Week 6 - Some Lessons are Hard to Learn, and the Aaron Hernandez Case Study
You would think by the sixth week I would know better. You would think that I would have learned by now that my old approaches would lead to old results. But some lessons are hard to learn, especially the old patterns are so firmly entrenched in your habits. Why I thought I could just go back to the Powerpoints is beyond me. Maybe it was the feelings of urgency around covering content (oh those slides of mine) versus creating a learning experience. Maybe it was the schema of what a course should be, and what learning should involve. Or maybe I’m just a slow learner. Whatever the case, here I was in the same place as before: clicking away and pointing to a screen, with the students mildly interested.
I think that talking about Theories of Deviance is pretty interesting. I mean, what is more fun than exploring why people commit crimes. I always liked studying that topic in school. So many factors and variables to consider, and then applying them to real-world cases. Of course, what I like about the topic doesn’t really matter much when there are not a bunch of “me’s” in the class. Academics like to create students in their image. It is kind of like intellectual childbirth, or creationism. One fly in the ointment of this plan is the fact that students have a say in this process, and may not want to be reborn as you would like to see them.
For 80 minutes I danced and dazzled, trying to use contemporary examples from current events to illustrate points. Problem is, the students really don’t know much about current events. And by that I mean they don’t typically look at newspapers, follow stories, engage in news of the world in any intentional way. The idea of making the content topical is hung up by the fact that the students don’t know the topics of the day.
Going back to the early days of the course, I recalled how students like celebrity killers, or at least are intrigued by them. Fortunately, I had recently watched the Netflix documentary on Aaron Hernandez “Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez.” For those not in New England, Aaron Hernandez was a star football player for the New England Patriots. He is from Connecticut, and has deep roots in the region. Shortly after signing a $40 million dollar new contract, he was arrested for the murder of Odin Lloyd. What was uncovered during the investigation and trial was a pattern of alleged criminal behavior, drug use, potential gang activity, CTE head trauma from football, and other factors which may have contributed to his criminality.
The fascinating thing about the documentary is the various explanations that are given for his criminal behavior. While it doesn’t map precisely onto the theories in the course book, it is pretty close. There are biological and socio-biological factors related to his CTE, which can cause a lack of impulse control, emotional outbursts, and violent activity. There are the social learning factors of gang culture, a traumatic family situation, and wrong circle of friends. There is the utilitarian view, where he was not punished adequately for smaller and earlier transgressions (largely due to his football abilities), resulting in more violent behavior later in his life. And the social control theory when knowing that not everyone who has these challenges commit crimes.
To use this case as a framework for theories of deviance, I made up a quasi-experiment for the class. I created seven different case descriptions. They were all similar in how they described the crime for which he was found guilty, and the others for which he was a suspect. The seven groups differed in how the precipitating factors around the case. He is how I broke them down:
Biological – CTE and head trauma as a factor
Social Learning – Family trauma and social disorganization
Biosocial – Drug addiction, as well as that coupled with gang association
Utilitarian – personal traits and failures of judgement, coupled with lack of punishment
Social Identity and Labeling – the question of whether Hernandez was gay or bisexual, and how attempts to keep that hidden may have been a motive
Cultural – the culture of football and the larger context of hyper-masculinity
All these reasons, to varying degrees, were covered in the documentary. And while not a perfect representation of the theories I wanted to cover, they gave the students a general framework through which they could examine the Hernandez case.
Aaron Hernandez and Odin Lloyd
Breaking the class up into groups of three and four, each group got their case description. I encouraged the students to use their laptops and do whatever research they wanted about the case and causes. I did not tell the students what their case was meant to represent. Rather, I wanted to see, and for them to see, how a different framework of why the crime was committed can impact how we view that crime, how it should be punished, and what can and should be done to prevent it in the future.
It did not take students long to catch on to what was happening in the class as they engaged in discussion about their case description. They quickly caught onto how complicated it can be to theorize why people commit crimes, and how factors can intersect and interact with one another. Some students had seen the documentary, and were able to provide additional insights that I had forgotten. Others were Patriots fans, and recalled further details of his time at the University of Florida as well as with the Patriots. They pulled in information from our previous discussion on criminal injustice, and how certain people are not punished for crimes based on their social standing. No one was not paying attention, and everyone was engaged.
Overall, it was a much more effective way of getting them to think about theories of crime and deviance without having to wade through my slides (no matter how beautiful they are). And hopefully it makes a memorable impact by getting them to appreciate how theory and policy can work together. Finally, the exercise appeared to accomplish the goal of teaching theories of deviance through the type of topics that they care about. It was a lot more work to create this exercise, but it also allowed me to use my own creativity and challenge my teaching habits. Maybe this time I’ll finally learn.