Free Republic

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122792327402265913.html

http://www.amityshlaes.com/

The reply from Duke was:

“Thanks for your thoughtful response...some have not been nearly so thoughtful. I do think that you can count on Duke to look at the situation and its response in a very open and honest light. That has been one our hallmarks and I think you can count on more of the same.”

The question I have now is who will look at the situation? Do the Board and the President review their own behavior?

An email that I already sent to Duke in January:

I very much appreciate this note from you. In the past, because our daughter is a recent Duke graduate, my wife and I have made small donations to Duke. We make more substantial donations to our own colleges. I make these donations to my university both because I appreciate the education I received from its faculty and because I feel strongly about the role a university should play in society. This role is principally to teach and to pursue the truth, including but not limited to the pursuit of truth in academic research. I believe that President Brodhead had an opportunity to further the university’s mission by demonstrating fairness and courage during a difficult time. He failed to take advantage of this opportunity. As I wrote to President Brodhead in April, it is easy to express principles but difficult to act in accordance with them. Instead of continual apologia such as the letter from Mr. Burness in today’s Wall Street Journal, I believe that Duke owes its students, alumni and the public a true apology for its failures in this matter. As a Duke alumnus was quoted in the January 22nd edition of The Chronicle: “It’s just my hope that Duke will admit some of the instances where they might have been wrong and work to make sure this doesn’t happen again, where Duke students are targeted by Durham authorities and Duke’s own faculty would be cited in a defense change-of-venue motion. It’s in their best interest that it’s not a part of Duke’s reputation.”

PDF files of the motion are available at http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/

This is probably all in the motion. Is here a link to it?

This is probably all in the motion. Is here a link to it?

Is there a link to the motion?

A related post at the Duke Chronicle's website (http://www.dukechronicle.com/messageboard/index.cfm?event=viewtopic&umessage_id=3d1bc1fa-12a5-410c-a893-a2dc0e123530):

Perhaps somebody should xerox the following list of quotations by Dr. Martin Luther King, and put "Duke Lacrosse 2006" at the top, and pin copies up everywhere. As a small silent reminder . . .

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"A lie cannot live."

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

"A right delayed is a right denied."

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

"The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict."

"The time is always right to do what is right."

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

See last sentence: Those who continue to defend them can holla at me after they’ve done 16 years on a jive humble charge.

The LA Times had an op-ed piece on Sunday that spoofed people like Holloway and the courses they teach. An excerpt follows. Note the reference to Duke. The full column is at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-allen7jan07,0,4948945.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary.

I got an A in Phallus 101
The list of the 12 most bizarre college courses in the U.S. includes offerings such as 'The Phallus' and 'Queer Musicology.'
By Charlotte Allen, Charlotte Allen is an editor at Beliefnet and the author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus."
January 7, 2007

THE "DIRTY DOZEN" list of "America's Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses" is out — and Los Angeles-area institutions of higher learning have walked away with one-fourth of the ranked honors (or dishonors). Occidental College, an 1,800-student liberal arts school in Eagle Rock, is the only college on the list to collect not one but two citations for excellence at offering trendy theories of gender, skin color and white-male oppression at the expense of actual academic content.

UCLA didn't fare badly either, with one citation. And believe me, the competition was stiff. The Southern California colleges were competing against such nationally recognized PC heavyweights as Cornell, Amherst, the University of Michigan and, of course, Duke.

Sorry, but see what?

From Durham in Wonderland (http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/):

Holloway Leaves CCI
Karla Holloway has resigned her position as race subgroup chair of the Campus Culture Initiative, to protest President Brodhead’s decision to lift the suspensions of Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty. “The decision by the university to readmit the students, especially just before a critical judicial decision on the case, is a clear use of corporate power, and a breach, I think, of ethical citizenship,” said she. “I could no longer work in good faith with this breach of common trust.”

Holloway had not always been so concerned with the significance of “judicial decision[s] on the case.” This summer, she wrote that “justice inevitably has an attendant social construction. And this parallelism means that despite what may be our desire, the seriousness of the matter cannot be finally or fully adjudicated in the courts.” Therefore, since the presumption of innocence “is neither the critical social indicator of the event, nor the final measure of its cultural facts,” judgments about the case “cannot be left to the courtroom.”

Holloway’s departure from the CCI is a welcome development. Holloway’s comments over the last nine months had shown little or no respect for a wide variety of groups on campus, and so her occupying such a prominent place with the CCI seemed a basic contradiction in its mission.

Male athletes? “The ‘culture’ of sports seems for some a reasonable displacement for the cultures of moral conduct, ethical citizenship and personal integrity,” reinforcing “exactly those behaviors of entitlement which have been and can be so abusive to women and girls and those ‘othered’ by their sports’ history of membership.”
Those who defended the players targeted by Nifong? They believed that “white innocence means black guilt. Men’s innocence means women’s guilt.”
Women’s lacrosse players who had worn armbands expressing sympathy with Seligmann, Finnerty, and Dave Evans? She denounced their “team-inspired and morally slender protestations of loyalty that brought the ethic from the field of play onto the field of legal and cultural and gendered battle as well.”
The sympathetic article announcing Holloway’s resignation from the CCI came in a publication called Diverse Online. Here’s how its author, Christina Asquith, described the scene last spring. “Initially, many at Duke supported the dancer. Students held candlelight vigils on campus and 88 professors, now known as the ‘Group of 88’ signed an advertisement in the student newspaper calling for the administration to take a stronger stand against the players.”

Apparently Asquith didn’t receive the memo on the new party line regarding the Group of 88’s intentions.

Labels: faculty

The 20% decline in early-admission applications may be more indicative because an acceptance would be binding on the early-admission applicant. The overall fall in demand for Duke may be masked by the smaller decrease in regular applications, which do not reflect the strength of the applicant's desire to go to Duke (#1 or #7??) or by the overall growth in regular applications nationwide. Also, does anyone know if the quality (e.g. SAT scores) of the Duke applicant pool has changed?

Also see the editorial in today's Duke Chronicle at: http://www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2007/01/10/Editorial/Nifong.Make.The.Right.Move-2616541.shtml?norewrite200701100939&sourcedomain=www.dukechronicle.com

Nifong: Make the right move
Posted: 1/10/07
The lacrosse debacle came to a new peak in December, as Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong dropped rape charges against the three indicted members of the 2005-2006 men's lacrosse team Dec. 22.

The case seemed to have been falling apart in Nifong's hands in the preceding months for myriad reasons: two negative DNA tests, evidence from the defense indicating that at least one of the accused was not even at the party at the time of the alleged rape, skepticism about the legality of the lineup in which the accused stood, and a North Carolina State Bar investigation of the district attorney's actions.

Then, the alleged victim reneged on her original testimony, saying she actually wasn't sure a rape had occurred.

And with that, the rape charges were gone.

Two charges still stand: kidnapping and sexual offense. We have yet to see whether or not these will be found to hold any truth. But there is one other aspect of the case that now must go, and that's Nifong.

It is now clear-glaringly clear-that the district attorney had made egregious errors in his handling of the case.

Worse, it seems that he made some of these errors consciously. Not only did he brazenly condemn the lacrosse players as "hooligans" in the media and proclaim their guilt even before DNA tests or any other thorough investigation had been conducted, but also, as the testimony of Dr. Brian Meehan in early December showed, Nifong also took steps to keep exculpatory evidence from the defense.

McCarthy-esque overzealousness in the public spotlight evolved into what many now perceive as intentional malice.

The bottom line, however, is that whether a matter of intention, perception or misstep, what Nifong did is inexcusable. From his early accusatory remarks to his handling of DNA tests and the lineup, he has made mistake after mistake, tripping down the ugly path of this case.

In the process, Nifong has fed the fire of an already chaotic media circus and cast a dark shadow over Durham, at least in the national eye.

Now, he must step away from the case-and be forced to do so if he refuses. It is clear that he cannot be objective, that he cannot be a fair asset in the legal process.

For the sake of all parties involved-the accused, the accusers, Duke and Durham-It is time for the case to be placed in someone else's hands, someone the public can trust.

If there is truth in the remaining charges and whatever evidence Nifong has can prove it, the case will stand up in court under the eye of a new prosecutor. If this is not the case, we will soon see that Nifong may have performed more poorly than we even now think.

But outcomes have yet to be determined. The crucial move now is that of taking Nifong away from Duke lacrosse, out of the fray. Only then can this case move forward in an honest light.

Mr. Nifong, have you no decency? If you do, take the first good stand you have thus far in the case, and pass it on to a party more objective, fair and just than yourself.

---

© Copyright 2007 The Chronicle

BET Poll:

By BET.com News Staff


Posted Oct. 23, 2006 – Over the past several days, new questions have surfaced about the credibility of the dancer who accused members of the Duke University Lacrosse Team of raping her. Three former teammates professed their innocence to CBS’s “60 Minutes,” while a second dancer suggested the alleged victim had lied.

Last week, we asked, "In light of the investigation by '60 Minutes,' what should be the impact of this new report?"

And here's how you voted:

About 41 percent of you said, "The Duke alleged rape case should be further investigated."

About 33 percent of you said, "The Duke alleged rape case should be dropped because of lack of evidence."

About 26 percent of you said, "The Duke alleged rape case should continue to trial."

See Ed Bradley interview at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/11/60minutes/main2082140.shtml

As you suggest, I am sure they have no proof that black players or coaches failed to be selected because they were black. My point in posting the article was to illustrate the nature of the thought process of some people. I find it rather scary.

See the enclosed article:

BlackAthlete Sports Network-www.blackathlete.net

BASN BLACKBOX
Women's Lacrosse Sameole Sameole
By
May 26, 2006




WOMEN'S
LACROSSE

SAMEOLE SAMEOLE

NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP
PROVES IT 'PERFECTLY'

AND DUKE WOMEN'S
INSULTING GESTURE


THIS WEEKEND

Question

what do Duke's men's & women's

Lacrosse teams share in common ?

Both have ONE African American player

and now both have insulted

African Americans

The Duke women who will play in the NCAA Division I Lacrosse Championship Final 4 today in Boston have decided to wear INNOCENT arm bands during the game in "support" of the Duke men's lacrosse team.

Of course it's inappropriate. But are you surprised that Duke University President Richard Brodhead has no problem with it. Well President Brodhead there are 3 men's players under indictment for a major crime and until and unless they are acquitted of all charges this gesture is an INSULT to African Americans.

But why be surprised by the Institutional Racism we have already documented at Duke University so well exemplified by the make up of their athletics program and specifically here the lacrosse program.

Surprise Surprise

Just as the now suspended Duke men's lacrosse team has just ONE African American on its 47 member roster and NO Blacks on its coaching staff, the women's team now playing in the National Championship in the Semi-final round in Boston has all of ONE African American player on its 31 player roster and NO Blacks on its coaching staff.

We made the point in an earlier Box had the Duke men's team had a significant number of African Americans on their teams, it would have been impossible for the white team members to then go out to have "fun" humiliating Black women hiring them to "dance" for them, of course as they NEVER hired White Women to do.

Well in the very same way IF the women's team had a reasonable number of African Americans on its team they NEVER would have decided to wear INNOCENT arm bands in their championship games in support of the WHITE men on the Duke lacrosse team humiliating BLACK women.

IF the Duke Administration led by President Brodhead was not Lily White as noted in an independent review after the lacrosse team incident in March, Duke would NEVER have allowed these women to use the lacrosse field and the national championships to make a clearly "political" statement and very publicly.

But it isn't only Duke

and guess what .....

Of the FOUR NCAA women's teams in the Final 4 Duke's is to make a mockery of it more "integrated" (sic) than TWO of the other 4. Great Notre Dame University and lacrosse powerhouse Northwestern both have NO African Americans at all on their teams, and yes the fourth team Dartmouth has "tied" Duke for the honors of having ONE African American on theirs.

And here is another Fact

of the 16 members of the

Coaching Staffs of

ALL 4 teams

there are NO Black coaches

Whatsoever

And to wrap it all up

of the 112 players

who will take the Field

Friday night in Boston

exactly TWO of them

are African American

What Racism ???

Whenever you want to reach us with comments
or better yet an idea for a topic for the Box .......
blackbox@blackathlete.net

I am surprised there has not been some adult in Durham to force these clowns to put a stop to this. The judge need only throw out a bad ID and this is over. Nifong can pretend that was not his fault and Durham has a slight fig leaf.


This is why it is not a good practice to have a supervisor handling an investigation. There is no one available to make an independent evaluation.