Wolf's DSED column damaging, inaccurate

I am profoundly hurt and disappointed by what Elliott Wolf has produced in the Nov. 15 issue of The Chronicle, "Physician, heal thyself," but I am especially appalled at the way Wolf has gone about producing it. We-Duke Students for an Ethical Durham and friends/partners-are all preparing a well-reasoned, fair and well-informed response to Wolf's column, not only as a necessity but also a courtesy to Wolf that we believe he has not extended to us, nor is it what he has provided to the readers of The Chronicle.

In the meantime visit our blog, where you will find much of the substantiation that he demanded and that I provided to him. Wolf made it clear that unless I betrayed my own integrity by revealing to him anonymous source documentation, he was going to publish a column attempting to eviscerate DSED and me. Though I easily substantiated my arguments-indeed I bent over backwards to meet his absurd time demands-with publicly available sources, he ignored them in his column.

With some minor modifications to a single sentence from my piece in The New Right Review, I stand by my arguments as I have done my research. We welcome criticism, and as Michael Gustafson, assistant professor of the practice of electrical and computer engineering, will attest, we often have to pry it from him.

However, it is a bit much to be accused of things like "plagiarism" and "rush to judgment" in a defamation piece for which some of the "investigation," let alone writing, was conducted after Wolf's deadline for submission of the column. Equally odd was the absurd claim we are "rapidly losing support," substantiated by an incredibly damaging misquote of Gustafson (intentional or not) and anonymous "Chron[icle message board] postings," according to Wolf, who accused us of substantiating with "hearsay" and "gossip."

Regarding what he calls our lack of "policy objectives," Wolf did not even inquire about them, nor did he ask about any of our non-lacrosse related initiatives. We have not sought publicity for much of what we have done because we wait until we have done our due diligence.

Wolf has made a variety of mistakes and wildly misappropriated several quotes. While he included a quote of which I am quite proud, he left out the most important sentence: "Similarly, when we are shown to be wrong, we must readily admit that we are wrong." I am committed to that statement, and we hope Wolf will make the same humble commitment. I do not know what has prompted this betrayal of his usual journalistic integrity or his rush to discredit us, but we hope that we will be able to continue working for a better, ethical Duke together.

Ken Larrey

Pratt '08