Compassion or Insult?

It is a story which tugs at your heartstrings, unless you have no heart. An Ishpeming father has appealed to the Michigan High School Athletic Association, or MHSAA, to allow his son to play high schools ports past the age of 18. His son has Down’s Syndrome, and started school a year late because of it. MHSAA bylaws do not permit anyone who will be 19 before September 1st of a school year to participate in sports. The student, Eric Dompierre, is already a 19 year old junior at Ishpeming High School.

It would be very easy to say that he should be allowed on the school’s football and basketball teams just so that he could be part of a team. That’s essentially what his father Dean, the Ishpeming schools, and free Press sportswriter Mick McCabe want. Yet Eric is only to actually be on the field or court during extra point attempts in football, or when the game safely decided in basketball. It leaves us with the question: is the young man being treated as an equal, or is he being patronized?

With all due respect to the situation, allowing him to be on a team but only allowing him in the games when nothing is at stake does exactly that. While we can appreciate his desire to be part of a team, what are we saying about his personal integrity when he is only to play when the game doesn’t matter? Aren’t we in fact insulting his dignity him rather than defending it?

This is not to say that we ought not have compassion for him or anyone who struggles with disabilities. But if part of mainstreaming those who deal with such mental and/or physical issues is to make exceptions for them within rules that apply equally to everybody else (and as such it becomes difficult to call them unfair) then it seems right to ask about whether they and their supporters really want mainstreaming. Or, again, whether they in truth patronize such individuals.

Compassion is a fine and good thing. Yet if it leads us to harm rather than uphold someone’s dignity, even the dignity of someone who may not realize his dignity is being harmed, then we need to take a step back and ask about the real meaning of our compassion. We help no one’s dignity when we patronize. We may actually be insulting it.