Yesterday my world was rocked. That might be a little dramatic, but I place a huge importance on the values and morals that Notre Dame cultivates, so when I heard about the Manti Te’o hoax I was incredibly saddened. At first, there was lots of suspicion as to whether or not Manti had created this story for his own benefit, but after watching Jack Swarbrick’s press conference it seems that is not the case. There is still a lot that needs to be explained, but I’d like to be optimistic and hope that these scammers were really that good and Manti was really that naive.
My friend Isaac emailed me a link to the DeadSpin article, and in the middle of reading it I got a text from my little brother. I looked to Twitter and Facebook and it was blowing up with comments and information. It was spreading like wildfire.
Here’s the article to read for yourself: http://deadspin.com/5976517/manti-teos-dead-girlfriend-the-most-heartbreaking-and-inspirational-story-of-the-college-football-season-is-a-hoax and here is the Press Conference: http://www.und.com/genrel/011613aaa.html.
I (especially after reading Gone Girl, ha) can see how such an elaborate, lengthy plot can be constructed. It’s definitely fishy, though, so I’m waiting for more information to come out. It’s just sad and disgusting and awful.
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Wednesday morning I woke up and NEEDED coffee and food immediately. I settled in with my coffee, same-old oatmeal, and the Today Show and started catching up on emails.
Then something came over me and I decided I needed to update my blog pages. Nothing major, just more recent since some of them were from years ago or even from when I first started the blog! I’ve updated my About, My Story (just the end), Recipes, and Fitness pages!
My mom’s car was still being serviced, so I had to drive her to work around 10am. I went straight to the gym where I ellipticized for 30 minutes before completing the Ab and Core workout from Best Body Bootcamp! Each circuit ends with a plank…
I was famished by the time I finished so I raced home and made lunch. The same lunch I’ve had every day this week…eggwhite, hummus, and spinach sandwich with an apple and veggies. After lunch I prepped dinner in the crockpot and then got to work on my treadmill desk. GAHHHH!! I’m still so pumped. I read blogs for about an hour on it (which made me cover a whopping 1.88 miles haha) and then stretched for 10 minutes, which is one of my Best Body Bootcamp goals for the week. I need to make sure I stretch!
Snack time was delicious. I had a chocolate craving so I topped a sweet potato with a mixture of Greek yogurt, stevia, and cocoa powder. That cocoa powder/greek yogurt combination was my go-to dessert when I was losing weight (note: not during my eating disorder, years later when I ended up overweight), and now I remember why. SO GOOD!
And in the midst of getting work done, emails, etc, I found out about Te’o and settled in to a few hours of depression, anger, and constant social media checking.
I had to pick my mom up from work, and when I got home we ate dinner while watching the Notre Dame press conference on my laptop. Classic.
Dinner was a slow cooker Garam Masala Chickpea recipe I adapted from Julie! I followed hers almost exactly, but used a big chicken breast we had leftover instead of the chicken thighs and added some curry powder as well. Our sour cream was moldy (ew) and we didn’t have any fresh cilantro, but I thought it was awesome on its own. My mom said it could have used something more. Either a thicker broth, or more liquid so it was more like a stew. The flavors were pretty good though with my extra added spices.
I had another Greek yogurt mixed with cocoa powder for dessert because it was so good this afternoon. All the while fielding phone calls from tons of my friends wanting to talk about the Teo thing. It’s just…SO crazy!
And then bed.
- Go ahead, lay it on me. What do you think is going on? Guilty or innocent?
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1. Okay and random question my mom and I were wondering: you know those mini wine bottles and mini alcohol bottles you can buy? I think they are under 3oz, so could you bring those through airport security and then drink on the plane? Not that we want to do this, of course.
2. Is anyone else having trouble rotating images in the new WordPress?
Yes you can bring those mini alcohol bottles! I do it hehe
Good to know…;)
The flight attendants can’t see them though because technically you can only drink the alcohol they sell on the plane. So be sneaky…
Haha ok. I really want going to do this! My mom just brought it up
What kind of cocoa power do you use? Mixing it with a greek yogurt sounds delicious!
Just regular Hershey’s!
lol @ the mini alcohol bottle question
Oh my gosh – I totally thought of you when I heard about that scandal. How sick and twisted! I hope, hope he wasn’t in on it.
i don’t follow every detail about the “scandal,” but for the sake of having faith in humanity, i like to think it was not preconceived.
Super excited to have you featured on my blog today!
I LOVE sweet potatoes with chocolate yogurt. One of my favorite lunches!!
If you want to pin your Five Q’s Here is a link to do so!!
http://pinterest.com/pin/259097784784193199/ Five Q’s with Clare
I just was watching that scandal this morning (and thought of you). Only because of the ND relation though – not the scamming part. That is such a messed up story. He did appear to be genuinely surprised and humiliated by it though.
Thanks for your take on the ND “scandal”, there’s so much info out there & it just is a wild story! I hope for the sake of being an upstanding person that this is not something he was aware of! As far as baby bottles of booze, I saw some recently at Walgreen’s. And yes, to not being able to rotate images, it’s driving me nuts!
Ahh glad to know it’s not just me!! How do we figure it out?
The Te’o story is so weird, and as an outsider with no vested interest in whether he’s guilty or not (besides wanting the truth to come out), like you said, there are a lot of questions. At the very least, he lied about meeting her (at a Stanford game?) and told his father, apparently, that she had visited him in Hawaii. If he was just embarrassed that it was an online relationship and lied to hide that, why did he let the media get so involved in it? That’s another thing, if this to him was a genuine relationship where he was deeply in love, why did he not ever seriously question that they could never meet, Skype, Facetime, etc.? Didn’t he want more pictures of her? After she died, where did he send the flowers? He didn’t Google her, look for her obituary, etc? It’s just hard to believe he was REALLY that gullible, naive, to not suspect something was off.
Then there’s another element where it’s possible he did think this girl was real, but he exaggerated the seriousness of their relationship to the media in order to garner sympathy. That would still mean he was innocent of being in on the hoax, and it would make it more believable that he didn’t know without wondering all of the above questions, but it still doesn’t look great.
There are so many unanswered questions, and if ND won’t reveal the results of their investigation (which i read they were keeping private??) then I don’t see how we get the real answers.
Hopefully hearing from Teo will clear things up, but yeah if they dont release the investigation it will just be peoples word. Thankfully no one was actually physically hurt in this.
That story is so strange! In conjunction with that story, I read another about the football coach’s reaction to a 19 year old woman who committed suicide after allegedly being raped by an ND football player (he refused to even comment). I was wondering why you had never mentioned this story, especially since in today’s post you mention the importance of moral standards. Here is a link to the article: http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/notre_dames_double_standard/
Hey! I found out about that other story wayyyy after the fact (and was shocked!). I don’t know much about it, but from what I understand the university allows the family privacy and it is their choice what to release. And I know there is conflicting evidence, but I heard that the police determined it was not a rape. Something that he did touch her breasts (which is not okay either) but that her previous mental health may have been the bigger concern. Regardless he was involved in some way which is not a good thing. I just don’t know enough to speak about it and trust that those that do have handled it appropriately.
Thanks for the thoughtful response! I agree with it being hard to talk about these things when the info is unclear, but I think it is safe to say that the people that have handled these things don’t always do so appropriately — the police who dealt with her suicide were totally unaware of the rape investigation because that info wasn’t shared. The problem in that case seems to be lack of transparency on Notre Dame’s behalf because of the importance placed on the football program. I just think it’s interesting on both sides about the reverence for college football — the school spirit and support on one hand, but the questionable behavior that is allowed because of the value everyone places on a successful football team.
Definitely. It’s hard to say – some say that ND is purposely covering things up for the sake of football, others say that they truly weren’t saying anything because it was mid-investigation and they give the families that right. I will say it is frustrating to find out these things after the fact and certainly appears deceptive. But, being the optimist (and perhaps naively blind) ND enthusiast that I am, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.
FYI just found this!
Part of ND’s statement:
There is a law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that prohibits universities from publicly discussing specific disciplinary cases. However, I want to point out that any time the University investigates any potential student violation of the law or university policies, we do so professionally, carefully and thoroughly
And this:
Seeberg’s suicide came nine days after she reported to Notre Dame Security Police that a student athlete had touched her breasts while they were alone in his dormitory room. Under Indiana law, touching another person without consent for purposes of sexual gratification meets the definition of sexual battery, a felony.
—Apparently Indiana never convicted him of anything (I assume because there was no proof aside from hearsay). Just more info!
Right, hearsay because the girl who filed the complaint had committed suicide. What I meant in my comments above is more about the school’s reaction (or lack of reaction) towards the player, not the police investigation of the incident (obviously the police keep the investigation quiet because of the sensitive nature of the activities). It just seems that there were lots of complications because of the different police agencies and lack of communication between them. The article Lily posted has a lot of interesting info that seems to provide a fuller picture of the problems in disclosure and response from the university and football admin.
From the Natl Catholic Reporter article:
“What she eventually did tell both her therapist and her friend that night — then committed to paper, in a handwritten statement she and the other young woman carefully signed, dated and handed over to campus police the next day, is that a Notre Dame football player sexually assaulted her in his room after two other students left them alone there. Yet Notre Dame police, who have jurisdiction to investigate even the most serious crimes on campus, still had not interviewed him when she committed suicide 10 days later — and wouldn’t for another five days.”
Just more info!
Thanks!
I’m confused — I didn’t think anything I posted was offensive or attacking but was kind of hurt when I saw this on your twitter: “There is so much I want to say in regards to people attacking notre dame without knowing the facts. #NotreDame.” If you don’t want to have these kinds of conversations, you are free to delete my comments, but I thought they were all reasonable and factually based on what I’ve read. Since your blog and twitter are linked, you should assume people can see both of them. I’m interested in hearing all the facts about these kinds of stories, so if you have more info, I would look forward to reading it!
Jenna, that tweet was completely unrelated to you! I’m really glad you’re reading and curious! As you can imagine, lots if people Are talking to me right now and that was a frustration from a different conversation on Facebook. Sorry!!!
Okay, thanks Clare! It is so hard to separate fact and fiction (especially with the Teo story!) but I definitely think it is important, and I can tell you do too.
http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/reported-sexual-assault-notre-dame-campus-leaves-more-questions-answers
Eek, that is a disgraceful response.
I hope it was a hoax as well…however he did tell some pretty big lies regardless. The whole story is just sick and twisted.
what bothers me is that even if he was “cat-fished” he stil lied about spending countless of hours on the phone with her while she was dying. and spending time with her and her family. To think that he would do and say all of this for his own purposes is terrible. If they do find out that he did though, i think he is going to be in some trouble.
hopefully it turns out for the best!
That yogurt/cocoa mixture sounds amazing..need to try ASAP! I am really not sure about the whole scandal and what I believe..I only briefly heard what was going on lately and haven’t done much research but now I am really interested in it! Hopefully he’s telling the truth because if not that would be really disappointing on so many accounts.
Wow, this story is so messed up! I just watched Catfish on MTV last night for the first time so my first thought is that he is innocent, but I don’t know…seems like it definitely could have been planned.
Yeah, we will find out!
“…values and morals that Notre Dame cultivates”?
You’re kidding right? This is a school that has systematically covered up sexual assault charges by players, and actively maintained a culture of football above all else. Shame on you. When fandom replaces rational discourse we are in a sad state indeed.
If you had been raped by one of your beloved players as an undergraduate I hope your family and friends wouldn’t have thrown you under a bus. It sounds as though they may have.
I don’t intend these comments to be an argument so I will just say that I politely disagree based on many years of attending and being involved with the university on multiple levels.
Yes you can bring mini bottles but they do take up space in a cosmetic bag. I did that once to have a night cap for a red-eye flight.
Clare, I love how handle the comments on here. You’re as my parents would say, “a class act.”
I usually buy fruit flavored Greek yogurt, but purchased some plain and plan on trying your cocoa recipe. Yum!
thanks, and hope you love it!
My husband and I brought some of those mini-bottles on a plane and were told by the attendant that it was against FAA regulations to consume them aboard an aircraft. We quickly downed the bottles so we didn’t have to waste the wine. Classy
Hahhaha nice.
My husband has been going nuts about this since it happened (he is an ND grad). Completely obsessed! Also, it is awesome that you respond/ “let through” comments that offer criticism/disagreements. And you always respond with thoughtful, non-defensive answers. Very mature of you. And very rare in this “blog world.” Snaps for you!