Alum weighs in

As a graduate of Duke (1974), I follow with some interest news stories that affect the school. As the father of an 18 year old male lacrosse player and a 10 year old daughter, I am particularly interested in the current and unfortunate situation regarding an alleged sexual crime involving a Duke lacrosse player(s).

I am interested for numerous reasons.

I am interested because it is readily apparent that the media is all too willing to assume the guilt of the lacrosse player(s). White, male, athletic, smart, ... all qualities that are not part of a currently popular diversity curriculum.

I am interested because, if the allegations were true and it was my daughter who had been harmed, I would want retribution, revenge, if not blood.

No society should condone criminal, forcible and indignant acts of a sexual or otherwise degrading nature. But then again, no society should condemn any group for an apparent involvement, prior to proof of complicity in those acts.

Assume for a moment that the alleged victim has made a false accussation. Further, assume that the supposed evidence upon which the authorities are pursuing the case was, in fact, self inflicted and that the evaluating nurse was unable to parse the difference between a self-inflicted vaginal trauma and the result of a sexual assault.

My point in asking for these assumptions is this -- the facts are simply not known. One can construct numerous plausible fact patterns that fit the reported situation, absent the facts.

But the lacrosse team has been branded -- and will remain so even if exonerated. And the University administration has abetted that act. I consider the University's public position an affront to a proper sensibility and sense of justice. For, it is clear that a basic tenet of our American sense of "innocent until proven guilty" has been violated.

Class of '74