Our friends at The Claremont Insider, the best local blog around, covered the recent brouhaha between Teddy Bingham PO '11 and Eric Yingling CMC '12 that I've already reported on ad nauseam.
The post is generally right on the facts, but says that Bingham is 18. He's actually 19.
When one of the professors asked Bingham if he had been drinking, Bingham replied yes. The professor then asked him his age. According to people who were present, Bingham waited for what seemed a long moment and then replied, "nineteen."
And yes, for drinking underage at Pomona and stealing stones from our dedication area, he got no punishment. In fact, they chaulked it up to "campus mischief."
25 comments:
Are you really, really going to complain about somebody drinking underage and getting away with it? On a college campus? When you go to CMC?
Why don't you just come out and say "I don't like this guy because he goes to Pomona?"
Citizenx, don't be stupid. The point is he was drinking underage, which is illegal, stealing, which is also illegal, and then started the attack, making him at least partially culpable.
But he wasn't punished. No, in fact, it was the marine who defended himself, and who had committed no crime, who was punished.
So much for justice. The entire CMC judiciary board should be fired.
AHAHAHAHA.
Ok, unlike Charles, I make a point of responding to anonymous posts. If you're going to accuse me of being stupid, at least have the patience to wait for me to say something legitimately stupid. It happens often, stick around.
Charles chose to couch this discussion in terms of underaged drinking. Not only that, he went so far as to call our intrepid hero's dear old Maman and ask her about underaged drinking. When she gave a very legitimate and reasonable response, Charles fired back a snippy one-liner that referenced some school board red herring.
Furthermore, Charles wrote "underage drinking at Pomona" not "underage drinking". Surely you anonymous, writer of so many comments, understand that adding our hero's school is leading and unneccessary, especially when it was already mentioned?
He didn't even mention the fact that Bingham lunged, and only in passing wrote about the stone-stealing -- which, I might add, seems to have been halted by the proceedings, and thus shouldn't be subject to punishment.
Anything else?
Let me get this right. In CitizenX-Land if bank robbers are caught by the cops on the way out of the bank, and the "crime" is stopped, no harm, no foul?
By my count, it only took CitizenX a dozen and a half lines, perhaps fewer, to say something stupid after he put us on notice that it might happen.
Anonymous, I feel like I need to comment now. Regardless of how stupid I am, your analogy is fucking retarded. Did you seriously just compare underage drinking in college to robbery? So according to that logic, if a kid is caught stealing candy or something, he should be put in jail right?
Some anonymous posters are cooler than others, don't put us all in the same boat.
-Anonymous Anonymous
While I very much like the idea of CitizenX land, your anonymous analogy is astonishingly inapt (awful lot of alliteration all around CitX Land).
I'm not really yelling, but you don't seem to bright, so maybe if I caps it, you'll understand easier.
HE WASN'T CAUGHT BY AN AUTHORITY FIGURE. HE WAS CAUGHT BY A RANDOM PERSON THEN PUNCHED OUT. IN YOUR ANALOGY, THAT'S LIKE A PERSON WALKING IN TO ROB A BANK THEN BEING PUNCHED OUT BY ERIC YINGLING I DON'T KNOW WHY HE'S THERE BUT HE IS.
Do you see why he couldn't be charged with robbing that bank? Because he didn't do it and was instead punched out by Eric Yingling on his way to rob it?
DO YOU SEE?
CitizenX, while I do agree that Charles should be a little more cautious in his criticisms on the underage drinking front (Pomona's much stricter alcohol policies notwithstanding), I also believe that Bingham's state of intoxication is completely relevant to the case and he should be duly punished. This isn't about a Stag exploiting an opportunity to rag on a Sagehen; this is about a miscarriage of justice, however small.
There is no reason to doubt that the accounting of the events of that night as related to us here and elsewhere are incorrect. That accounting strongly suggests that Yingling interrupted Bingham in the process of defacing campus property by asking him what he was doing. Bingham attacked; Yingling defended himself. Would Bingham have attacked Yingling if he were sober? It's impossible to know for sure, but I'd put my money on "no."
That the Claremont Police declined to take Yingling in for prosecution would seem to reinforce the notion that Yingling was well within his rights to defend himself from a drunken Bingham. Charles' vitriolic assaults on Josh Siegel aside, the fact that our J-Board is putting Yingling on probation and that Pomona is declining to punish Bingham at all is severely disappointing, and sadly, I'm not sure anyone concerned with this has any method of redress whatsoever.
David,
That's a good point, and I actually agree with pretty much all of it except this:
The drinking, I think, was pretty irrelevant to whether Teddy should be punished. If he had performed the same actions sober, I think the punishment should basically be the same. Sure, he did stupid things because he was drunk, but punishing him specifically for that would be so enact a double standard.
Basically, anybody that lunges at somebody and causes a fight is pretty much at some sort of fault, whether drunk or not. A drunk person is just more likely to do something stupid like that.
P.S. I think whether Yingling was within his rights or not, it was probably excessive. Not that it should have any bearing on the outcome, but still. Reminds me never, ever to drunkenly lunge at a Marine.
Citizen X,
Excessive?? It was ONE PUNCH!!! Was Yingling supposed to somehow overcome muscle memory in a split second decision to defend himself against a drunkard? So let's see, we can lessen force by reducing the number of blows , or by reducing the force of the blows. Since there was only one blow, the only choice would have been to overcome a gut instinct. I think you need a reality check, but maybe you've never been in a fight.
He wasn't punched out on his way to rob the stones, he already had one stone out of the ground and in a shopping cart, along with some football equipment!
This is one of the earlier anonymi. New light in the last post: Now there is an assertion about some football equipment also. And no one has mentioned the shopping cart. Unless it was Bingham's personal shopping cart there is an arguable issue there as well.
Reminds me of the old story about the worker who every day for years would take a wheelbarrow of sand from his place of employment, past the security guard on the way out. At length the worker retired, and on his way out the last time, the security guard had to ask him, "all these years, you've taken a wheelbarrow of sand out of the plant; what were you doing?" "That's easy," the worker told him, "I was stealing wheelbarrows."
Anonymous--
Football equipment? Sounds like you're a big-ass liar. Nothing anywhere said anything about stealing football equipment.
No I am not a big ass liar, and if you idiots were privy to the information that I am, you would know the facts. The football equipment refers to the Pads/Dummies that are attached to the sled that sits out there all season. Bingham admitted to stealing these with his friends, as well as a few cones that were out there. And a shopping cart was present, and they were placing the cones and pads in the cart. There is video of Bingham and his 3 friends with the shopping cart in the Senior Apt's parking lot just minutes before the fight. Yingling actually obtained the video and had it ready to use as evidence against Bingham if necessary; however, Bingham simply admitted to what he and his friends were doing, so introduction of that evidence was not necessary.
First, of all, I'm going to imagine that all of the Anonymous people are the same. This comment thread is much funnier that way.
Secondly, the point is that there isn't really a need to throw a punch in that scenario. You generally can sidestep a drunken lunge. Or knock the person to the ground without balling your fist. Or do one of any number of things. Especially if you've been trained. Ask anybody who does any sort of martial arts - Yingling probably would have been better off choking him out than striking him.
Or to use an analogy, what if Yingling had shot him? Would you be babbling about how you can't change the force of a bullet and how he only shot him once, or would you recognize that while legally defensible, the use of that particular kind of force probably was excessive?
As long as you realize it's just your imagination; there's quite a bit there already. I sign up for Posts 5, 11, and now 15.
Citizen X,
Are you really trying to make an analogy with a gun shot? Need I point out how horribly flawed that logic is? And who are you to try and use this Liberal, pussified, questioning of Yingling's actions? Try and sidestep him? Choke him?? Choking is way worse. Going for the throat could be called attempted murder. It was just a punch.
At least now I know why you go to CMC. This soft-ass liberal arts college environment is the only place you can survive.
Are you really trying to make an analogy with a gun shot?
Yes.
Need I point out how horribly flawed that logic is?
I was simply saying that the "he only threw ONE punch, and he couldn't make it any less hard" argument is stupid, and doesn't excuse the punch.
And who are you to try and use this Liberal, pussified, questioning of Yingling's actions?
I'm not anybody. Just weighing in on what happened. That's what people do sometimes. I'm not starting a posse to round him up.
Try and sidestep him?
Do you know what drunkenness does to proprioception? Have you ever been around drunk people?
Choke him?? Choking is way worse. Going for the throat could be called attempted murder. It was just a punch.
This is simply wrong. I'm not even suggesting he should have choked him, just saying it was a less dangerous option. And I'm not talking strangulation, but more Rear Naked.
At least now I know why you go to CMC. This soft-ass liberal arts college environment is the only place you can survive.
Don't go to CMC. And please believe me when I say I've survived in much worse environments. What's that they say about assumptions? "You're a presumptuous dick?"
I'm no good with sayings, but you get the gist, I hope.
CitizenX, I'm pretty sure you're wrong about how if someone is stopped by a non-authority-figure from completing a crime, they won't be charged.
Say I hire someone to fix my TV, and then I catch them leaving my house with it. I yell at them and chase them off, and they leave the TV. Are you seriously saying that I have no legal recourse? That because I prevented them from completing the crime, they can't be charged with anything?
Or if I leave the keys in my car, and someone gets in and starts to drive off. If I pulled them out of the car, do you really think the police wouldn't arrest them?
I'm pretty sure that just because a bystander happened to stop Bingham during the commission of his crime doesn't mean that he couldn't be prosecuted.
I do agree that all the focus on his underage drinking is a bit overboard. He was drunk on a weekend, like most college students are. Meh. But the fact that he was in the process of stealing? And that he started a fight? There absolutely should have been consequences for that.
Though, come to think of it, I guess consequences were supplied. Just not by Pomona.
John (IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME),
First off, I agree that if there's anything he should have been punished for, it's starting a fight. I imagine though, that in this case it might not have been neccessary.
In terms of your examples, I'm not actually entirely sure of the legal precedence. In the first one, I imagine that you could get the person arrested because you'd engaged in a contract of some kind with them. In the second, I think it might depend on how far they got towards that end. I'm looking it up now.
In any event, a drunken student on a dark night isn't very sound testimony as to whether he was stealing, so in the absence of more evidence, I'm not sure how you really could make a case for Bingham being punished. Especially if you were relying on intent.
CitizenX,
I did a couple google searches. Here's a case (http://www.freep.com/article/C5/20081113/NEWS08/811130704/-1/News0204) where someone walked into a restaurant and tried to take the cash register. Employees and customers stopped him, and he fled without the register. He was charged, among many other things, with "larceny in a building." That's a pretty decent parallel to this incident, I think.
Or here (http://www.insidebayarea.com/san-joaquin-county/ci_10950501): a guy tries to steal a frozen piece of meat. Is confronted by a bystander, drops it, and is later arrested and booked for "attempted petty theft."
Bingham admitted what he'd been doing, and had stones in his possession when Yingling stopped him, so so I don't think the "not enough evidence" argument hold much water. I'm not relying on "intent." I'm relying on the fact that his undisputed possession of the stones was unlawful.
-John
(Yep, real name.)
John,
Upon further reflection, I'm pretty sure this case is very much like the two you described. Not sure if Pomona has similar laws in place, but in any event, he probably could have been charged with taking the stones.
That is, of course, if he admitted it. Which he seems to have done in this case.
Thanks for the legwork John. I googled intention, which just sent me into an hour long spiral of wikipedia articles.
CitizenX / John,
I like the back and forth there.. some well written arguments for both sides. CitizenX - I'll agree that in hindsight, there are numerous other options I could have taken. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment and without much time for reflection I chose the path I did. As far as choking, you may or may not be familiar with the training that Marines have but our chokes are all called "blood chokes"(MCMAP), and they are called that for a reason. Next time- if there even is one- it is clear to me that it would just be better to avoid the situation all together and let the school deal with anything like that rather than trying to intervene.
As far as the jboard went, it was cut and dry, Mr. Bingham didn't deny anything that I said and our stories were 99% the same so I don't think there was too much variation in the events that happened. This jboard was strictly about my actions on that night, being a CMC student.
Takes a standup guy to respond as Eric just did.
Eric,
Thanks for the response. Again, I don't even think your actions were really that out of line. You had other options, perhaps, but when you drunkenly lunge at somebody, you kind of take your chances.
As far as Teddy goes, it seems that J-Boarding, while maybe technically appropriate, is probably unneeded in this case. He probably gets it now.
Cheers.
Citizen X,
Oh, definitely agreed.
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