Posted on 04/11/2006 8:28:30 PM PDT by Asceticon
There has been no trial. There has not even been a hearing. There has been an overzealous prosecutor flinging out accusations like he's "Page Six" in the New York Post.
This is NOT jurisprudence. If Duke is found to have without cause besmirched these students, and this is revealed to be a Tawana Brawley-style incident -- as it more and more appears to be ... Well, you won't want to be anyone associated with Duke.
As a result of this woman who they brought into Duke's orbit, no doubt Duke will be sued by her and her family if any charges are filed, no matter what the ultimate result.
Let me ask you a question. If you committed conduct that caused you and your company to be blackmailed, don't you think your boss would have the right to fire you? Strippers, escorts, drug dealers, and others in semi-legal or illegal professions are bad news, and associating with such people can be dangerous. Duke's first objective is to protect its self and its reputation.
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think having an exotic dancer perform in your home is illegal in North Carolina.
Furthermore, the politically correct stance we are constantly being told by these liberal professors at Duke is we should not stigmatize this young mother of two and college student's profession of being an exotic dancer. In fact, these Duke students were helping this woman put herself through college and raise her two children.
So looking at that way, Duke is in no position to punish these Duke students for hiring an exotic dancer in a private, off-campus home.
So if the sexual assault allegations are false, the only thing Duke could punish these players for is underage drinking, something no doubt >90% of Duke students do during their college career. So yes, the university could punish them for underage drinking, but it would be a selectively-applied penalty driven by political expediency.
Duke's POSITIVE duty, with these or any other students accused of whatever, is to insist on fair play, ''innocent until proven guilty'' if you like.
Duke was NOT sufficiently besotted with PC nonsense (although it's an arch-PC institution) to expel the accused students. Failure #1 (actually, about #7 but who's counting?).
That the players were consuming some amount of alcohol is inarguable; I'm old-fashioned, I believe in ''same rules for everyone, all the time''.
I've no idea what Duke's student code prescribes as the appropriate punishment for underage consumption of alcohol, but you PC types would only apply it to those you dislike.
I'd apply the very same rule, whatever it happens to be, to all -- to EVERY student.
Which, of course, would depopulate the university by, say, 70%, and p*ss off a lot of grad students and professors who needed to acquire various grants next year.
In short, Duke's actions throughout were not only incorrect as to law, but venal in the extreme, and WILDLY hypocritical to boot.
Nor am I picking on Duke, here. My old school -- ask Billybob, because I no longer even mention that sewer -- is and has been doing the same thing, and worse, over and over.
I'm plain sick of these folks, these ''institutions'', who feel (not 'think', mind) that they are so superior to law in general and the Constitution in particular, that they can perpetrate ANY sort of outrage upon their students -- their customers, in the real world -- that they deem fit at any time they deem fit.
Bob Knight would kick players off his basketball team for missing class, let alone hiring a stripper.
And so did former Ohio State basketball coach, eldon miller.
And I think Woody Hayes did the same.
Duke was on spring break. If photo evidence is brought to the Dean of students participating in wet tee shirt concerts or underage drinking should those kids be thrown out?
The story from the both sides is that they were hired to perform as exotic dancers.
The fact that she may have worked as a prostitute in "one-on-ones" at other times doesn't mean she was hired to do that here.
You may be speculating that both sides are lying as to what the women were hired for, but I'm merely pointing out that that would have to be the case for you to be right as to prostitution.
By branding its students guilty without even a HEARING?
What kind of college would Duke be then?
Gee, I think I'll go out and make some accusation against USC. By the time the press is done with it, I could get the whole journalism class expelled!
Duke owns the house where this party took place, which means that this stripper at the end of the day can and probably will sue Duke, so yes this incident involves the school. Secondly, other than the writer of the e-mail who was suspended, not expelled, none of the other players have been thrown out.
I don't give a tiny damn about lacrosse -- what's fascinating is merely that you types INARGUABLY by your refusal to condemn Duke's and the idiot DA's actions outright, now that hard evidence is in, appear to want to make the law up as you go along.
Here's the way it works, mate. Bring a charge. The governing authority tries to determine if said charge has merit or possible merit. If it's an adminstrative matter, then deal with it according to previously published administrative rules.
If it's a legal matter, then (in the case of a university) refer it to the appropriate legal authority.
Duke not only didn't do this, it abetted, from moment one, this moron of a DA to its students' demonstrable (and perhaps very long-standing) disadvantage.
If you're too bloody blind to see this result, you have my sympathy...but damned little of it.
True, and the parents who support their education, if they have brains themselves, are presently planning ANY OTHER educational destination than Duke.
And so did former Ohio State basketball coach, eldon miller.
And I think Woody Hayes did the same.
I don't know about Eldon Miller, but Bob Knight and Woody Hayes are/were conservatives who, if they were in charge of Duke University, would expect all students to uphold a moral tone and wouldn't put up with politically correct nonsense from the faculty and liberal administrators.
It's hypocritical for Duke to be liberal/libertine the rest of the time and then suddenly find moral fiber on matters of sex when it is expedient to throw the lacrosse team to the wolves in the form of a bunch of race hustlers and radical feminists.
The school stigmatized these kids as if they were different from all the other students because they drink and hired strippers over spring break. If you ask me, the reputation of the school has been damaged by not waiting for results of any testing before they accepted the coach's resignation and cancelled the lacrosse season. I can't think of any team in the nation where the season was ended based on allegations.
Quite a different outcome occurred, however, when at least 12 members of the Ohio State women's rugby team went topless at the Lincoln Memorial on a lovely Saturday afternoon. Being rugby players, they're entitled to do some wild and crazy things. A Post photographer, who was nearby covering a Pagan ritual, took a picture of the backs of the topless players that was published, and officials at Ohio State suspended the team from practice and from two games. After meeting with members of the 37-woman team, however, the school's vice president for student affairs, David Williams, revoked the suspension. "I think they were very apologetic, they realize they did something that was an embarrassment to the university," Williams told the Lantern, the student newspaper.
The women's coach, John Moore, who was present at the memorial but did not know of their plans, has come to their defense. He says today's young women athletes "feel the same kind of spirit" that Brandi Chastain felt after she kicked the goal that won the World Cup for the women's U.S. soccer team. These acts are proud and exuberant expressions of female athletic power that we are going to see more of.
Athletes are held to a different standard on campuses where they pull in huge amounts of revenue. In some cases, it might be a higher standard, and in some cases, it will be a lower one as we've seen in some of the notorious cases of athletes assaulting women.
These young women did not break any law.
Back on campus in Columbus, there is chatter about what went on Saturday -- but it's not about the shirts vs. skins controversy. The buzz has to do with news reports that officials in the athletics department, upset about a story on the football team that was printed in the Lantern, took 7,500 copies of the newspaper and dumped them in a trash bin. This act, which occurred on the same Saturday as the rugby team's photo op, involves destruction of property and loss of revenue, because advertisers aren't going to pay for an issue that's circulating in a trash bin.
Chad Schroeder, marketing associate for the athletics department, had asked the newspaper the previous day not to distribute its First Down football review because he thought the cover portrayed the team in a negative light. Athletics Director Andy Geiger said that "the newspapers should not have been put in the Dumpster," and that Schroeder made a mistake, but will not face any disciplinary action.
You don't have to be a wizard to detect the difference in treatment accorded the women rugby players vs. an adult, male school official in the athletics department. Given the kid-glove treatment he received, it would have been the height of hypocrisy for Ohio State to enforce the suspension of the rugby team.
The women's story, unfortunately, doesn't end all that well. The same night university officials lifted the suspension, the Midwest Rugby Union, the regional governing body for rugby clubs, barred the women's team from competition for the rest of the season. Because the team will miss its two remaining regular season games, it will be ineligible for postseason play and may be placed on probation for the spring season. That's pretty heavy-handed, even for rugby players.
Tom Rooney, Ohio collegiate coordinator for the union, said: "We felt that the girls needed some punishment even though they broke no laws."
Girls? Thank you, Mr. In Loco Parentis. Matt Hull, president of the Ohio Rugby Union, offered the priceless commentary that the players' actions had unfairly given the sport a bad image: "It was a silly thing to do and not what we would want to promote rugby."
For the women, being accused of damaging rugby's image must feel like being called ugly by a frog. The truth is that the young women's prank has done more to put rugby on the sports map than anything in memory. They didn't trash any bars, destroy any property or break any laws. They just had some fun -- and gave the rest of us a good laugh, too.
© 1999 The Washington Post Company
Even if she performed as a stripper, the fact of the matter is that those type of women in those professions tend to be con artists and drug addicts. Allowing one into your home is a dangerous act- especially when a dispute arises over money. While certainly they should be cleared of the charges against them if the evidence we have so far holds up, it doesn't mean that these players have a right to play lacrosse again this year. Keep in mind only one student has been suspended, and none have been expelled. The seniors on this team will graduate and have their degrees in May. If that wasn't the case, if they were expelled without a hearing, it would be a different story altogether. But I think Duke acted within its rights, and I certainly don't think that the players would win a lawsuit over the cancellation of their season.
Instead, like hysterical schoolgirls, they went as utterly nuts as you can institutionally, from day one, following the lead of a prosecutor up for re-election.
If this proves to be a disturbed woman's lie, heads ought to roll at Duke. The alumni should demand nothing less.
The players may win a suit against the DA who declared a sexual attack definitely occured and the local police handing out flyers declaring the rape occuered @ 610.
That's all you need to say to indicate who you are.
Or a recent hazing incident with the Niagara women's lacrosse team...
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