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http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/highschool/bal-sp.duke04nov04,0,6771148.story?coll=bal-hs-football
From the Baltimore Sun
Still drawn to Duke
After allegations surfaced, area football recruits did their homework - and are glad they enrolled
By Jeff Barker
Sun Reporter
November 4, 2006
DURHAM, N.C. -- The phone was ringing in the northeast Baltimore home of Sheldon Bell, a promising high school football player who had signed a letter of intent to attend Duke University.
It was last spring and the media had begun to report an African-American woman's allegations that she was raped by three white Duke lacrosse players at a party and that racial taunts were overheard. Duke coaches were scrambling to reassure Bell and other recruits about their decisions.
Bell's mother, Paula, believed in Duke but needed to investigate for herself. She wanted to make a pilgrimage that any mother could understand.
On their next trip to Duke in April, the family drove around campus to see if there were signs of racial tension, as the media had reported. They even stopped at the worn, wood-frame house where the alleged rape was said to occur. "This is my only son," says Paula Bell, a bank loan administrator whose faith in Duke was soon restored. "I wasn't going to just give him to anybody over the next four years."
To her relief, her son, who arrived on campus several months ago, says Duke has become the place he thought it was. Sheldon Bell, a Baltimore City College High graduate, says the lacrosse case raised questions but didn't dim the luster of a university he was smitten with for its reputation and beauty. The wide receiver is not even bothered much by Duke's 0-8 record. The Blue Devils, who host Navy today, play with an abundance of underclassmen that gives Bell hope for the future.
For Duke officials, part of the fallout of the lacrosse case was reassuring Bell and other recruits - black and white - that the Duke in their minds matched reality. While there remains public doubt about whether a rape occurred, a trial is expected next year.
To the Bells, it was a lesson in keeping things in perspective. "My mom just wanted to make sure Duke is actually what it is believed to be," Sheldon Bell says. "I think she came to realize that it is."
Still, the allegations were delicate for African-American athletes at the time. For many of them, Duke is already an adjustment.
Bell's high school is predominantly black. By contrast, African-Americans number about 11 percent of Duke's undergraduate population, a figure that parallels the totals for other schools that recruited Bell, such as Maryland (12.9 percent) and Virginia (8.9 percent). About two-thirds of Duke's football team - and about half of the team's freshmen -is African-American.
Bell and buddy Glenn Williams, a sophomore safety for the Blue Devils from Baltimore's Archbishop Curley, have been in classes where they are the only black students. Bell calls it "a change" but quickly adds, "I know why I'm here." He is considering majoring in computer science and is interested in a business career if the NFL doesn't beckon. He turned 18 last month and is redshirting this season so he can gain strength and learn the offense.
Neither Bell nor Williams says he has felt singled out because of race since arriving at Duke.
Both room with other African-American football players, Bell on the East Campus where the freshmen live and Williams on the West Campus. In a sense, the football team provides a cocoon - a regulated environment that typically begins at 7:30 each morning with team meetings and practice.
"Whether you're white, African-American, purple, these kids do everything together. They hang together, they eat together," says Duke offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien, a former University of Maryland assistant who helped recruit Bell.
Bell and Williams say they like Duke enough that they've talked to another Baltimorean, Gilman linebacker-fullback Ben Eaton, about attending.
Work to be done
By mid-April, the lacrosse case had attracted the attention of national civil rights advocates such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who expressed concern about white lacrosse players hiring black strippers for a party. One of those strippers, a 27-year-old student at historically black North Carolina Central University, told police she was pulled into a bathroom and raped by three players.
North Carolina Central's chancellor appealed to students not "to seek retribution or take matters into their own hands." On March 31, Duke officials alerted students to a rumor of a planned "drive-by shooting" of a house near where the alleged rape occurred, but nothing came of it.
Some Duke administrators and students believe the racial dimension was overplayed in the media. At the same time, they acknowledge there is work to be done to make certain minorities feel welcome in society and on Duke's campus.
"This sensational coverage which drove this case was, in part, motivated by the very real concerns which surround race and class in our society, and particularly in our criminal justice system," says Ed Douglas, a white Duke lacrosse player from Baltimore who has been elected co-captain for the spring season.
While Douglas calls such issues "legitimate," he says that "with respect to this case, however, I believe that race was used to play off of very powerful emotions and consequently distorted the events."
When the story broke, Paula Bell said the family received reassurance from Duke coaches. "They said that what we heard on the news was a little blown out and that their commitment to us was still the same," she said.
Said O'Brien: "I just think we called and said Duke is a lot bigger than that one night."
Some black students at Duke worried that the lacrosse players might be coddled. "White male privilege is an issue here," Teshonne Powell, an undergraduate from Atlanta told The Sun last spring in an e-mail interview.
But Williams said he didn't worry about the lacrosse case coverage scaring Bell away. "I was confident that the players who had their hearts set on Duke were going to stick with their choice," Williams said.
And that's what Bell and the other recruits did. No incoming recruits changed their minds, O'Brien said.
Self-segregation
Bell, who says he's the first member of his family to attend college, smiles broadly when he recalls how his mother wouldn't relax until she had studied the campus environment herself. Paula Bell said she was comforted when she arrived at Duke and found no obvious signs of discontent. At the lacrosse house, she said, "there were only flowers and a teddy bear and a balloon placed there."
Paula Bell said she is fortunate to have never had occasion to counsel her son about handling racial prejudice at Duke or anywhere else. "Some of his dearest friends, even in high school, were of a different race, so it's never been a problem," she says. Plus, she says, "my son knows right from wrong."
In the aftermath of the rape charges, Duke officials have been studying how to bring minority groups together more often in social settings. "I don't mind saying that people in the '60s and early '70s referred to Duke as 'The Plantation,' " says Durham Mayor William V. Bell. It wasn't until 1963 that the medical school accepted its first black student.
Today, William Bell says Duke is increasingly sensitive to racial issues but that he hopes for more interaction with the Durham community, which is about half black. He said he wishes he would see more Duke students strolling down city streets, such as one called "Black Wall Street," because of the successful black-owned businesses there.
Elizabeth Chin, a visiting professor in the cultural-anthropology department last spring, says she welcomes Duke's self-analysis. As in many other environments, she said people at Duke often "self-segregate." She says she encouraged students of varied racial backgrounds in her class to work on projects together so they might break down stereotypes.
"I think there's a lot that Duke could do, but they need the courage and commitment to do it," Chin says.