judge Goza, a kind and intelligent man that looks exactly what you’d think an old Mississippi judge would look like. I went up before him once in a Moot Court competition and you can tell he’s actually thinking. So I think a ten-year sentence with most of it suspended is fair enough.
Does Sigma Chi know they’ve got teenagers drinking? Oh yeah. Do they know they drink to excess? Hell yeah. Could they stop it? Absolutely. Could State do better as well? Yes again. We non-fraternity types used to be infuriated with the public frat partying on our strictly-no-alcohol campus. We couldn’t have a drop in a residence halls, but everybody looked the other way if it was at the KA house.
If we’re really serious about stopping drunk driving and underage drinking, we don’t need to lie to ourselves about “personal responsibility.” That damn defense lawyer for the chapter just about makes me sick. We’ve already got laws saying this kids are too young to drink, based on the premise that they aren’t responsible enough. I know what they’re going to say already: you touch a hot stove, you get burned. You get drunk and drive, you might die. You assumed the risk.
The difference being, this is like pressing somebody’s hand to a hot stove. They create the culture, they ostracize any differences—it’s not a critique, it’s a fact—and then they want to dodge out on any responsibility. So Sigma Chi, you should take care of those boys’ parents. Their children aren’t around to shuffle their feet and make excuses; you shouldn’t have so much bad faith you’d put the blame on a couple of dead boys.