Duke to forfeit games to Georgetown and Mount St. Mary's

[billhoward]

[quote ugarte] ... I disagree with a lot of what Ken has written on this thread (too much white-men-have-it-so-hard-in-this-cruel,-cruel-world for my tastes), but this should have been an apology. ...


.... The St. John's basketball players didn't get prosecuted for just this reason. (Some of them still got kicked out of school, though, because solicitation of a prostitute for a gangbang isn't exactly part of the Catholic mission of the university...)[/quote]

Interesting phrasing.

Insert obligatory priest jok--wait, never mind. Today's the NY Diocese is rightsizing dozens of their schools because of financial woes. This priest-sex thing may change the church more than Vatican II.

(anyone else find they're hanging around the site for no important reason other than maybe there might be a Wisconsin forfeit and we really are gong to Milwaukee ...? I have been to the lynah construction site a dozen times so far, again for no reason.)

[cth95]

Here is some more recent info from ESPN.  Apparently many of the team members didn't exactly have squeaky clean records to begin with.  

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2387151

[billhoward]

And now Sports Illustrated (online) is heard from same day as The New York Times publishes. College presidents read the Times, alumni read SI, and they're hard to ignore, even if SI's first pass is a rewrite plus analysis, not firsthand reporting.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/tim_layden/03/29/duke.lacrosse/
[quote SI.com]A step in the right direction
Duke made proper move in suspending lacrosse team
[By] Tim Layden / Viewpoint


Something bad happened at a party in a house near the Duke campus more than two weeks ago. How bad that something was, and precisely which -- if any -- of the Duke men's lacrosse team's 47 members were involved, is currently the subject of a criminal investigation and the impetus behind considerable unrest on the idyllic Duke campus and in the city of Durham, N.C.  ...


(An elephant has entered the room. Would [Duke President] Broadhead have acted imilarly if this incident had involved his powerhouse men's basketball team or his mediocre -- but ACC -- men's football team? Would any Division I-A president? Small steps, here.  ...

... In terms of its competitive athletic philosophy, Duke is somewhere closer to Florida State than to Yale.

[/quote]

[billhoward]

[quote cth95]Here is some more recent info from ESPN.  Apparently many of the team members didn't exactly have squeaky clean records to begin with.  

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2387151[/quote]

Although the one-third who've had brushes with the law are mostly drinkers who don't meet the contemporary 21-year drinking age in the U.S.

Sorry, but when you're walking through some of the funkier parts of Manhattan and smell burning leaves on every second streetcorner, it's hard to think of having a couple beers as a seroius crime.

[Robb]

[quote billhoward]It's profiling and police departments who use it...[/quote]
Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Your original complaint was that a newpaper article described the perpetrators as "white."  That's not AT ALL the same thing as a police department collaring people on the street without probable cause due to their race.  Sort your apples and oranges and see if you still want to rant.

Regarding the DNA testing in this case: it's voluntary, not forced, so nobody is being "hauled in" or compelled in any way.  If a female (of any race) walks into MY police department and says, "3 white men at a party raped me.  I can't confirm it, but based on their conversation, etc, I believe that they are members of the Duke Lax team," you can be darn sure that I'll be interviewing the white members of the Duke Lax team and will be asking them to voluntarily submit to DNA sampling.  And aftward, I'd wrap myself in the US Constitution (including the 14th amendment) as I slept easly at night over the decision.  

On the other side of the coin, if I were a member of a team and someone accused members of the team of committing this crime, I'd be first in line opening my mouth for the swab.  This issue is just not that complicated.

[DeltaOne81]

[quote Robb]If a female (of any race) walks into MY police department and says, "3 white men at a party raped me.  I can't confirm it, but based on their conversation, etc, I believe that they are members of the Duke Lax team,"[/quote]

Btw, I could be mistaken, and I'm not going to read through all the articles again, but I don't think we know for a fact that she said anything about the lacrosse team. She very well may have just told them the address, and based on the address and likely other evidence, the police are the ones who figured out it was the lacrosse team.

Nonethless, there's quite a large difference between pulling random people off the street because of their race, and narrowing your search to members of a small group who match the characteristics.

[billhoward]

[quote Robb][quote billhoward]It's profiling and police departments who use it...[/quote]
Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Your original complaint was that a newpaper article described the perpetrators as "white."  That's not AT ALL the same thing as a police department collaring people on the street without probable cause due to their race.  Sort your apples and oranges and see if you still want to rant.

Regarding the DNA testing in this case: it's voluntary, not forced, so nobody is being "hauled in" or compelled in any way.  If a female (of any race) walks into MY police department and says, "3 white men at a party raped me.  I can't confirm it, but based on their conversation, etc, I believe that they are members of the Duke Lax team," you can be darn sure that I'll be interviewing the white members of the Duke Lax team and will be asking them to voluntarily submit to DNA sampling.  And aftward, I'd wrap myself in the US Constitution (including the 14th amendment) as I slept easly at night over the decision.  

On the other side of the coin, if I were a member of a team and someone accused members of the team of committing this crime, I'd be first in line opening my mouth for the swab.  This issue is just not that complicated.[/quote]

The similarity is the wide net of suspicion cast against people just because of their skin color, whether in print describing suspects or on the streets hauling in suspects. I don't believe I saw anything attributed to the woman saying she couldn't identify them beyond their skin color, which had the effect of cutting out 1/47 of the suspect pool if the suspects only could have been Duke lacrosse players and not other students, roommates, friends, who might also have been there.

Your supposition of how the non-directly-involved players acted ("if I were a member of a team and someone accused members of the team of committing this crime, I'd be first in line opening my mouth for the swab") may be opposite what happened. Some reports say the team is stonewalling. And that's why investigators are taking the "let's test 'em all right away" shortcut that bothers me.

I'm still troubled that every white player on the team gave - voluntarily? voluntarily but under coercion? with a court order? - samples. Four dozen people hauled in for something perhaps involving two or three. The police couldn't further narrow the field? If the lone black player was at the party (although if his teammates acted the way they did, he probably knew of the behavior before and kept his distance), the cops could lean on him, grant immunity, force him to explain what was happening, and from there identify and lean on others there who knew what was going on but didn't have direct involvement. It feels like the police took shortcuts.

If this were the Howard Univeristy (no relation) lax team with 47 blacks and 1 white and a similar incident happened and the police hauled in all 47 blacks without first narrowing the field of contenders, what do you think the reaction would be? People might be marching to support the victim, but a lot of others would be blasting "the ugly blanket of suspicion cast over young men of color simply because of their color."

---

FWIW a lot of the legal maneuvering unfolded in the two days after the Cornell game. "Distracted" would be an understatement to describe Duke. I wonder if the selection committee tries to find a way to consider this not a quality win.

[Ken\'70]

http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-718588.html

[nyc94]

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0329061duke1.html

The warrant shown here is for the house, not for the players' DNA samples.

[Ken\'70]

Based on the following solid evidence and highly credible accounts the DA has already determined a rape did take place, by the lacrosse team, at the house in question:

- 911 Call: the caller is driving by the house when a white male shouts n****r at her, check that - she's walking by the house when a bunch of white males shout n****r at her; she identifies the house exactly by number, opps, there's no number on the house

- Accuser tells police she and the other dancer re-enter house and get seperated, no - wait, the DA says the other dancer said she stayed outside

- Woman who took accuser to Kroger says she was just driving by and picked up accuser on street, no - wait, woman who drove accuser to Kroger says she was the second dancer (both versions courtesy of Durham police dept)

- Kroger security guard says accuser is on drugs, can't get out of car

- Accuser has demonstrated unassailable character by having two illegitimate children then leaving them 3 nights a week to turn tricks

- Lacrosse players, their lawyers and parents confident DNA will reveal none of them involved - DA says it doesn't matter if no DNA match found, DNA doesn't prove anything (I'm not kidding, http://www.newsobserver.com/1185/story/423471.html )

If anyone else thinks the DA is a bit over the top on this, the answer is that he's in a re-election race with the vote in May.  This case is a god-send for him, particularly given the racial aspect.

[Jerseygirl]

[quote Ken'70]

- Accuser has demonstrated unassailable character by having two illegitimate children then leaving them 3 nights a week to turn tricks
[/quote]

Putting this particular case aside for a second, it's bullshit like this that sends my blood pressure through the roof. Tell me Ken, how many moral check marks does a woman have to have before she's allowed to accuse someone of rape? Should men who rape and assault working prostitutes not be charged because hey, the girls asked for it by being on the street corner at 3 a.m.? What about a "slutty" (God, I hate that word) freshman who passes out at a frat and gets gang raped? Did she lose the right to say no because she's said yes before?

Getting back to the case, no, I don't think the DA is a bit over the top on this. I'm not making any judgements on guilt or innocence. Rape is a very serious crime, and if the accusation is made, it needs to be treated as such until the facts show otherwise.

[billhoward]

Newspapers have had their own No Child Left Behind requirement for decades. You have to put in quotes or explain anything that might go over the heads of one subscriber or force him to put his teeth back in to better pronounce the phrase. Note explanatory ending to the sentence.

http://www.newsobserver.com/1185/story/423471.html
[quote Benjamin Niolet, Anne Blythe and Jane Stancill, Staff Writers]Ignacio Adriasola, an art history graduate student, had a sign taped to his shirt: "It isn't what Duke has, but what it lax," using the shorthand word for lacrosse.[/quote]

[jtwcornell91]

Gee, if there were only some venue in which a group of people analyze the evidence, with advocates for both sides and some sort of impartial official presiding. ::rolleyes::

[DeltaOne81]

[quote jtwcornell91]Gee, if there were only some venue in which a group of people analyze the evidence, with advocates for both sides and some sort of impartial official presiding. ::rolleyes::[/quote]

Crazy talk! Surely unrelated participants with personal biases must pick and chose the pieces of evidence that fit their preconvinced notion in an anonymous setting, in order for justice to prevail!

[Pete Godenschwager]

[quote Ken'70] she identifies the house exactly by number, opps, there's no number on the house
[/quote]

According to the warrant, the number is indeed on the house.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0329061duke2.html
(under description of premises)