Posted on 01/04/2007 6:39:42 PM PST by quinhon6869
A former Duke Lacrosse player has filed a lawsuit against the University saying he was failed by an professor because of his membership on the lacrosse team.
1. There are 3 plaintiffs (the student and his parents) each of which are seeking in excess of $10,000 in compensatory damages and in excess of $10,000 in punative damages. That's in excess of $60K total, plus attorney's fees. This quickly becomes a 6-figure lawsuit for Duke.
2. Duke specifically does not allow discrimination on the basis of, "race, color, ... or any other university program or activity." (I think the program or activity part was meant to protect groups other than the lacrosse team, but it would certainly apply here, since only the lacrosse players received failing grades, and in sudden fashion.)
3. Duke changed it's mind twice with respect to Dowd's appeal. Once, when they allowed a John Hopkins course he had previously taken to count towards graduation, and again when the changed his grade from an F to a D. So why does Duke suddenly allowed a, presumably, disallowed course at JHU to count toward graduation? And doesn't the changed grade prove his case? He is asking that the D be changed to P (passing).
4. Dowd received an email from the faculty contact person in the political sciense dept., whom he had contacted with the title, "Wow! No wonder you guys were mad ..."
5. Dowd sent the instructor emails in advance of his class absences. He had only one absence in the class which was excused for an out-of-state game prior to Nifong's investigation of the entire team.
6. Professor Curtis used different reasoning to explain the F. First she said he didn't support his stong statments in the paper. Then she said he had confused the charcters he was writing about.
I ain't no lawyer, but I think Dowd's lawyer, from a prominent NC law firm, is going for a quick settlement. The only reason Duke would fight it is that they fear a flood of similar suits, but other than the second lacrosse player in Curtis' class, there is no mention in the complaint of any other grade shenanigans.
There is the clincher, right in there, about her guilt! This teacher needs to be removed from the teaching profession.
Professor:
Curtis is a political science professor whose most recent publication is on the politically correct topic of multicultural education. Over recent years, her behavior has been a caricature of an academic radical: shortly after 9/11, she wildly (and, of course, without any evidence) condemned an alleged attempt “to silence professors who encourage students to probe the history of U.S. foreign policy in the effort to understand the September 11th attacks.” She protested efforts to remove from the ranks of the nation’s faculty those “who feel shame, fear and anger over the violent suppression that the United States has undertaken in so many states across the globe in the near and the distant past”; and those who “feel distress over the long-time support by the U.S. of the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, whose oppression of women has been brutal.”
from http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/
I put up with this nonsense for exactly two class periods. I should mention that I had spent what at the time was a significant part of my leisure income on this class.
This female 'professor' continually made remarks about 'global warming' and how it was a 'scientific fact', extolled the 'documented' benefits of socialism over capitalism, and continually bemoaned the effects of human beings on the ecosystem and the harm 'we' were doing to 'old growth' forests.
On the occasion of my third class I raised my hand and asked her where she got her degree in climatology.
She said she didn't have one.
I asked her where she got her degree in meteorolgy.
She said she didn't have one.
I asked her where she got her degree political science.
She said she didn't have one.
I asked her where she got her degree in forest management.
She said she didn't have one.
At that point she stopped me and asked why I wanted to know all this. I said "Because I'm pretty sure I'm paying for a class in English Composition and I was under the impression that I was going to actually be taught that subject by someone with a degree in it. If I wanted to be instructed on any of those other subjects I would have signed up for classes instructed by someone competent in those fields."
"Now I'll thank you to stop expounding on subject areas in which you have no professional expertise and to begin actually instructing me in the subject matter which I paid for. If you continue with injecting your irrelevant political opinions into valuable class time I'll make a formal complaint to the Dean of Students."
You should have seen the look on her face.
She made some remark about having a right to her opinions and did her best to look down her nose at me.
I told her she did indeed have a right to her opinions on her own time but that she didn't have a right to waste my time and and my money. If she wanted to share her opinions with me she could invite me to the local watering hole after class and buy me drinks .
At least half of the class thanked me afterwards.
L
I like what you did. Every class needs someone like you in it.
Call it every single time you see it.
L
Every one of the 88 (and she is of course one) should be booted from Duke. Just to start Brodhead's to-do list, if he wants to create some justice out of all this.
When the photograph seems to radiate "smug superiority", which only confirms the attitudes revealed in that course synopsis, well, it's only natural to use it in coming to some what are likely some pretty accurate conclusions about this wench.
*APPLAUSE*
I think some FReepers got into the rating game. LOL
Assuming that's logically possible.
< }B^)
I think you coined a new term in there, which combines Commie and Feminazi.
How can you compare beautiful Eliza Jane to this witch. OK Eliza might not be a prize but who cares she was nice. This women is pukid and nasty acting.
I might suppose the entire lacrosse team has a defamation action against the University and those 88 professor individually and anyone involved in producing or distributing the flyers.
>>And to think - our universities used to be the envy of the world.
They still are. Just not for crap like this. Hard sciences, engineering, business, medicine, and such.
Find a discipline where there are "known right" answers, and not a lot of nonsensical fluff as demonstrated in her course syllabus, and that's where you'll find the foreign students.
Libel!
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