Stroman On Sports: Stadiums, Safety, And Paris

In the wake of the Paris attacks, what additional steps should we take – if any – to guarantee security in the public square?

We’ve all heard the famous Ben Franklin quotation: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Reality, of course, isn’t quite so simple: individual liberty actually depends in part on society’s ability to guarantee security – they’re not opposites – and we know that we have to accept some rules and regulations for security purposes. (Ben Franklin, for the record, knew better: that quotation has been lifted out of context.)

But we also don’t want a police state: a free society needs to allow individuals a wide berth to think, speak, and act for themselves, even if that comes at the expense of “a little temporary Safety.”

Where is the line? How much regulation is necessary to be sufficient? How much is too much? Public venues face these questions all the time – and the issue is particularly salient now for stadiums and other sports arenas, since the Stade de France was one of the primary targets of the Paris terrorists.

Deborah Stroman is a professor at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and an expert on analytics and the business of sport. She discussed these issues on Monday with WCHL’s Aaron Keck.