Ray Rice isn’t a very nice person. He knocked out his fiance in an elevator with a single punch to the face. Then he dragged her body out of the elevator into the hallway with a foot still lodged in the elevator. He speaks calmly with a security guard and doesn’t even look down at her on the ground. I almost find his disregard for her lifeless body as disturbing as the punch.

There is no disputing those facts. The elevator camera documented it all. What is in dispute is whether the NFL administrators knew about this video before TMZ put it up on their website. If they knew about it, why didn’t they either fire him or take him out of the game for a long time? If they hadn’t seen the video, why didn’t they ask to see it?

The NFL president is pleading ignorance, which doesn’t seem entirely honest. Clearly, this Rice dude was worth a lot of money, and they didn’t want to damage that property. Also, I think that they didn’t consider the behavior of their players off the field to be any of their business.

A few weeks ago, a group of nasty children in Ohio pulled a prank on an autistic kid. Instead of dumping ice water on his head for the Ice Bucket Challenge, they got up on a roof and dumped urine and excrement on his head. They videotaped it, because that’s what assholes do. The victim covered in shit wipes the nastiness from his eyes and looks confused.

School officials were interviewed for the story. They said that this was indeed a horrible act, but they couldn’t expel the perpetrators, because the act happened outside of school grounds. Schools have taken a very strict line between things that happen during school hours and on school grounds versus everything else. Their responsibilities end when the kids take a step outside the school building. Even school buses are grey areas.

If we think that the NFL is responsible for their players’ crimes, should schools also take responsibility for their students’ crimes? Should all places of employment penalize their workers for outside-the-workplace crimes? Do they have the means to investigate every crime and then form an impartial committee to determine the punishment?