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At what point do you believe university officials were informed that Duke students living off campus had potentially participated in this crime?
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<p>The Durham police met with every member of the lacrosse team, with the original search warrant detailing the alleged crime already in hand, on March 16th. Given the large number of players involved, I have to believe that this meeting took place on campus and that the Duke coaches and athletic director were aware of the situation at that time.</p>
<p>Hi, I'll be a freshman at Duke next year. I'm very disappointed that this happened of course, but I have no doubts at all that my safety has nothing to do with the University I attend, but with the choices I make and the luck that I have. Unfortunatly as a young woman, I have to be very careful who I trust and who I involve myself with. It makes me sad and confused knowing that some of my peers would do something so violent and obscene and heartbreaking to someone more vulnerable than themselves. It makes me sad that society has taught me, and other girls, to fear and distrust and I have to in order to protect myself. It makes me angry beyond belief that violence towards women is almost borderline acceptable in our society because of silence and the difficulty in actually bringing charges against and convicting a rapist. More often than not it is the victim who is on trial as disbelief and blame often fall on them.</p>
<p>A guy I've know since 8th grade and who is a good friend of mine is coming to Duke next year with me to play on the lacrosse team. I told him about the incident and gave him the chronicle website. But when we later talked about it I was completely disgusted with him. He questioned the choices of the woman to put herself in that position. I hate people who are misogynistic and don't even realize it (I doubt he'd even know what that word means either). After discussing it with him I can honestly say I want nothing to do with him next year. He is the definition of a meathead and will never ever ever understand.</p>
<p>I'm still kind of worked up about it.</p>
<p>I hope whoever are responsible for this get what they deserve.</p>
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What I am trying to say is that we just don't know. If there's a wall of silence going on, why would it be hard to believe that the team <em>would</em> try to keep it from the coaches? There are also other questions - like how does FERPA enter into the university making a statement before anything becomes public knowledge? I just feel that this forum - and especially some posts on the Parents Cafe - are quick to assign blame using assumptions and conspiracy theories, neither of which will help in determining what really happened. Certainly, the university needs to have a strong response, and certainly these athletes cannot be protected due to their status as students or athletes. However, the university cannot be in the business of assuming or pronouncing guilt before it is proven.
<p>Duke has been off my daughter's list of schools to apply to for quite a while. Their Administration has its head in the sand about a whole host of issues. They sponsored a Palestinian conference on campus that stunk of anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>One of their students - who actually received some kind of Duke award - wrote an anti-Semitic piece in the school newspaper shortly after the conference - he was a senior, some good a so-called Duke Education did him.</p>
<p>Now this lacrosse episode - seemingly ignored by the Administration and worse - the coach made some initial comments that tried to minimize what had happened. Even worse - some of the articles reference the fact that women who were "hired" for the party got nervous when racial slurs were starting to be slung at them. There's one African-American freshman on the team (don't know if he was at the party, for his sake I hope not) - the rest of them are pretty much a bunch of Maryland prepsters and parochial school prepsters. Anyone from the New York area will remember the parochial school kids who chased two African-American kids to their death on the highway in Howard Beach, NY. These Duke Lax players must be of the same ilk. Those who were guilty of either the assault or impeding in any way the police investigation or not reporting the crime if they knew about it should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The Duke Lacrosse team should be suspended for the rest of the year. </p>
<p>I hope that coaches and university staffs around the country - especially in football, hockey and lacrosse - will educate their teams about this case. It should be a lesson to all.</p>
<p>I feel fortunate that my son goes to West Point - where the Honor Code actually still means something.</p>
<p>Duke has had an undeservedly high academic reputation for a few years now - hopefully this episode will place it back where it belongs - in the second tier.</p>
<p>oib1, could you please give examples other than that conference and this lacrosse incident?</p>
<p>wasn't happy about that conference either, agree it was a complete lapse in judgment (extreme example of campus liberalism), but in general am feeling like we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater....</p>
<p>Well said Byerly. I'm amazed and how judgmental and misinformed people can be. Let the facts come out, be informed, then reach your judgment based on facts. Sheesh...</p>
<p>If you want to argue that this incident SHOULD knock us down a few rungs, I'm inclined at this point to agree with you.</p>
<p>But
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Duke has had an undeservedly high academic reputation for a few years now - hopefully this episode will place it back where it belongs - in the second tier.
<p>Please do not confuse the intelligence of our student body with the disgusting, unforgivable, inexcusable, and morally reprehensible actions of 3 students. That's unfair to the large amount of people here - including myself - who work very hard and consider ourselves to be good people who are disgusted and ashamed by the actions of some of our fellow students. </p>
<p>Everyone's been talking about the Lacrosse scandal, but no one seems to be thinking about the slips of paper that we were handing out around campus saying "What are you rooting for?" and encouraging students not to attend future Lacrosse games. No one here is mentioning Sexual Assault Prevention Week, which begins tomorrow and includes events such as keynote speakers, ribbon campaigns, the clothesline project, and a rally/march that goes from East to West campus. No one has brought up Saturday's candlelight vigil that took place outside the house as a "silent protest" of the team's actions, or the students who gathered there the next morning banging pots and pans as a "wake up call" regarding sexual assault.</p>
<p>Our academic reputation was earned through lots of hard work, and it's grossly unfair to judge an entire student body based on the events you mentioned. Everyone I know is disgusted by the team's actions, but as a member of the Sexual Harassment and Rape Prevention group on campus and someone who has been working her butt off for the past month to organize this upcoming week that is dedicated to raising sexual assault awareness, I am also disgusted by the generalizations I've seen about an entire student body based on three meathead athletes' actions.</p>
<p>The Service Academies get an awful lot of scrutiny - imagine how many incidents never get reported at Duke, on campus and off.</p>
<p>Also, if your daughter was old enough to date (I'm guessing you're Class of 1993), I wonder who you'd pick for her first, a West Point Lacrosse player or one of these Duke lacrosse players. </p>
<p>Bottom-line for every school - West Point or Duke et. al. is that alcohol is often behind these incidents. Navy's quarterback (and I'm not picking on Navy) was recently brought up on sexual assault charges - he and the woman were both drunk.</p>
Yup, just because a few lacrosse players allegedly raped a woman over spring break, suddenly everyone will realize that a Duke education sucks.
What you don't seem to realize is that just because a Duke student or Duke students do something doesn't mean that it was caused by the school. Did Duke make that anti-Semitic kid you refer to racist? Did Duke make those lacrosse players (alleged) rapists? Did Yale make George W. Bush do the things he does? Did Harvard make Theodore Kaczynski the Unabomber? Did the Army make Timothy McVeigh bomb Oklahoma City? Just a few weeks ago a UNC grad drove his car through part of the UNC campus injuring several students as retribution against American action in the Middle East--Is that UNC's fault? You blame things on the Duke administration, but I highly doubt that you know what actually goes on here. There is lots of debate and discussion over these things, stop judging what you do not understand. I honestly don't care if your daughter applies to Duke, but your argument is ridiculous.</p>
<p>I hope you understand that you sound like someone that hates Duke for whatever reason and just uses every bad thing that happens here as "proof" that it is inferior. And you're convincing no one.</p>
<p>BigGreen - I went for the low-lying fruit, i.e., the first article Google came up with not from the 70's or older.</p>
<p>My point is that there are major problems at many institutions - reported and not. No need to bring a straw man (or, in this case, a straw-daughter) into it.</p>
<p>Oib~ I am as dismayed and upset as anyone else by this terrible incident. But to say that it reflects the entire student body, or the academic tier of Duke University is completely ridiculous. How could this possibly have anything to do with the quality of the academics at Duke? You have no idea what the results of the DNA testing will be, what the whole investigation will turn up--you have accused and judged not only the lacrosse team, but all the professors and students at Duke!! Are you saying that now everyone at Duke will suddenly be unintelligent?? </p>
<p>The QB from the Naval Academy is having his case investigated by the Academy, and not the local police. According to the Washington Post, and other news organizations, the service academies always handle it that way, and rarely are any of the accused rapists sent to jail. Duke has made it very clear that the Durham police are handling this case, that they will not interfere with that investigation and that they will then determine what further action needs to be taken by the University. Unfortunately this is not isolated to any one university, to any particular type of athlete or other student or professor--it is far too common. But Duke has been very aggressive with its organizations which try to keep the issue in front of the student body--thus the rally in front of the house in question, the Sexual Assault Prevention Week, etc. as mentioned by Bandcampgirl--these are terrific groups, and I have spoken to some of their student leaders--very involved and intelligent young people (males and females are actively working in these groups!)</p>
<p>Parents can encourage or discourage their children about applying to schools. Ultimately they will be sending them off to college--and, believe me, no matter where you send your child, that school could just as easily have such an incident (God forbid). We worry about our kids on a daily basis--are they getting along with the kids they have met (particularly the roommate)? are they liking their classes, are they studying, are they eating properly, getting any exercise, doing their laundry--but most importantly, have we given them the tools to be able to make good decisions while they are away. Ultimately the way they behave has something to do with the way they were raised--we hope that we have done our best to teach them about respecting others, and making those good decisions. It has nothing to do with whether they went to parochial school, public school or private school--kids at all of those schools turn out great, for the most part. And, there are kids at all those types of schools who do bad things. Let's hope that everyone learns more from an incident like this, and that the lesson learned prevents it from happening again.</p>
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Oib~ I am as dismayed and upset as anyone else by this terrible incident. But to say that it reflects the entire student body, or the academic tier of Duke University is completely ridiculous. How could this possibly have anything to do with the quality of the academics at Duke? You have no idea what the results of the DNA testing will be, what the whole investigation will turn up--you have accused and judged not only the lacrosse team, but all the professors and students at Duke!!
<p>See Fizz379's note above re: her friend since 8th grade. This incident does reflect on Duke - the Duke Admissions office should take note. They are admitting "meathead's" (Fizz's language) because they are good athletes. Happens at lots of other schools that have athletic scholarships. Would be interesting to see the average grades and SAT's of the Duke Lacrosse team versus that of Cornell or Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Too bad all of the teams at Duke don't have a Coach K (Army grad) to guide them. I just hope none of this reflects on him in any way. Can anyone imagine the Duke basketball team doing something this stupid, venal and undisciplined.</p>
<p>BigGreen- Grades and SAT scores have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with sexual assault, sorry.</p>
<p>Sure my friend is less intelligent and accomplished academically than I am, but he's also a great lacrosse player and a nice guy. Unfortuantly the sentiments he expressed that made me so upset are sentiments that a wide range of diverse people also express, and it was that realization that made me so angry. Not all athletes are meatheads, and even the meatheads are mostly good people, ie my friend haha. </p>
<p>This one guy just really annoyed me because he thinks he's a great debater or something, while I just think half of what comes out of his mouth is ill-informed and annoying and I wonder why I'm arguing with someone who it took me 5 minutes to explain how to spell "chronicle" to.</p>
<p>Last year at my high school, a woman came to speak about date rape. In order to get the point across that terrible things happen AT EVERY SCHOOL IN THIS COUNTRY, she told a horrifying anecdote regarding a friend of hers who was roofied, brutally gang raped, and then left passed out in a commons room. When we were asked to guess where this happened, no one got it. The answer was Brown University.</p>
<p>I went to a summer program at Brown before my senior year of high school. During the 3 weeks I was there, a man literally jumped out of the bushes, pulled a gun to my friend's head, and raped her. They then caught him, but he escaped and literally stalked us for the remainder of our time at the program (which, luckily, was only a couple of days).</p>
<p>Am I trying to pick on Brown? No. Are these terrible things that happened at Brown? Yes. Do I thnk that this is BROWN UNIVERSITY'S fault? Absolutely not. Did this stop me from applying to Brown...ED, no less? Obviously it didn't...and shouldn't have been the reason to stop anyone else. Brown is an incredible university, and does not deserve to lose applicants based on incidents such as the ones I mentioned.</p>
<p>I'm thinking of the poster who said that his daughter was not applying to Duke. That's perfectly OK, I can't argue with that. But if you are going to decide not to apply to Duke, then it should be because we don't have the major you want. It should be because you want a small liberal arts school instead of a large university. Hell, maybe it could be because you don't like basketball. But don't decide not to apply because of this Lacrosse scandal or anything else like it...because I hate to tell you this, but if you think that you will find any school in the country that's immune to vile actions such as these, you will be shocked and disappointed wherever you choose to go to school. This is not a Duke thing.</p>
<p>Oh, and one more thing. My roommate was just assigned to read the controversial article that was previously referred to on this thread for a course she is taking. She's Jewish, as am I. She was shocked that she was asked to read this, and offended by some of the things she read. But at the end, she told me that she was able to see some intellectual value in what the guy was saying, despite her incredible offense at most of his message.</p>
<p>Others may disagree with me, but in my opinion, it takes a whole lot of intellectual maturity to be able to look beyond the offensive and find something valuable in a message. It takes a certain kind of student who is able to give something another look without immediately disregarding it, and really examine the piece itself for validity. And this sort of maturity - not the article itself - is what I think of when I think of Duke, and what I really think the take-home message should be.</p>
<p>Good point about Coach K and where was the lacrosse coach on this? I think the timeline establishes with high probablility that someone in the ADs office knew about this but kept it mum until the N&O broke the story.<br>
Even if what happened was completely consensual and no charges are filed, I think the 3 players involved ought to be expelled from school. There is no room for this kind of disgusting treatment of women and self-debasement at any college with any sort of standards. </p>
<p>At least Tom Wolfe got one thing right in IamCS - its not the football or basketball players you need to watch out for, it's the laxers. Too many rich prepsters who have probably had daddy and mummy bail their a$$es out before and thought of hiring a black woman stripper after watching too much porn after practice.</p>