By Clare Arnold

Messenger Staff Writer

Some Placer students believe that being an athlete gives you special privileges on campus. Often it is said the football players may be labeled as the “golden children” of Placer. However, this perception may not have its merits.
“I hold athletes up to higher standards because they are representing Placer High School and our community.” said Placer Cardio Health teacher, John Hilton.
So a teacher at Placer says that he holds them to higher standards but what do you think the athletes themselves will say?
Varsity football player Michael Downen said, “A lot of our coaches here are teachers and we are all really close, so sometimes they treat you like a friend or family member.”
So in this athlete’s perspective, the coaches and therefore some of the teachers, treat the players different because they know them better than others. Whether treating them different is positive or negative depends on the certain situation.
Freshman football player Louis Fudge says “I think people see us as getting special treatment because we get to have a bus to take us to our games while other teams don’t get this privilege. The football team also seems to get a lot more funding than the other sports.”
In this football player’s point of view, the football team gets more money and that’s why they are viewed as having special privileges.
These people have given their opinion on if the athletes get special privileges, but what about getting different consequences than the rest of Placer High? Junior Varsity football player Joseph Capra said, “If we get in trouble the coaches give us consequences that are usually worse than what someone that wasn’t on the football team would have.”
To agree with this point freshman player Michael Stuck said, “We get consequences that are worse than normal students because our coaches have the ability to punish us in the way they see fit which is usually harder then what an ordinary student will receive.”
So these players believe that instead of getting consequences that aren’t that bad, they get extra consequences from their coaches that are actually worse that what a student that wasn’t an athlete would receive.
So to crush common beliefs football players actually have worse consequences and very little special privileges.