Seyward Darby, Trinity ’07, served as editor of the 101st volume of The Chronicle in 2005-06, when three Duke lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a stripper at a party held by members of the team. Darby now works as an editor for Foreign Policy. Now 10 years since the March 13 party, Darby answered questions via email and reflected on coverage of the case as well as the atmosphere on campus when the story broke.
This story is part of our coverage of the 10th anniversary of the lacrosse case. Our other coverage can be found here.
The Chronicle: When did you first hear about the allegations, and when did you realize how big the story would become?
Seyward Darby: I first heard about them when I was in New York City for spring break. I was in the Empire State Building. At the time, we didn't know that the lacrosse team was involved, only that a rape had allegedly occurred in a house off East Campus. We found out that lacrosse players were being accused a few days later—the day after Duke fell out of the men's basketball bracket during March Madness. We knew it was going to be huge when media vans and trucks began rolling into campus, and when The New York Times called The Chronicle office to ask for assistance in obtaining a copy of the search warrant for the Buchanan house.
TC: What was the atmosphere like on campus as the story developed?
SD: If you were to walk across campus on a given day in those initial weeks, not much would have seemed out of the ordinary—save the journalists and videographers posing in front of the Duke Chapel to provide dispatches for local and national TV shows. Certainly, there were protests that The Chronicle documented at the time, students and professors and Durham residents who believed the lacrosse players had committed a crime, or at the very least were hiding something they had done, criminal or not. And there were students, especially friends of the lacrosse team, who were vocal about the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."
Yet most people, as I recall, didn't know what to believe; the facts weren't at all clear at that point—this is before even the DNA test results were released—so most students, when they were thinking or talking about the case, were pondering whether a rape could have happened, whether the accuser might be lying, whether the district attorney had a piece of damning evidence or was just overzealous. In other words, the campus atmosphere was one of curiosity and anticipation. People absolutely wanted to know what had happened, and they wanted a just outcome. But they also weren't jumping to sweeping, collective judgments about the allegations in the case.
Additionally, I would say that students were frustrated by how the media were portraying Duke and Durham: using these big brushstrokes of "black versus white," "poor versus rich" and the like. Students weren't operating under the delusion that the University was a perfect place, or that its relationship with the city was impeccable, but they also saw the good along with the bad—and they didn't like seeing the place they called home reduced to generalizations and assumptions.
TC: Had there been criticism and discussion surrounding Duke's social culture before the accusations?
SD: Yes, there had been. In the years leading up to the case, for instance, The Chronicle had written articles about how drinking and partying culture had been pushed off campus and, by most accounts, could quickly spin out of control. I myself wrote three such features, documenting changes in University alcohol policy in the preceding decades. Neighbors in Trinity Park complained about rowdy parties, students complained about an administration that stifled social life—including the now-infamous tailgate—and the University implored students to behave responsibly. I know, too, that many students of color, and many white students too, were concerned about the status of race relations both on campus and off. There were also ongoing conversations about the dangers of privilege, misogyny, and many, many other important issues. So, put simply, there was criticism, much of it founded—and not all discussion turned into constructive action, which was upsetting.
These kinds of critiques and conversations are not unique to Duke. I attended Yale for graduate school, for example, and similar themes came up all the time. I say this not at all to excuse what problems Duke had—because it definitely had them, and I was frustrated by them—but rather to underscore something the media did not always keep in mind as the lacrosse case progressed: that universities are living institutions at which new generations of students and teachers are perennially grappling with and addressing social, economic and political injustices and inequalities, whether specific to a campus or absorbed from broader American culture and history. Duke was put under a microscope during the lacrosse case, held up as uniquely awful at times, and I fear a broader, potentially powerful conversation about enduring problems (and potential solutions) at universities nationwide never occurred; the case went off the rails, the story shifted, and—predictably—the media and public lost interest.
TC: What was it like having so much media attention directed at campus?
SD: In a word, surreal. One day, most of Duke's press was for basketball, or professors doing ground-breaking research. The next, fellow students were being accused of gang rape on national television. As student journalists, we were stunned—and just tried to manage the onslaught as best we could, remembering that our responsibility was to report the news fairly and clearly. It didn't matter what we thought or what our hunches were if we couldn't report them out; it mattered what we knew. Lives hung in the balance, on both sides of the case; they weren't there for the media's enjoyment. Every person at the party that night had an experience, a story to tell, and it was important not to fixate on one version of events as the absolute truth when not every version was known. I'm referring to the fact that, at first, the players were not speaking publicly. There were upsetting developments, like the email from one player making a sick joke about skinning strippers and reports that players may have used racial slurs at the party. But the question on the table wasn't whether the players had done any kind of wrong; it was whether they gang-raped a woman. We tried very hard to keep that at the forefront of our minds.
TC: Do you think Duke's image changed as a result of the media's narrative?
SD: I think it did. For several years after, I found that if I said in a social situation that I went to Duke, people would sort of count back in their brains and realize, "Oh! You were there during the lacrosse case. How awful was that? Do you think they really did it?" This question still comes up now and then, by the way; I think that Nifong and the national media so intensely cast suspicion—or outright blame—on the players early on that some people who watched from afar during that phase don't know, remember or believe the ultimate outcome. I think too that media were quick to snatch up subsequent stories of controversy at Duke. The sex powerpoint is a good example.
TC: Is there anything you would like to add?
SD: Just that I was really proud of the work The Chronicle did. I'm sure it wasn't perfect—we were kids, really, covering a massive story about our peers, people we knew from classes and social life. But we worked incredibly hard to be as professional as possible. I give enormous credit to managing editor Sarah Kwak, news editor Steve Veres, and sports editor Mike Van Pelt. I was only at the helm for the first two months of the story, because we had an editorial changeover and Ryan McCartney took the reins.
He did a tremendous job steering coverage as the case moved into a very different phase. Also, our sports reporters were fantastic, staying on top of things as the months passed in a way even national reporters could not. The Chronicle's coverage was a solid team effort and one that I hope, amid all the ugly carnage of the lacrosse case, is at least one small example of good.
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