Your blog hit the nail on the head for me. I’m so disgusted with the behavior of these students. They made bad choices and now must take accountability. They’ve disgraced themselves as well as the school. It doesn’t help that Brodhead didn’t revoke scholarships and suspend the players from day one. It seems to me there are more deserving students that should be granted admission to Duke then the current white trash that attended that party. Unfortunately this “college students gone wild” mentality isn’t specific to Duke as we all know and I think it’s high time the schools start addressing this conduct. I attend a small college in NJ, but am so outraged by the apparent acceptance by all colleges administrations of crap like this I went ahead and sent my college president an email suggesting this problem be addressed. I believe more institutions need to be proactive in teaching morality, ethics and values. I don’t blame the schools for causing this problem as I believe it starts with the parents. Why don’t we examine the parents of these boys. Let’s find out what enterprising people they are. Who knows, judging from the lacrosse players actions, their parents are probably not much different then the executives at ENRON.
All that aside, students need to start learning ACCOUNTABILITY for their actions. The schools need to start being less tolerant of and more proactive in preventing this behavior. These are, after all, our future business leaders, doctors, lawyers, etc…

This event occurred on university owned property, why arent the Duke Campus police questioning everyone of these young men in attendance, and why doesnt duke simply suspend, them if they refuse to cooperate. And why does the atheletic director still have his job? Some of these students have records for violent assaults and many had misdemeanor records. These are not Choir boys we are talking about.

The ONLY thing that might cause Duke to really change would be a 100 million dollar lawsuit against their endowment and all the students that were there, and are not cooperating. Duke understands money very, very, well like Harvard. Although they may not understand the law and the necessity to be moral leaders and provide a safe environment for ALL students and people associated with Student life.

What has been disheartening to me is talking to my fellow, white, male, elite school educated comrades, that dont share in my horror at how duke and these students are being treated with kids gloves for extraordinarily serious charges that have been verified by Duke Medical staff. Fortunately it appears to be mainly the under 40, crowd that doesnt share in the horror of this event.

What kind of message does that send to the woman on campus at Duke that three potential rapists, and perhaps 37 other complict people in the rape are attending class with them every day,. and the university police dont even require statements.

also in reading the Duke papers, apparently a number of woman students, whom the Duke team referred to as lacrosstitutes serviced the team sexually. perhaps these woman also shared in some ways with this deranged sense of entitlement these young men seem to have. Why are these woman being identified and giving spirtual or moral guidance? They didnt aquire that nickname by being ‘angels’.

and most sady among the duke bloggers, most of whom appear to be young, white, male and conservative. there appears to be NO concern for the rape victim, not even basic empathy, especially in light of what the police reports stated. their only concern appears to be for their ‘schools’ reputation. you think their first concern would be empathy for the victim as at the Very Least she was robbed and probably beaten.

i wont be hiring anyone from duke university, given what i have seen on how terrible the response of the duke leadership and duke alumni is. these people have terrible characters. we will cancel our recruitment to their campus.

im stunned at the apathy of society to this womans plight, despite the many problems she appears to have. what could have lead her to such low self esteem that she was dancing for men, and that society didnt offer her more viable job opportunities. where was her father and the local church ministers?

as a white 50+ year old male, ex college lax player, an executive, im OUTRAGED at Duke University and how they have handled this matter. All of the students involved should have been suspended and removed from campus within one week. They should shut the LAX down for 4 years, and revoke all LAX scholarships of students whom even attended and are putting up this ‘wall of silence’.

and most of all i am very, very sorrowful over the pain and humiliation this woman must be experiencing over this.

Duke has a good nick name for thier school, the devils. It suits them well.

Well, at least you can rest easier knowing that DNA evidence (you know, that old dead white man notion of due process of law) has proved that they didn’t rape her.

Yeah, I mean it’s not like it’s that easy to get ahold of some kind of membrane or sheath that would allow you to have sex with someone without depositing any sperm in her vagina. I mean, what are the odds that the college-aged, male members of a sports team would have access to condoms, of all things?

Actually, in some cases, rape is about lust. The man wants to have sex. The feelings of the woman are irrelevant to him. It is not so much that he gets gratification from the violence inherent in the act (although there are other rape cases in which this is absolutely the case); rather he uses violence to get sex because he wants it now and thinks that forcing the woman is the quickest way to get it.

However, rape isn’t caused by average men being suddenly unable to control their lustful urges.

I think in many cases it is caused by average (i.e. “not particularly remarkable”) men being unwilling to control their lustful urges. Saying rape (in many cases) is about sex isn’t saying that the man couldn’t control himself. It is simply saying that having sex was the motivation and violence was simply the means to an end.

I don’t have much of anything useful to say about the Duke Lacrosse team rape case today. For news and commentary I’d suggest Justice 4…

No, it didn’t.

WinstonWebb: Well, whaddya know? The stripper was lying.

The article you linked to doesn’t say that she was lying:

“It doesn’t mean nothing happened,” Nifong said at a public forum at North Carolina Central University, where the 27-year-old alleged victim is a student. “It just means nothing was left behind.”

No charges have been filed.

Nifong said prosecutors were awaiting a second set of DNA results, but did not say how those differed from the tests reported Monday. Nifong added that in 75 percent to 80 percent of sexual assaults, there is no DNA evidence to analyze.

The district attorney said a rape case can built on testimony from the alleged victim and other witnesses. Nifong also said the hospital exam of the woman has led him to believe a crime occurred at the March 13 party.

According to court documents, a doctor and a specially trained nurse found the alleged victim had “signs, symptoms and injuries consistent with being raped and sexually assaulted.”

If you want to work yourself up into righteous indignation about evidence and proof, then you had better learn to read your sources carefully, to represent your sources honestly, and to learn to exercise basic logical distinctions, such as the distinction between (1) the lack of a particular line of evidence for an event, and (2) particular evidence for the lack of that event. What you’ve got here is at the most (1) and not (2).

But hey, don’t let that stop you from your little “women who accuse male atheletes of rape are lying whores” jag.

I still lust for my mate after 6 years. How does this jive with your definition?

“But apart from the motivation– lust, a need to dominate, anger, whatever– what all rapes have in common is an extreme disregard for another human being’s wishes (whether that disregard is momentary and isolated or systemic and pathological).”

Yeah, and the really revolting thing is that this disregard isn’t about something casual or noninvasive. A lot of jerks will invade your space over a parking spot or whether they think you’re too fat, but while annoying, it’s not usually traumatizing. Rapists, though, insist on violating and brutalizing one of the most personal things anybody has, their physical body and their sense of self and sexual identity. An assault of such magnitude, if it *didn’t* carry the element of rape, would be easy to prosecute, but as soon as the sexual element becomes involved, it’s suddenly all vague and depends on what color of underwear she had on. I know I’m just stating the obvious, but every time I hear that “boys will be boys” attitude I want to say “but only towards women, and only because they can get away with it.”