When news broke of an alleged gang rape by three members of the lacrosse team, Trinity Park residents said they'd had enough.
Beer cans littered on front lawns and parties that can rage until the wee hours of the morning have been the weekend norm in this neighborhood bordering East Campus for years. But with allegations of a brutal rape of a black stripper in their own backyard, residents took to the streets, calling for Duke-and its rowdy students-to make serious changes.
"It's anti-social behavior, that's what we witness," resident Bonny Moellenbrock says. "That's why they're not getting the benefit of the doubt."
After 46 of the highly-ranked team's 47 members were ordered to submit to DNA tests and an aggressive district attorney broadcasted accusations of violent gang rape and sodomy, the news went national. Making the front page of the New York Times and garnering spots on SportsCenter and ABC World News Tonight, people around the country-and the world-now know Duke for something other than basketball.
But it was the residents of Trinity Park who gave the television crews footage that helped catapult the story into a national firestorm with dimensions of race and class strife.
During one early-morning rally when more than 200 people gathered outside student houses on the edge of East Campus, protesters banged pots and pans, waking students in a form of retribution for years of their own unwanted wake-ups. With dreary-eyed Duke seniors looking on, the group marched around the corner to the home of Provost Peter Lange, demanding a stronger University response.
When one Trinity Park neighbor said racial slurs came from the 610 North Buchanan Boulevard house around the time of the alleged rape, it heightened tensions between Durham's substantial black population and the University's mostly affluent and white community.
A week after the major protest and amid rumors that Duke students may be the targets of gang violence, police stationed patrol cars in the parking lot of 704 North Buchanan-the largest, and maybe most notorious, of the student-rented houses. Many undergraduates who live in the houses-most of which were recently purchased from Trinity Properties by the University-were too scared to sleep at home that night.
Meanwhile, angry e-mails flooded listservs administered by Trinity Park residents, leading one observer to ask, "Trinity: What is wrong with you? Your community has turned into a vigilante group!"
Though residents of Trinity Park were incensed by the rape allegations, some say they were happy that the attention-which included anonymous death threats to the house's residents-forced the lacrosse players out of their home.
"It was no fun having them as neighbors because they acted as farm animals most of the time," says Jen Minelli, whose home at 602 N. Buchanan is just a few doors down from the lacrosse residence. "I'm glad to see them out of the house."
Some neighbors are leveling the blame directly at Duke and the failure of its administration to address their long-voiced concerns. Minelli hopes the event will be a catalyst that will force the University to pay more attention to the neighbors' desires.
Although President Richard Brodhead couldn't hear the clanking of the pots and pans, he's certainly listening to their message. In an April 5 e-mail addressed to the Duke community, Brodhead acknowledged he was well aware of the continuing tension.
"The objection of our East Campus neighbors was a reaction to an attitude of arrogant inconsiderateness that reached its peak in the alleged event but that had long preceded it," Brodhead wrote. "I know that to many in our community, this student behavior has seemed to be the face of Duke."
Durham resident Christina Headrick wrote in an e-mail sent through the buzzing listserv that she wants Brodhead to institute a 24-hour hotline for neighbors to phone in complaints. She also thinks the University should revoke the off-campus living privileges for students with numerous offenses.
"[I]t would be more effective to create some more CONSEQUENCES for behaviors off-campus," Headrick wrote. "A $150 noise citation has just been the cost of doing business in our neighborhood."
David Smith, an attorney and the former president of the Trinity Park Neighborhood Association, says the initial intensity of the community's reaction is a result of the one-sided coverage of the incident.
Although members of the lacrosse team remained silent in the weeks immediately following the alleged rape, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong appeared in a bevy of local and national media outlets declaring his confidence that team members are guilty of sexual assault.
"There are two sides of the story," Smith says. "At this stage of the game, all people have heard is one side."
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