Boston College is, by all accounts, a top flight academic institution.  A place you would be proud to send your son or daughter to study and a vital part of the cultural life of a great city.  To attend college there is not a small thing, to receive a scholarship a privilege.  Such a privilege comes with obligations that would readily be apprarent to most students.  Being in good academic standing is one, obeying the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is another.

Saturday night a Boston College player allegedly left a bar in Brighton and crashed his car into a stone wall.  He was leaving the scene of the accident with a companion when police stopped him.  He refused a breathalyzer test and failed a field sobriety test.  The player was released after being arrested and had agreed to appear in court on Tuesday.  Instead he skipped the court appearance and travelled with the team to Boise, Idaho where BC played in the MPC Computers Bowl.  When the school learned of his arrest they made arrangements to postpone his hearing. Coach Tom O'Brien allowed him to dress for the game, but not play. 

The player in question is 22 years old.  Yet somehow he was not mature enough to understand the seriousness of lying to officers of the court and fleeing the state in the face of serious charges.  Then again, maybe he did understand.  He may have figured the college would handle the court date.  They did.  He may have figured he wouldn't be thrown off the team.  He wasn't.  And nobody goes to Boise without a reason, so he probably figured he would get to dress out for the bowl game.  He did.  At this point he probably believes he will be on scholarship to Boston College next year and that somehow the whole drunk driving thing will be worked out.  I'm guessing it will.

Somewhere in the future this player will graduate from Boston College into a world where if you fail to show up for court appearances you are arrested.  Where you have to face court officials yourself and find your own attorney.  Where employers take a dim view of employees who get arrested.  And where alcohol abuse is a matter with consequences far greater than whether you get to put on a uniform and play a game.

Tom O'Brien and Boston College will probably make the appropriate clucking noises about the incident and their desire to help this young man.  I hope they are able to.  But they sure have gotten off to a lousy start.