The Daily O’Collegian

It’s been almost one week since Olivia Withington, an advertising and Spanish junior, found out how hard it can be to smile.

I mean that in the most literal sense.

Saturday, after performing at the Seretean Center with the Latin American Student Association, the newly crowned Miss Hispanic OSU headed to Mike’s College Bar. A friend was playing a gig there, so it would’ve seemed wrong not to make the short walk from the theater to support a pal.

Thirty minutes after passing through the doors of the bar, sober and completely keen of her surroundings, Withington found herself on the receiving end of a flying glass bottle, which resulted in lucrative amounts of medical bills atop of physical and emotional scarring.

When it comes to bar fights, it’s easy for the facts to get muddled, leaving the daunting task of finding the guilty party to investigators who have been on the case all week.

An investigation? That’s what this has come down to?

Considering the moral aspects of this situation, I’m angered and alarmed that an investigation is needed to bring this person to justice.

My frustration grows because of the culprit’s obvious evasion of the situation by ducking out of the bar and not confessing to throwing the bottle and injuring an innocent person.

Talk about cowardly behavior.

An awful thing happened, and this person has a chance to save a scrap of their dignity. He or she has a chance to make right some of what went wrong Saturday.

So, after almost a full week, why hasn’t this person taken advantage of it?

It’s bad enough that a brawl straight out of the movie “Roadhouse” broke out in Stillwater’s most laid-back venue.

But what’s worse is that there is still an aggressively violent person out there who seems to carry no scars, pain or remorse for the hurt they have caused.

In case that person reads this, here are a few of the struggles Withington faced in the past few days.

In preparation for her surgery, doctors inserted a mouthpiece over her entire bottom row of teeth to protect their sudden sensitivity.

Her front four bottom teeth are half as long as they should be and jagged. Because of the near exposure of the nerve endings of those teeth, consuming anything that is too hot or cold is out of the question.

Her front two top teeth also suffered damage, and a root canal is scheduled for next week to see if the left tooth is salvageable. In all, six veneers will cover what is left of her front teeth.

On top of that, dentists have suggested that she consider plastic surgery on the more lasting injuries, which include a noticeable bump on the rim of her upper lip.

These are some of the repercussions from a poor decision that one person made.

This could have happened to anyone who is erratic enough to throw things the way an 8-year-old does when angry, but someone is responsible, and that person is more fortunate than people might think.

The fact that the errant beer bottle flew more than 15 feet and struck an innocent bystander only magnifies the act’s repulsiveness.

Suppose for a moment the bottle that struck Withington had hit its intended target, who was standing only a few feet from the hand which it flew.

Had this been the case, speculation of the bottle’s velocity leads me to believe that the result would have been much worse. Students at OSU could be mourning the loss of a fellow student this week. People would not be talking about someone’s assault with a deadly weapon. They would be talking about murder.

So, my message to the guilty party is this: You are lucky enough this came out the way it did, but you have one more thing do.

Save yourself from karma’s wrath. Confess.