Time to address the real classroom issue

Along with most of my departmental colleagues, I recently received a request to approve the letter written by my friend Professor E. Roy Weintraub and signed by many of the faculty in economics. I'll do that, without much enthusiasm. Some expression of faculty support is appropriate for the students who have been victims of-at the least-outrageous prosecutorial behavior.

But the real Duke issue is not being addressed, at least not publicly. It is not the ad from the Gang of 88, which mainly represents a missed opportunity to keep one's mouth shut-hardly unusual for academics. What matters is what went on in the classrooms during the weeks after the story broke.

I know for a fact that some faculty immediately wanted the whole lacrosse team expelled; if that opinion was kept privately it did little harm. However one hears stories, many with the ring of truth, about classroom discussions and even instructor's lectures on the subject that clearly assumed the worst and suggested retribution against the players. There is even a case in which retribution may have been taken in terms of grades. It is these things that ought to be brought into the open and discussed, because if true they outweigh in importance to Duke anything that seems to have happened at the Party From Hell.

There must be students (other than the players, who are reasonably keeping quiet) who know about these things. They should open up about them.

Lawrence Evans

Professor Emeritus of Physics