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Interviews under way for district judgeship

By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun, Dec 1, 2006

DURHAM -- The governor's office interviewed several candidates this week for a new District Court judgeship in Durham -- perhaps bringing the day closer when wall-to-wall, standing-room-only crowding will end in some courtrooms here.

Gov. Mike Easley apparently didn't personally interview the people interested in the newly created position. A member of his legal staff reportedly did the quizzing.

Just when the governor might make an appointment remained unclear Thursday. But the decision presumably must come before Jan. 15 when the new judge is supposed to don his or her robe.

The judgeship was created by the Legislature in response to Durham's long-standing problems with backlogged dockets and courtroom overcrowding -- a situation that brought out the county fire marshal many times in the past year.

Those known to have interviewed for the judgeship this week are lawyers Kerry Sutton and Brian Wilkes, along with Assistant Public Defender Shannon Tucker.

Attorney Drew Marsh reportedly was questioned also. But he could not be reached for comment Thursday, and the governor's office would not discuss the situation.

Others who have expressed interest in the new bench job include former Durham Assistant District Attorney Tab Hunter and lawyer Scott Holmes.

Meanwhile, Chief District Judge Elaine Bushfan said Thursday she was eagerly awaiting the governor's appointee, who will bring to seven the number of District Court judges in Durham.

"We will finally have our noses slightly above water," she said. "We will be able to breathe again. Before long, you might even see some dramatic changes. It will be less of a controlled-chaos situation."

But, Bushfan added, the Durham courts aren't out of the woods yet. In fact, a need already exists for an eighth judge, she said.

Among other things, the seventh judge will allow Durham to hold one extra session of criminal court each week, plus an extra week of child-support court, according to Bushfan.

At least for those weeks, daily criminal caseloads that sometimes reach or exceed 500 might be spread between two courtrooms, eliminating the need to call out the fire marshal, Bushfan said.

In addition, she said, the new position will allow district judges to have an "office day" at least once a month to handle administrative duties. Local District Court judges don't enjoy that luxury now.

Bushfan said the new judge will undergo training at the School of Government in Chapel Hill, and possibly attend a judicial "college" in Reno, Nev.

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-794508.html

* Controlled-chaos -- 500 criminal cases a day-- the Courthouse is always the busiest place downtown.

Duke president gets panel findings

BY RAY GRONBERG, The Herald-Sun
December 1, 2006 12:04 am

DURHAM -- A group assigned after the lacrosse scandal to examine Duke University's campus culture relayed its initial findings to school President Richard Brodhead just before Thanksgiving, but won't issue a public report until spring, Duke officials said Thursday.

Members of the Campus Culture Initiative Steering Committee gave their preliminary report to Brodhead orally, telling him and the members of a presidential advisory council also established in response to the lacrosse case, that they'd finished gathering data and comment from an assortment of interests at the school.

They intend to spend the winter interpreting those findings and drafting what Duke officials said Thursday would be "a limited number of recommendations."

The 25-member committee was supposed to submit an interim report to the president by today. But officials "had not intended ... from the beginning" to release their findings to the public yet, said Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Bob Thompson, the steering committee's co-chairman.

Three other committees assigned to address different aspects of Duke's involvement in the lacrosse case submitted their final reports to Brodhead in the spring. Duke made all of them public, although as a private university, nothing required it to do so.

Brodhead asked the campus-culture group to "evaluate and suggest improvements in the ways Duke educates students in the values of personal responsibility, consideration for others, and mutual respect in the face of difference and disagreement."

He also said it would offer advice on how to promote "a more responsible approach to the culture of campus drinking, a major factor in Duke's recent crisis and the source of much bad college conduct nationally.

Committee members interviewed Thursday said the initial phase of the effort has led to a thorough airing of the issues surrounding alcohol use, race, gender, athletics and residential life.

In the process, "we have found in a lot of ways, our students are pretty similar to those at other places, and some of the issues we have here are issues that people have at lots of American universities, said Jeff Forbes, a computer-science professor who's one of the 10 faculty members on the panel.

Other issues remain for the group to grapple with as its drafts its recommendations, among them the question of how student culture affects Duke's "stated vision of itself," said Sam Wells, the dean of Duke Chapel.

"Putting it bluntly, is what a student does on a Friday or Saturday night entirely their own business, or is it part of the conversation about what a university is trying to be?" Wells added.

"We've identified a lot of complications and linked issues," said Noah Pickus, associate director of Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics. "And we're both trying to dig into them and ensure that the [final] report ties many things together, that it doesn't isolate one issue or two issues, but that it indicates the way in which many different issues at a university interrelate."

The panel's reconnaissance work included a series of forums earlier in the semester that gave students, faculty and staff members a chance to sound off on the issues Brodhead wanted addressed. It encountered a significant amount of skepticism along the way from people who believe there's nothing wrong with the campus culture that needs fixing, Wells said.

The new coach of the men's lacrosse team, John Danowski, apparently spoke for many when he said last month in one of the forums that there's been too much criticism of the university.

"The language of 'solution' only appeals to those who feel there's a fundamental problem," Wells said. "In Duke's case there's a lot to be proud of, and there are a number of people who feel we haven't heard enough about that in the last year -- and others who feel this isn't the time for it."

No one's forgotten the impetus for the study: the lacrosse case, a debate Wells said the group has tried to avoid.

But "the most difficult thing about this process is that it's assumed in some quarters that to say this is a good time for Duke to think about its own culture is inherently to be making some kind of statement about the guilt or innocence of the three students arrested," he said. "It's felt in some quarters that the best way to stand by the three students arrested and the team in general is to say there's nothing to talk about. That's difficult."

Thompson and other committee members have previously said their work had identified a "culture of divides" at the university, and that on the alcohol front they're likely to suggest that administrators draw distinctions between the problems of underage drinking, drunkenness and dangerous behavior.

Wells said committee members know they "can't duck" the alcohol issue, and are likely to suggest some combination of enforcement and what he termed "alternatives and imagination" to deal with it. He hinted the group might rank underage drinking a lesser priority than other alcohol-related issues.

"As an English person, I find the legal drinking age is more a part of the problem than part of the solution," he said. "It makes it difficult for treating people as adults if the law says they aren't. I don't think the law is helping universities in that particular way."
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