We Have to Leave Some Room for Redemption
UPDATE: I took a much deeper look at this situation involving Julia Vetter and Brynn Nieukirk which you can read here. Based on the information I was able to gather, it’s clear the University of North Dakota handled this situation poorly.
MINOT, N.D. — People who do or say racist things need to be held accountable.
We also need to leave open to those people a path to redemption.
I’ve been thinking about those issues after reading about a couple of ugly incidents in Grand Forks.
One involved two women, Brynn Nieukirk and Julia Vetter, who were, until just recently, volleyball players at the University of North Dakota. Earlier this year they were involved in a video that included a racial slur. They were disciplined but allowed to remain on the team. UND used the image of one of them in a recent promotion of its athletics programs.
This caused a UND football player, Jaxson Turner, to call the school out on Twitter. “This is never acceptable but especially during a time like this. This video was brought to your attention and this athlete shouldn’t be the face of UND athletics,” he wrote, directing his comments at a UND account.
