Duke University Suspends Entire Lacrosse Team Due To Rape Allegation

[Headache in a Suitcase]

it is very strange... the entire time the team captians have stated that in the end the evidence will vindicate them. and there's been no reports of anyone caving and turning in other teammates as of yet... and it's been a month. i've never been on a team in my life where every single player gets along... so you would think in almost a month someone would have ratted someone out, if only out of dislike for the person. but that hasn't happened.

it's very strange, and it seems to be a lot more complicated than what the original story stated. and something about that e-mail just doesn't sit right with me... the kid would have to be one sick sadistic fuck to have sent an e-mail like that out half an hour after being involved in a rape.

i'm very interested to see the results of the DNA testing now...



another question/comment, sort of on topic but sort of not...

i'm not pointing this at anyone in particular on this board, but more so to the overall feelings of the public at large...

kobe bryant and duke lacrosse... when the kobe story broke the overwellming feeling in the media and public opinion was that he was being railroaded by a promiscuous teenager looking to make a quick buck... even though there was DNA evidence linking kobe to the crime, the girl was well off, and kobe has been shown to be an absolute egomaniac, and rape is a crime of power/ego, not sex...

and then the same media and same public have already convicted the members of the duke lacrosse team, without any DNA evidence yet to be presented, and the victim is a poor stripper.

now i know full well that anyone can be raped, regardless of class, race, sexual promiscuity (sp?), etc. etc. but i just find it strange and maybe a little sad that, with more evidence present, people completely wrote off the kobe rape with the bullshit, sexual based "he's a superstar he can get anyone he wants why would he need to rape anyone" yet have completely jumped all over the duke lacrosse team while the evidence has still yet to be fully collected.

but then again everyone thought mike tyson was guilty immediately, even though his fame was double that of kobe's, just because mike has been known to be a bit of a looney.

i know it will be tough and damned near impossible to do... but i would really like it if rape cases would be kept out of the public eye until all of the police investigation can be fully completed... so that we don't allow the court of public opinion to sway the decision either way before it's even brought to trial. maybe then we can finally get a fair trial for both the victim and the alleged attacker.

perhaps some legislation needs to be passed with stricter penalties for those who leak information on rape cases to the press... jail time, large fines... that way victims can feel more comfortable coming forward, while at the same time we don't rip a person to shreds who may, in fact, be innocent. i dunno.

 

[anitram]

I always thought Kobe Bryant was a total scumbag.

 

[Dreadsox]

Not a single DNA match....

 

[indra]

I always thought Kobe Bryant was a total scumbag.

Me too.

But I'm not real fond of most jocks anyway.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

DURHAM, N.C. -- DNA testing failed to connect any members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team to the alleged sexual assault of an exotic dancer, attorneys for some of the players said Monday.

Citing DNA test results delivered by the state crime lab to police and prosecutors a few hours earlier, the attorneys said the test results prove their clients did not sexually assault and beat a dancer hired to perform at a March 13 team party.

No charges have been filed in the case.

"No DNA material from any young man was present on the body of this complaining woman," defense attorney Wade Smith said.

The alleged victim, a 27-year-old student at nearby North Carolina Central University, told police she and another woman were hired to dance at the party. The woman told police that three men at the party dragged her into a bathroom, choked her and sexually assaulted her.

Authorities ordered 46 of the 47 players on Duke's lacrosse team to submit DNA samples to investigators. Because the woman said her attackers were white, the team's sole black player was not tested.

District Attorney Mike Nifong stopped speaking with reporters last week after initially talking openly about the case, including stating publicly that he was confident a crime occurred. He went on to say he would have other evidence to make his case should the DNA analysis prove inconclusive or fail to match a member of the team.

Smith said Nifong now has the evidence needed to change his mind.

"He doesn't have to do it," Smith said of filing charges. "He is a man with discretion. He doesn't have to do it, and we hope that he won't."

On Sunday, Bill Thomas, an attorney for one of the Duke players, said time-stamped photographs will show the alleged victim was already injured and "very impaired" when she arrived the March 13 party.

Thomas said some of the photographs show extensive bruises and scrapes on her legs, especially around the knees.

The lacrosse team's season was called off last week, and coach Mike Pressler resigned.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

But I'm not real fond of most jocks anyway.

may i ask why?

 

[WildHoneyAlways]

Wow.

On a side note, did the stripper have a bodyguard with her? Don't most strippers bring some sort of protection with them?

 

[Dreadsox]

Wow.

On a side note, did the stripper have a bodyguard with her? Don't most strippers bring some sort of protection with them?

No.....Not all the time.

A stripper that came to my friends Bachelor Party a number of years ago was murdered about two months later going home from a party.

 

[redkat]

still the DA was confident he could prove his case without DNA evidence. We'll see... We don't even know exactly what happened to her There is more than one way to rape someone.

 

[Irvine511]

On a side note, did the stripper have a bodyguard with her? Don't most strippers bring some sort of protection with them?

i have only dealt with strippers (female ones) outside of a bar once in my life, and i was shocked to see them arrive and leave with no protection (though it wouldn't have surprised me if they had a firearm somewhere with their stuff).

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

this woman claimed that she got her bruises from the rape at the party, and that she was sexually assaulted... not with a foreign object but by the duke players themselves...

and now, unless the lawyers are lying, there are photographs that show the woman to already have the bruises when she first arrived at the house, as well as no DNA linking any of the Duke players to the crime.

if the DA was so confident that he could prove rape after the DNA tests, one would think he had something... a hair, semen, skin, etc.... anything that would test positve for DNA... otherwise why get the DNA samples?

this woman may still have been raped. but it's looking more and more like either someone else was at that party (which is unlikely because why would the team put their entire season at risk in order to protect someone who wasn't even on the team), that she had been drinking heavily, was raped earlier in the evening and was so inebriated that she did not recall when and who raped her, or that she's making the entire thing up.

or the duke player's attorneys are lying... and that doesn't seem very likely.

 

[WildHoneyAlways]

In college my sorority used to hire a male stripper every year before school started. (don't ask. ) Every guy that came to the house came with a body guard/driver who never left. It seems like a safe(r) practice.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

not that i know anything about strippers... but any establishment of "class" would send their workers out with a bodyguard. if they arrive with no bodyguard, one would assume they were from a low end establishment, and/or working on their own.

not that i, uh, would know that...

 

[deep]

No DNA Match in Duke Scandal

 

[indra]

may i ask why?

Most I've met have been jerks.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Most I've met have been jerks.

painting with a rather broad brush there, aren't we?

 

[Irvine511]

at this point, it doesn't seem like there's much of a case to be made against the Duke players.

this was written a few days ago, but i thought it was interesting and might be a good jumping off point for discussion (and i like to use my Nexis ID for good and circumvent the idiocy that is Times Select):



[q]Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

April 9, 2006 Sunday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 4; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 756 words

HEADLINE: Virtues And Victims

BYLINE: By DAVID BROOKS

BODY:


All great scandals occur twice, first as Tom Wolfe novels, then as real-life events that nightmarishly mimic them. And so after ''I Am Charlotte Simmons,'' it was perhaps inevitable that Duke University would have to endure a mini-social explosion involving athletic thugs, resentful townies, nervous administrators, male predators, aggrieved professors, binge drinking and lust gone wild.

If you wander through the thicket of commentary that already surrounds the Duke lacrosse scandal, the first thing you notice is how sociological it is. In almost every article and piece of commentary, the event is portrayed not as a crime between individuals but as a clash between classes, races and sexes.

''This whole sordid party scene played out at the prestigious university is deeply disturbing on a number of levels, including those involving gender, race and the notion of athletic entitlement and privilege,'' a USA Today columnist wrote.

''The collisions are epic: black and white, town and gown, rich and poor, privilege and plain, jocks and scholars,'' a CBS analyst observed.

The key word in the coverage has been ''entitlement.'' In a thousand different ways commentators have asserted (based on no knowledge of the people involved) that the lacrosse players behaved rancidly because they felt privileged and entitled to act as they pleased.

The main theme shaping the coverage is that inequality leads to exploitation. The whites felt free to exploit the blacks. The men felt free to exploit women. The jocks felt free to exploit everybody else. As a Duke professor, Houston Baker, wrote, their environment gave the lacrosse players ''license to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech and feel proud of themselves in the bargain.''

It could be that this environmental, sociological explanation of events is entirely accurate. But it says something about our current intellectual climate that almost every reporter and commentator used these mental categories so unconsciously and automatically.

Several decades ago, American commentators would have used an entirely different vocabulary to grapple with what happened at Duke. Instead of the vocabulary of sociology, they would have used the language of morality and character.

If you were looking at this scandal through that language, you would look at the e-mail message one of the players sent on the night in question. This is the one in which a young man joked about killing strippers and cutting off their skin.

You would say that the person who felt free to send this message to his buddies had crashed through several moral guardrails. You would surmise that his character had been corroded by shock jocks and raunch culture and that he'd entered a nihilistic moral universe where young men entertain each other with bravura displays of immoralism. A community so degraded, you might surmise, is not a long way from actual sexual assault.

You would then ask questions very different from the sociological ones: How have these young men slipped into depravity? Why have they not developed sufficient character to restrain their baser impulses?

The educators who used this vocabulary several decades ago understood that when you concentrate young men, they have a tropism toward barbarism. That's why these educators cared less about academics than about instilling a formula for character building. The formula, then called chivalry, consisted first of manners, habits and self-imposed restraints to prevent the downward slide.

Furthermore, it was believed that each of us had a godlike and a demonic side, and that decent people perpetually strengthened the muscles of their virtuous side in order to restrain the deathless sinner within. If you read commencement addresses from, say, the 1920's, you can actually see college presidents exhorting their students to battle the beast within -- a sentiment that if uttered by a contemporary administrator would cause the audience to gape and the earth to fall off its axis.

Today that old code of obsolete chivalry is gone, as is a whole vocabulary on how young people should think about character.

But in ''I Am Charlotte Simmons,'' Wolfe tried to steer readers back past the identity groups to the ghost in the machine, the individual soul. Wolfe's heroine is a modern girl searching for honor in a world where the social rules have dissolved, and who commits ''moral suicide'' because she is unprepared for what she faces.

Many critics reacted furiously to these parts of Wolfe's book. And we are where we are.
[/q]

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Yes indeed- whether a rape happened in this case or not (and it appears it didn't, even though many rape cases do exist and are successfully prosecuted without DNA evidence) the fact remains that many men and many athletes (especially rich white ones) feel a sense of entitlement and have completely disgusting, sick, inappropriate attitudes towards women. And certainly have a sense of entitlement that appears to thrive at a place like Duke.

I like jocks and men who are humble, respectful of women and of themselves, who conduct themselves with dignity. Who don't have a disgusting sense of entitlement and who live by decent moral principles. Who stand up for what is right and don't follow the crowd.

 

[Irvine511]

^ i agree with everything you've said, and to build off that a bit, i also think it's true that there's an expectation in place for jocks, and it's sometimes unfair and undeserved, and that there's a tendency to demonize jocks especially at a prestigious university.

i went to a small school that was *very* athletically inclined (for Div 3) and i was a swimmer. i was also able to slide very easily into more artistic/non-athletic circles due to always being sort of a floater, and i remember hearing lots of negative attitudes expressed towards "jocks" (many of whom had 1500 SATs and were getting into med school) or more derogatory, "assletes." i remember hearing, "oh, you're okay, you're not really an athlete," but i still thought of myself as one and took tremendous pride in my team's accomplishment (and woke up at 5:30am every morning in January to walk across the frozen tundra to early morning practice).

so i suppose the door swings both ways, that's all i'm trying to say.

 

[U2democrat]

Regardless of what happens or who did it, I hope the woman gets help, she needs it. But that's stating the obvious.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

^ i agree with everything you've said, and to build off that a bit, i also think it's true that there's an expectation in place for jocks, and it's sometimes unfair and undeserved, and that there's a tendency to demonize jocks especially at a prestigious university.

i went to a small school that was *very* athletically inclined (for Div 3) and i was a swimmer. i was also able to slide very easily into more artistic/non-athletic circles due to always being sort of a floater, and i remember hearing lots of negative attitudes expressed towards "jocks" (many of whom had 1500 SATs and were getting into med school) or more derogatory, "assletes." i remember hearing, "oh, you're okay, you're not really an athlete," but i still thought of myself as one and took tremendous pride in my team's accomplishment (and woke up at 5:30am every morning in January to walk across the frozen tundra to early morning practice).

so i suppose the door swings both ways, that's all i'm trying to say.

this anti "jock" mentality that is being shown by some in this thread is silly, and often times misguided and/or inaccurate information.

ncaa athletes are held to a high standard accademicly. they have to have a minimum 2.0 GPA, or they can't play. yes, at the highest level of D1, in the sports that bring in the big bucks... i.e. football and basketball... athletes with supreme talent can "coast" through school... take for example the university of texas, where vince young, the team's star QB, scored at the level of an elementary school student in a basic IQ test after attending 4 years of college. at a school like duke, or notre dame, or stanford... you do not get into the school, no matter what your athletic talent, if you do not meet the minimum accademic standards set forth by the university. now would someone at the bottom of the list of accademicly eligible students get in over someone with better grades just because they're a superior athlete? yes... just like a student with lesser grades would get into a school with an esteemed music program if they were a vastly talented musician. a teammate of mine in high school... who had a 95+ average and a 1350 on the SATs played basketball at Yale, while his older brother... with a 106 weighted average and a 1500 on his SATs, was wait-listed at Yale (ironicly enough, he went to Duke instead, and is now doing his residency at Harvard).

as for the treatment of women, yes... male white athletes can objectify women. so do many male black athletes. so do many males... period. it's not a matter of what sport they play, or what hobbies they may have, it's a matter of how the environment in which they were raised that gives them this sense of entitlement. the fact that they play a sport is secondary. if they were given everything they've ever wanted throughout life, never heard the word "no" from their parents, then yes... they would be the pigheaded sexist pigs that, admitidley, are sprinkled throughout every walk of life. if the young student/athlete is raised with discipline in his/her life, punished when wrong is done, and taught to respect others, then this mistreatment of women and minorities likely won't happen.

painting all, or most, athletes... "jocks"... as sexist, racist pigs who feel they are entitled to everything just because they can play a game is just as absent minded as stereotyping any race, religion or other group for that matter.

 

[Irvine511]

:a teammate of mine in high school... who had a 95+ average and a 1350 on the SATs played basketball at Yale, while his older brother... with a 106 weighted average and a 1500 on his SATs, was wait-listed at Yale (ironicly enough, he went to Duke instead, and is now doing his residency at Harvard).

what i always found interesting was that this was the source of much of the tension -- that athletes didn't "deserve" to be admitted, they just could run fast or swim fast or jump high. it is true that many athletes might not have been accepted without their athleticism, but what about legacies, minorities, musicians, published poets, etc.? why is athleticism perhaps regarded as a lesser ability than other non-academic traits that can help one gain acceptance into a prestigious university?

anyway, where i went to college, the men's and women's swim teams both had average GPA's in the high 3.3's, which was higher than the average GPA for the entire school, of course we were helped out by having a potential valedictorian on the team (who had over a 4.0, and is now doing nuclear physics research at Berkeley, and also makes close to 6 figures a year playing poker online)

i also think there's something to be said for the athlete who knows he isn't as academically talented as his peers in class, but busts his (or her) ass in the classroom just the way he/she busts his/her ass on the field. i think there's something to be learned from that.

 

[stammer476]

I'd be curious to know what the relationship is between the pre-evidence conclusions of those in this thread and the amount of time they spent in team sports.

Just on first glance, there seems to be one.

 

[BVS]

I'd be curious to know what the relationship is between the pre-evidence conclusions of those in this thread and the amount of time they spent in team sports.

Just on first glance, there seems to be one.

 

[stammer476]

Sorry if that didn't come out right. It made sense in my head.

I was just wondering if people's assumptions to the guilt/innocence/lack of judgement of the players had anything to do with their history in team sports. Just curious, that's all.

 

[Carek1230]

All I will say is I hope the hype and publicity this issue gets in the media helps spread a message that such alleged activities, whether they happened or not, will not and should not be tolerated. Period. And I hope that something positive comes forth from this in some way.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Sorry if that didn't come out right. It made sense in my head.

I was just wondering if people's assumptions to the guilt/innocence/lack of judgement of the players had anything to do with their history in team sports. Just curious, that's all.

i see where you're going with this, and all i can do is answer for myself.

my initial thought was neither of guilt nor innocence. it was simply to await the evidence. i didn't think they were innocent up until the DNA evidence came back negative.

there were, however, some questions that i thought of only because of my background in athletics... one in particular. i have never been on a team in my life where every single player liked each other. never. they may pretend to like each other, but there's always some deep rooted jelousy over playing time, etc... always. and i played basketball, where there's only 12-15 players on a team. we're talking here about a team of 46 players, who's entire season would be canceled if they did not come forward... yet still no one came forward. i find it very hard to believe that not a single player would come forward considering all that was at risk... let alone the straight forward human element. 46 people and not a single guilty conscience? come on...

 

[Liesje]

Rape or no rape, I'm guessing that lacrosse players being at a parties involving strippers is still a violation of their little student oathy thing or whatever. Not that I really care if that's how they want to spend their weekends, but it doesn't give Duke and points where "prestige" is concerned.

And no, I've not nothing against jocks in general since my fiance is a jock and I've never seen him disrespect a woman or a person of a different race.

 

[stammer476]

there were, however, some questions that i thought of only because of my background in athletics... one in particular. i have never been on a team in my life where every single player liked each other. never. they may pretend to like each other, but there's always some deep rooted jelousy over playing time, etc... always. and i played basketball, where there's only 12-15 players on a team. we're talking here about a team of 46 players, who's entire season would be canceled if they did not come forward... yet still no one came forward. i find it very hard to believe that not a single player would come forward considering all that was at risk... let alone the straight forward human element. 46 people and not a single guilty conscience? come on...

I was thinking the exact same thing. On the football teams I was on (a size comparable to a lacrosse team), I would flat out guarantee that someone would have broken the silence. You just can't get that many people to agree to a lie under that much pressure.

But then again, people never cease to surprise me.

 

[Liesje]

what i always found interesting was that this was the source of much of the tension -- that athletes didn't "deserve" to be admitted, they just could run fast or swim fast or jump high. it is true that many athletes might not have been accepted without their athleticism, but what about legacies, minorities, musicians, published poets, etc.? why is athleticism perhaps regarded as a lesser ability than other non-academic traits that can help one gain acceptance into a prestigious university?

GREAT point, Irvine! I know it's kind of off-topic, but I can sort of relate. At my school, if you come in from HS with a 3.8+ GPA and then maintain a 3.5+ GPA during college, you get an academic scholarship worth $3500 a year. However, if you're skin is brown or black (you can even be adopted and raised by the same white, Dutch, Christian Reformed community just like everyone else) and have only a 2.5 GPA, you still get $3500. I've never been able to understand affirmative action. To me it seems more like self-handicapping. I worked my ass off in highschool pulling a 3.9 at the best private school available. My friend was already flunking out of classes in high school, but since she was adopted from Bangladesh at 7 weeks of age, she got a bigger scholarship, which she ended up wasting because she couldn't pass any college classes first semester.

I think there should definitely be an academic standard for athletes, especially ones receiving scholarships (thankfully my D3 school doesn't give athletic scholarhsips). Being able to participate on a team is a privilege that is earned, not a right that is deserved. However I do agree that it is unfair to single out athletes as having an easier time getting admitted and better access to financial aid when I've seen this happen to my friends just because they were adopted from Bangladesh or Korea.