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http://friendsofdukeuniversity.blogspot.com/2006/03/expired-documents.html#c115845320725225306

Here is Orin Starn's article which was published and then removed from Herald Sun.

A university that prides itself on innovation would become a bold leader in much needed college athletics reform.

By Orin Starn
Published on Friday September 15, The Herald Sun

It wasn’t a sellout at Cameroon Indoor Stadium Monday night.

Instead the legendary basketball arena hosted a more intimate, private event for Duke’s 850 varsity athletics, coaches, and athletics department staff.

Men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski was a featured speaker at this combination pep rally and revival meeting. He urged Duke athletes to feel good about themselves in the wake of the bad lacrosse controversy publicity. “What this situation this spring did was that people wanted put a cloud over all athletics and specifically lacrosse.” Coach K explained later to Herald Sun reporter. “I don’t think that’s fair, quite frankly because we have so many great kids. If somebody did something wrong, then hold them accountable, but don’t indict everyone.”

I’ve taught many Duke athletes over the years, and very much agree that most are great kids. Although most Durhamites want to hear all the evidence before passing judgment, there’s also plenty of reason to doubt District Attorney Mike Nifong’s fairness with the lacrosse charges. I was one of thousands of city residents to sign the petition putting Lewis Cheek on the November ballot out of concern that Nifong may no longer be trusted with his job.

This said, the private Monday rally suggests that coach K, Athletics Director Joe Alleva, and their powerful supporters have stubbornly refused to learn the lessons of these last months. An arrogant sense of victimization and entitlement seems to have replaced any semblance of clear-thinking or self-reflection in Duke sports circles.

Consider what we know now. Quite apart from the alleged sexual attack, it was revealed this spring that almost one-third of the lacrosse team had been arrested on public drunkenness and on other charges. Good evidence suggests that a team captain gave a false name to hire strippers; that at least one player made a racial slur at a spring-break party; that another wrote a subsequent e-mail joking, parody or not, about killing and skinning stripper “b-es.” Another player was convicted in Washington D.C., of assault charges and reportedly yelled homophobic epithets. Still another was charged in June driving drunk and running a red light just days before Duke President Richard Brodhead announced the reinstatement of the lacrosse program.

Nor has Alleva inspired confidence with his leadership through it all. Many Duke insiders felt that Alleva as much or more than lacrosse coach Mike Pressler bore responsibility for failure to monitor the lacrosse team’s mounting trail of loutish behavior and arrest record. Then this summer, Alleva with his son Joe “JD” Alleva – a former Duke baseball player – when JD crashes their speed boat against a bank at a local reservoir. Alleva escaped with stitches, but JD was booked for operating the boat while impaired after refusing law enforcement requests to take a sobriety test. If not the most awful thing ever, the incident did not encourage trust in Alleva’s judgment, especially given the timing. The news reports of the alleged drunken crash were the last thing Duke needed in the tidal wave of bad lacrosse publicity.

None of this, of course, means that the three indicted lacrosse players are guilty. We must be vigilant in ensuring that both they and their accuser receive fair treatment from the justice system. But it does show an astonishing lack of perspective for coach K and others to suggest that Duke sports has somehow been innocent victim of groundless smears by “very narrow-minded” and “ridiculously wrong” critics, as he labeled them in a summer press conference. This should be a time for openness, reflection and dialog instead of circling the sports wagon with the veiled implication that any negative words about Duke sports are the fault of pointy-headed professors, scandal-mongering journalists, and weak-kneed administrators who fail to understand the noble role of athletics at Duke.

An exclusive rally for athletes sends completely the wrong message. It suggests they have interests separate and apart from other Duke students at a time when President Brodhead and other top administrators have, very rightly, sought to bridge the gap between the athletics department and the rest of the university. Holding this event on September 11th also seems oddly inappropriate as if the woes of Duke sports had anything to do with the deaths of thousands of people at Ground Zero.

Here is my proposal: Duke should honor existing athletics scholarships, then withdraw from Division I competition with their horrifyingly large time, training and travel demands on student-athletes and their crass, television-driven over-commercialization. The university ought to maintain lower-key club teams where students will learn the virtues of leadership, teamwork and competition just as well as they do on varsity squads now. New money should be invested in academic merit scholars for deserving African-American and other applicants from underrepresented groups to strengthen Duke diversity and excellence. Coach K and other coaches would have the option of remaining on Duke payroll coaching the new club teams (even if Coach K might perhaps be asked to take a small pay cut from his current salary of well over a million dollars a year).

A university that prides itself on innovation would become a bold leader in much needed college athletics reform.

Likely to happen?
Of course not
The right thing to do?
I think so

Orin Starn is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University.

Quite apart from the alleged sexual attack, it was revealed this spring that almost one-third of the lacrosse team had been arrested on public drunkenness and on other charges.

Right. Like "noise violations", maybe? Really hard stuff, there. No drugs. No guns. No meth lab. No cocaine. No beating up of women. IOW, nothing different from what any generation of college kids have done for the past 100 years. Not entirely laudable, but let's drop the hypocrisy here, shall we?

Good evidence suggests that a team captain gave a false name to hire strippers; that at least one player made a racial slur at a spring-break party; that another wrote a subsequent e-mail joking, parody or not, about killing and skinning stripper “b-es.”

What planet has this guy been on that he repeats things that have already been disected and dismissed or outrighlty disproven?

Another player was convicted in Washington D.C., of assault charges and reportedly yelled homophobic epithets.

See above. Is he living at the bottom of a well? Is he like one of those brainwashed N. Koreans, who, once you politely point out the truth to them, merely repeat the propaganda line all over again, as if you hadn't heard it in the first place?

The university ought to maintain lower-key club teams where students will learn the virtues of leadership, teamwork and competition just as well as they do on varsity squads now.

I see how much he loves athletics. . .

New money should be invested in academic merit scholars for deserving African-American and other applicants from underrepresented groups to strengthen Duke diversity and excellence.

The usual racism of low expectations.

Coach K and other coaches would have the option of remaining on Duke payroll coaching the new club teams (even if Coach K might perhaps be asked to take a small pay cut from his current salary of well over a million dollars a year).

How about getting the administrators to take a cut? (Do you think Brodhead is worth $800,000 a year, or whatever it is that he gets? How much does the Sec. of Education in Washington get? $500,000? How much does POTUS get? Half a mil? Is running Duke harder than running the USA? Is there anyone else willing to run Duke, and maybe even do it for less, and do it better?