Below is the full text of the "Group of 88" ad. Every word would prove critical in any civil action:
We are listening to our students. We’re also listening to the Durham community, to Duke staff, and to each other. Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism, who see illuminated in this moment’s extraordinary spotlight what they live with everyday. They know that it isn’t just Duke, it isn’t everybody, and it isn’t just individuals making this disaster.But it is a disaster nonetheless.
These students are shouting and whispering about what happened to this young woman and to themselves.
. . . We want the absence of terror. But we don’t really know what that means . . . We can’t think. That’s why we’re so silent; we can’t think about what’s on the other side of this. Terror robs you of language and you need language for the healing to begin.The students know that the disaster didn’t begin on March 13th and won’t end with what the police say or the court decides. Like all disasters, this one has a history. And what lies beneath what we’re hearing from our students are questions about the future.This is not a different experience for us here at Duke University. We go to class with racist classmates, we go to gym with people who are racists....It’s part of the experience. [Independent,29March2006]
If it turns out that these students are guilty, I want them expelled. But their expulsion will only bring resolution to this case and not the bigger problem. This is much bigger than them and throwing them out will not solve the problem. I want the administration to acknowledge what is going on and how bad it is.
Being a big, black man, it’s hard to walk anywhere at night, and not have a campus police car slowly drive by me.
Everything seems up for grabs--I am only comfortable talking about this event in my room with close friends. I am actually afraid to even bring it up in public. But worse, I wonder now about everything. . . . If something like this happens to me . . . What would be used against me--my clothing? Where I was?
I was talking to a white woman student who was asking me “Why do people -- and she meant black people -- make race such a big issue?” They don’t see race. They just don’t see it.
You go to a party, you get grabbed, you get propositioned, and then you start to question yourself. [Independent, 29 March 2006]
. . . all you heard was “Black students just complain all the time, all you do is complain and self- segregate.” And whenever we try to explain why we’re offended, it’s pushed back on us. Just the phrase “self-segregation”: the blame is always put on us. [Independent, 29 March 2006]
. . . no one is really talking about how to keep the young woman herself central to this conversation, how to keep her humanity before us . . . she doesn’t seem to be visible in this. Not for the university, not for us.
I can’t help but think about the different attention given to what has happened from what it would have been if the guys had been not just black but participating in a different sport, like football, something that’s not so upscale.
And this is what I’m thinking right now – Duke isn’t really responding to this. Not really. And this, what has happened, is a disaster. This is a social disaster.
This ad, printed in the most easily seen venue on campus, is just one way for us to say that we’re hearing what our students are saying.
Some of these things were said by a mixed (in every way possible) group of students on Wednesday, March 29th at an African & African American Studies Program forum, some were printed in an issue of the Independent that came out that same day, and some were said to us inside and outside of the classroom.
We’re turning up the volume in a moment when some of the most vulnerable among us are being asked to quiet down while we wait. To the students speaking individually and to the protestors making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard.
We thank the following departments and programs for signing onto this ad with African & African American Studies: Romance Studies; Psychology: Social and Health Sciences; Franklin Humanities Institute; Critical U.S. Studies; Art, Art History, and Visual Studies; Classical Studies; Asian & African Languages & Literature; Women’s Studies; Latino/a Studies; Latin American and Caribbean Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Studies; European Studies; Program in Education; and the Center for Documentary Studies. Because of space limitations, the names of individual faculty and staff who signed on in support may be read at the AAAS website:http://www.duke.edu/web/africanameric/
Notice the topic of the ad. The ad says absolutely nothing about the guilt or innocence of the Lacrosse team. It was far more concerned with broader social trends of racism, as demonstrated by the media coverage of the event, and with the general campus atmosphere of what the libs there would probably call "white privilege." This is essentially political speech, protected under the First Amendment, and not defamation or libel.
It may suck to be those boys wrongly accused of a crime they did not commit - and the parties responsible should have to pay. That does not mean, however, that everyone who expressed an opinion about what this case meant libeled those boys. The slander was by Crystal Magnum and by Mike Nifong - not these liberal professors.
Of course not. But there is a difference between uttering an opinion and making factual assertion--even by implication--that a person has committed a foul crime. And some people who thought they were uttering opinions have later found out from a jury, much to their consternation, that they committed slander or libel.
Sometimes we get a little lazy and forget that there is speech that even the First Amendment does not protect.
I don’t know and I’m not an attorney, but the linkages are so damn clear. Is there any doubt that the ad is saying that what happened on March 13 was evidence (i.e. assumed into fact) of the climate of fear and racism? What happened on March 13? Who doesn’t know what happened. The first paragraph seems pretty clear to me who they are talking about as “proof” of a racist “problem” at Duke.
To paraphrase another poster, this ad didn’t pop out of a vacuum and uses an incident to justify its publication. The incident has been pre-judged.
Like I said earlier, let the 88 twist in the wind.
Read up on “false lights”, Jude24. And remember — these professors are persons who are authority figures in a presumed position to know more than then general public about the parties involved and the circumstances of the case.
You’re right. There is no viable lawsuit against the professors. Now there is going to be a HUGE lawsuit against the county and the prosecutors office. I’d hate to be their insurance carrier.
The point is to make them squirm, make them worry, make them miserable, make the hire attorneys, deride them in court papers, and in public, make Duke worry, make their families worry, let the students they propagandize see the other side of their profs.
The left has permeated our govs, our culture, our media, and our schools with their relentless ruthlessness.
It is past time to unleash hell on them.
Regarding your written and published claim “We are listening to our students.”
Identify by name, student number and any other applicable means of identification each and every student listened to regarding this matter. Identify where and when each “listening” conversation took place. Identify where these memorizations of these “listneings” if any now reside and in whole custody they have been since they were memorialized.
Identify how each of these students you listened to were chosen by you to be “listened to.” Identify the age, gender, racial, educational and pertinent experiences of each student so “listened to.”
Identify each and every step you took to ensure a cross section of students in the cross section of age, gender, racial, educational and pertinent experiential level of these students and how they related to all the students of Duke, all students in Durham County, all students in North Carolina and all students in the United States.
Identify each and every course you have taken in statistical sampling and how you applied the lessons learned in these classes to each “listening” interview you conducted.
Identify how you applied the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) of the American Society of Certified Public Accounts to selecting, conducting and memorializing the results of the “listening” sessions you have claimed to conduct.
and it goes on.....
These are just about 5% of my first set of interrogatories generated by the first sentence of their letter.
They cannot win!
The above line seems to validate what you say, jude.
Wait for what? would be the question I'd ask of those who wrote the line.
Answer: wait for resolution of the legal case before them.
Nonetheless, the article does assume the oppression of African Americans.