Melissa Boyd/ Whetstone

By: Melissa Boyd (Whetstone Staff Writer)

You can imagine my surprise when I opened my email on a boring day and saw the Google Alert, stating “Charles Coursey arrested for a sexual relationship with student.”

I know a lot of people, but Coursey is not one of them. I don’t know many of the sports people, so I was really confused why I was getting this alert. I only get alerts from Google that pertain to Wesley.

So I opened the email and saw he was an assistant coach at Wesley for the basketball team.

One of our staff members, regardless of if he was a volunteer or not, was arrested for having sexual relations with a 17-year-old student.

Why hadn’t we been told? Why wasn’t there an email alert or at least something on the website?

No – the college had only issued one sentence regarding this and immediately took him off of the athletics page, where his picture no longer can be seen.

When I asked students how they felt about this, several did not wish to comment because they didn’t know enough. I was their only source of information because they just hadn’t been told. They didn’t want to appear stupid.

Other students, as you may see in the students’ reaction article, were quite upset. Sometimes, it was hard to capture everything they said because they spoke so fast and so passionately.

I share their frustration – I was upset someone had not thought to tell the student body.

Someone said it’s not our business, as students, because the law was not broken on Wesley property. The act didn’t affect Wesley or their students because our students weren’t the ones who were having the relationship with Coursey.

However, it’s our staff member. It IS our business.

Call me crazy, but I enjoy writing articles like this. I don’t enjoy the criminal factors (such as having a staff member arrested) or the limited information initially given to me.

I do, however, enjoy the adrenaline of discovering the truth and informing people. I enjoy the reactions of students who shared my discovery, because of me.

I understand why the college would not want to “brag” about Coursey.

But don’t we, as students, have a right to know?

Yes, we do, which is why there’s a newspaper.