Is anyone really pissed off that ND looks so prude for suspending this kid and we have no idea what he did?
I don't think you can say that they look prudish, without knowing what happened. Picture this:
Fauria lives next to a Jewish kid, or a Muslim kid. Fauria is constantly harassing the guy about being Jewish/Muslim. He has had four meetings in the last 3 weeks, with sequential levels of the ResLife Chain of Command, about knocking it off. Each time, he shows some contrition in the meetings, and promises to stop picking on the kid. So, at each level, they decide to give him another chance. Finally, a few days after the 4th meeting, he is caught doing it again. This time, the ResLife people bring in a high muckety-muck in the Administration to handle it. This high muckety-muck meets with Fauria, who by now is getting tired of these meetings, and can't understand why people won't let him "joke around" with the guy. So Fauria cops an attitude at this meeting, emboldened by the lack of prior consequences for his actions. The high muckety-muck meets with the recalcitrant Fauria, then discusses the issue with his high muckety-muck peers. The decision is made to suspend Fauria for a semester, to try to reinforce to him that the matter is being taken seriously, and he better shape up. There would be little paper trail, since this was not a criminal matter, but it would be a sufficient reason (in my mind) to suspend the kid. The kid gets pissed off at being suspended, takes his ball, and goes home. Of course he "takes the high road" in the media. He isn't about to let it get out that he was harassing a student because of his religion. So he just keeps his mouth shut about it. A bunch of talk show radio guys, being the responsible defenders of journalistic integrity that THEY are, read on some internet message board the rumors that the incident that took place was something to do with streaking. They see an opportunity to increase their ratings, by breaking the story that a Notre Dame football player was kicked off of the team and thrown out of school, for streaking. So they run with it. But they don't want to reveal their highly placed, incredibly accurate internet message board source, so they just say "Well, if the rumors are true.........I wouldn't even have grounded my kid for what Fauria did."
This is obviously a hypothetical situation. But it is one possible illustration of how this could be a very understandable, very practical move on the part of the University.
I'll wait until the facts come out (they always do, in these cases, even if it is years later), and then I will decide for myself what to think of it.
