Dirty pool

Some days -- most days, nowadays -- you yearn for a little adulting from the adults. You think a smidge of autocracy might be not be a bad thing, if applied in the right circumstance by individuals who aren't children sitting at the big people's table.

(And, yes, that is exactly a reference to whom you think it's a reference).

And so come with us now to the offices of Fishers High School and the Indiana High School Athletic Association, where both adulting and backbone seem to be in short supply these days. Messages have been sent forth from both of those places, and they are not good messages. They are, in fact, the sort of messages young people might be inclined to take to heart, to the dismay of the adults who'll invariably wonder where kids get these crazy ideas.

Messages like "Expedience trumps propriety."

And also, "Boys will be boys, especially at sectional time."

And also, "Sorry, girls. See above."

At the heart of this is a series of texts sent by an unnamed member of the Fisher boys swimming team to some members of the girls swimming team. The texts, some of which have been made public, are vile, sexually harassing, in some cases laced with threats of violence. They are, as my mother would have said, the products of a kid who apparently wasn't raised right. And ultimately the kid got away with sending them.

Oh, sure. He got suspended for the balance of the swim season. But then the alleged adults got involved.

Just in time for sectionals, two of those adults, Fishers principal Jason Urban and athletic director Rob Seymour, personally called the IHSAA to request the student in question be granted a waiver to compete in the sectional, even though by IHSAA bylaws he was forbidden from doing so because he'd missed the balance of the season. IHSAA commissioner Bobby Cox, the third alleged adult, wasn't happy about it, but granted the waiver anyway, saying he had no choice.

"I’ve got a principal and an athletic director petitioning me to waive the rule, so I waived the rule," Cox said. "I’m following the bylaws."

So to review: He waived IHSAA bylaws because another bylaw said he had to.

This is about as weak in the knees as you can get from someone in Cox's position. I can think of several of his predecessors who are right now spinning like lathes in the grave at the very idea of an IHSAA commissioner behaving this way. Their response would likely have been, "I don't give a damn what the bylaw says. The kid ain't swimmin'. See you in court."

The problem with that, of course, is the IHSAA doesn't have a great track record in court. It's gotten sued before when a commish went all autocratic, and it's frequently lost. So maybe Cox was thinking about that, and maybe he was thinking about the Fishers' folks going so far as to get an injunction to halt the swimming state tournament until this unnamed young man could be reinstated.

Now, it's unlikely the Fishers' people would do something so all-world arrogant. But you never know with alleged adults. I mean, just petitioning the IHSAA to get the kid reinstated was remarkably arrogant itself, given the circumstances.

In any case, Cox should have channeled his spiritual ancestors and denied the waiver. It might not have been the smart play, but it would have been the correct one.

Because as it stands now, both his organization and Fishers High School have sent a clear message to the girls who were sexually harassed by this kid: You don't matter. We've got a sectional to win, so get over it.

Here's the thing, though.

Somewhere, somehow, this kid's going to get some frontier justice. He may be unnamed, but everyone in the swimming community likely knows who he is. So you just know that, given the way we are now, someone, somewhere is going to boo the hell out of him at some point. When he's standing on the podium at state, perhaps.

The people who subject him to this will get called out for it. But they won't be the ones at fault.

The alleged adults at Fishers and the IHSAA will be, for putting him there to begin with.