Opinion: Hypocrisy abounds in UNC’s handling of the Mock case

The lack of attention from the University regarding wrestling coach C.D. Mock’s personal campaign to blame women in general for his son’s sexual assault accusations indicates this university is comfortable with double standards.

Specifically, it seems complicit in a double standard pertaining to who has the right to self-expression.

As a coach, Mock was allowed to publicly express his views as an individual, according to a statement from the University. But student-athletes are severely limited in what they are permitted to share — inflammatory or not — about their personal lives and with whom. They are restricted from speaking to the media without prior approval from the athletic department.

This is justified by the necessity of protecting the school’s public image given that athletes generally have a higher profile than the average student. Mock’s profile, as a Division I coach, would seem to justify similar oversight.

His views also represent a double standard regarding the conversation surrounding sexual assault. He claims to speak for falsely accused males in the name of generating healthy discussion, yet he condemns female activism regarding this issue as a whole.

Student-athletes are subjected to several impediments to social media expression, ranging from the internet monitoring services of a private contractor to intervention from a team representative.

But Mock is somehow free to make national headlines with his blog with language that veers dangerously toward victim-blaming.

Mock states in his blog that he is proud of the University for the way it acted, or rather, did not act in response to his unsavory social media activity.

“Your (sic) likely another woman who wants to be able to go to a party and have zero accountability,” Mock tweeted on Jan. 11, implying that a woman’s irresponsible decision to party could somehow justify a man’s irresponsible decision to rape her.

While student-athletes may endanger a university’s image of wholesomeness with their photos from Halloween on Franklin Street, Mock can, and did, make the conversation surrounding sexual assault more intimidating for survivors. The results of Mock’s diatribe leave an insidious cultural impression and contribute to a climate of disbelief that continues to prevent survivors from coming forward. Far more is at stake than bad publicity.

Mock’s actions suggest he perceives the threat of false accusation faced by men to be greater than that of rape faced by women. The rate of false accusation is much debated, but it is typically pegged as occurring in somewhere between 2 and 8 percent of reported rapes. Compare this to a Department of Justice finding that for every 10,000 women on campus, 350 incidents of rape will occur per year, and more than half of those will go unreported.

This is not to say that there shouldn’t be a voice for the falsely accused. But it will be hard to accurately assess the rate of false accusation until we are able to know the true scale of the problem of sexual assault by creating a culture where survivors are not afraid to come forward.

The repressed voices on this issue currently remain repressed because of sentiments similar to Mock’s — a sentiment broadcasted nationally alongside UNC’s already tarnished name.

If student-athletes’ expression is to be limited in the name of restoring and protecting UNC’s brand, so too should that of coaches, who are under contract and duly compensated for their work.

By that logic, coaches should be held to a more stringent standard, given that their affiliation with the University typically spans more than four years.

Despite this, the current athletic model refuses to acknowledge student-athletes as employees, the only title that could justify the current restrictions on their self-expression. Meanwhile, coaches are not held accountable, even if their speech actively damages the community.