I'm Not WOTC, but If I Did It....

This morning I woke up to the same shocking news as many of my friends; Zach Jesse received a 35 year ban from the DCI. If you're reading this I assume you know what the DCI is, but if not, the DCI is the official sanctioning body for competitive play in Magic: The Gathering and various other games produced by Wizards of the Coast (WOTC). The news widely shocked the community. See, Jesse recently put up some solid finishes at Grand Prix, and while they say there is no such thing as bad publicity, maybe there is when you have skeletons in your closet.

I had first met Zach Jesse back in March when we both attended the SCG Invitational in his hometown of Richmond. Our mutual friend grabbed us to be his partners in a team draft. I'd never met Jesse or heard anything about him, and he was nice and courteous to me for the entire time we played. We also won the draft, so I had an overall positive impression of him moving forward. I saw him again in May at Grand Prix Atlantic City, where he happened to make top 8. When I saw him most recently at GP Charlotte, I knew something was amiss. Jesse had a winning record in the tournament and he was playing against a well-known opponent, but he did not receive a feature match. I was hanging out with our mutual friend who was disheartened by the news. From what I remember his quote was "This is bullshit". I had no idea what he was talking about so I dug for more information. I didn't get a complete answer, but he told me that something had happened in Jesse's past and Wizards did not want him on camera. I assumed it was an instance of cheating, and thought nothing more of it.

This morning when I found out the DCI had banned Jesse for something non Magic related I was outraged. Jesse wrote an explanation of his past behavior on Reddit, but for those of you too lazy to click the link here's the short version as I understand it. In 2003 (yes, 12 years ago) two college freshmen (18 years old) made a poor choice: they drank so much neither one had a clear recollection of the night. Unfortunately, the night didn't end there. Later that night, while the female was sick in her own bathroom, she was raped by Jesse. When the case went to court, Jesse took a plea offer for the lesser charge of aggravated sexual battery. He received an 8 year sentence, 3 months of which was to be spent in prison, with 10 years of supervised release to follow.

While I find Jesse's actions that night disgusting, my initial reaction was I didn't think it was fair for the DCI to ban a player for a non Magic related occurrence. If Zach has always displayed sportsman-like conduct in the game, never cheated, and holds a good rapport at his local shop, what could be the harm in allowing him to play? It instantly made me worried for anything that might be hiding in my past. After the initial shock passed, I tried to rationalize what the DCI did. This is what I came up with....

Sports leagues ban players all the time for things that occur in their personal lives. Most notably, the NFL suspends (or bans) players for a certain amount of time depending on... well, for seemingly random times based on whatever the commissioner sees fit. I found this graph that denotes crimes vs games suspended.

The "sexual assault" you see on the graph belongs to none others than Ben Roethlisberger, who raped a college age girl back in April of 2010. He was 28, she was 20. While we can see Ben's crime to be a bit more severe, the punishment is way more lax. Roethlisberger was originally suspended for 6 games, but upon the charges being dropped, his suspension was reduced. In fact, the WOTC explanation for the ban seem to mimic Goodell's reasoning for leaving some kind of suspension in tact

"The Personal Conduct Policy makes clear that I may impose discipline "even where the conduct does not result in conviction of a crime' as, for example, where the conduct 'imposes inherent danger to the safety and well being of another person.""

And while I enjoy watching sports, I had no idea the NFL had such a thing as a Personal Conduct Policy. In 2007, the same year the indefinite suspension was brought down on Micheal Vick, a new conduct policy was introduced to punish players for personal behavior. All of my information on the NFL, including the graph, can be found here (it's a pretty short and sweet article).

Just reading those statements, it sounds like the NFL one up-ed WOTC by putting a code of conduct in place before suspending players. Which brings us to the point - if WOTC is going to ban people for their personal lives, they need to establish the rules/bylaws to say so prior to the banning. We keep seeing WOTC amend their rules after something happens that they think shouldn't be allowed - for example, the mistreatment of women in the Magic community. What if they decided to stop being reactive and start being proactive? If WOTC wants to ban people based on personal behavior then they should take a page from the NFL's book and write the rules on personal conduct. At least that way, if someone gets banned they can see it coming. People would know what behaviors were acceptable and which ones weren't, and the people being banned would not be so blindsided. But if WOTC wants to do that they have to be more timely about it....

No matter how we each feel about Zach Jesse and his ban, I don't think anyone thinks rape is okay or a crime that should be taken lightly. The real shocker is how delayed the ban was. Hell, if Jesse had recently been convicted of rape I don't think anyone would have batted an eye at his ban. No, the real problem lies in the fact WOTC let him get invested in the game after his first Grand Prix top 8, build a brand, and spend time and money to play all without even whispers of a ban. Once he was starting to feel good and comfortable everything he had worked for, it was pulled out from underneath him.

Sure, advocates of WOTC may say that they had no idea of Jesse's past until the facts were brought to their attention, and they acted as soon as possible. Again, if that were true AND he was convicted of rape say 2 years ago a multi-year banning for the sake of the community seems reasonable. Neither of those things are true in this case.

13 years ago Jesse made a mistake that both he and his victim have to live with everyday. In all of this DCI/WOTC/Drew Levin blame, no one has addressed the victim. I don't claim to know her or what she wants, but from her interview in the local paper it did not sound like she wanted Jesse to still be haunted by a teenage mistake over a decade later.

"Zug says the victim wasn't concerned with a lengthy sentence. She didn't want to see him buried under the jail," says Zug. She just wanted to see him held accountable."

The victim seems to be a compassionate person who tries to see the good in people. After spending 3 months in jail and 10 years under supervision, I think he has been held accountable. If you don't want Jesse to be the next face of Magic: The Gathering that's fine, but putting (essentially) a lifetime ban on a reformed and upstanding member of the Magic community is unprecedented and without any established policy to back their actions.

That's how I would have done it.