It started slowly, but quickly turned the entire campus into something of a media circus.
Athletic Director Robert Mulcahy III said nationally syndicated radio host Don Imus "assassinated the character of 10 exceptionally talented and hardworking young women," in a statement earlier this week reacting the racist and sexist remarks Imus made on his radio show the morning after the Rutgers women's basketball team fell to Tennessee in the NCAA Championship.
The weekend is when people really began to take notice of the offensive comments, and by the time I had made it home Saturday to spend Easter with my family I was being asked by nearly everyone I know, "What exactly happened?" and "How do you feel about it?"
So I read them the transcription of Wednesday's conversation, and explained why I found it offensive.
Imus made character generalizations about 10 young women he did not know based on their looks, and the fact that eight of the 10 players he saw on the team were black.
Add on to that, by referring to Spike Lee's movie "School Daze," Imus reduced women's college athletics to a beauty pageant, and you can understand why so many people were outraged by the comments.
The comments took the dignity away from 10 of our fellow students, but what too many people failed to realize is what else it took from them: As Essence Carson put it, Don Imus had "stolen a moment of pure grace" from a team that had worked so hard to earn the right to enjoy it.
There were eight-hour practices while we were sitting at home over winter break, there were 15-minute "tap drills" that exhausted the players beyond what they would have ever imagined they could be.
And then, there were wins - a lot of them - as Rutgers turned their sluggish start into an NCAA Tournament run.
The hard work every day at practice turned into results, as Rutgers pulled upsets, won road games and shut down every offense it came up against on its way to the finals. When the players returned from Cleveland, they should have gotten high-fived as they walked down the street and applauded when they came into class, the same way Jeremy Ito and his football teammates did after that historic win over Louisville in November.
Instead, it went something more like "I heard what that guy said about you, what an a-hole."
And they had media calling their houses Easter Sunday and bombarding their cell phones searching for a reaction.
"Instead of spending time with [my brothers] and having fun, I had to cut off my phone." center Kia Vaughn said at a press conference.
And where's the justice in that?
But people rallied behind the team, defending its character and rallying to demand Imus' termination.
They threatened to boycott the stations that aired his show as well as his advertisers - pressuring them to pull their money from his show.
And yesterday, CBS Radio succumbed to the pressure as well, firing Don Imus.
Now that that's settled, I think it's time to let the Rutgers women's basketball team members go back to what they came here for: To be student-athletes.
With the emphasis on student first.
On Wednesday, head coach C. Vivian Stringer released a statement, a portion of which stated this desire.
"The Rutgers women's basketball team wants to put this behind us, so our student-athletes can continue to focus on doing well in school," Stringer said in the release.
The school year is wrapping up, and on the way to the title game, these 10 students had to miss a lot of class and catch up on a lot of work. While this controversy was going on, they had to skip study hall to go to press conferences. But maybe now that Imus has been fired, they can settle back into that role as students.
And as hard as we know they can work, hopefully they can write their papers and ace their exams.
Remember, as Carson said in Tuesday's press conference, these 10 student athletes "are a team full of bright-eyed youth that aspire to be great, … not only great on the basketball court, but in the fields of medicine, music and psychology."
When that happens for them, then maybe we can really say that justice was served.
Nic Martino welcomes readers to comment at phillienic@yahoo.com
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