Second chances
I finally watched an Illini basketball game yesterday, in what will hopefully be their penultimate win of the season. One aspect of their success this year that’s been nice to see in this punitive world is that one of the stars of the show (and the difference in yesterday’s game) was someone that the Champaign-Urbana community was close to running out of town just a year ago. The generally quite punitive prosecutor who failed to prosecute lost his re-election campaign largely because of that. I lived in Champaign-Urbana for 14 years and I’m not naive enough to pretend that the acceptance of the team and this player does not stem primairly from their success on the court. And the point is not to suggest that Champaign-Urbana is any more sports-addled or hypocritical than anywhere else that I have lived or anywhere else where I might currently live; it’s not. But it is a good and timely reminder of the fact that the character and fate of many young people are quite malleable and need not be determined by a misstep or two, unless we make it so.