Carnal Reason

Mary Katherine Ham wrote an article for Townhall called Some good things about Duke Lacrosse for a change. She left something out.

It’s an old story, from way back in May, when the facts in the Duke Lacrosse non-rape case were less clear. The Duke Women’s Lacrosse team was playing Northwestern in the NCAA semifinals, and they showed their loyalty and courage to the world. Here is how ABC News reported it:

The [accused men's team] players’ attorney has insisted they are innocent. But reports that the women’s lacrosse team would wear headbands that said “Innocent” became a flash point in the world of women’s lacrosse and the Duke community.

Instead, about 10 Blue Devils wore wristbands that said “45 13 6″ the uniform numbers of the three accused men. Other players wore wrist and headbands with the men’s logo.

Asked to explain the various messages, Leigh Jester pursed her lips, turned toward her coach and signaled her to answer.

“We had the intention of showing support for the men’s program all along,” Kimel said. “The message we were going to put on our bands was intended to be undecided until we came to Boston.”

The women’s team caught a lot of grief for this show of solidarity. I am going to dredge up an old story, a column by sports writer Stephen A. Smith. Mr Smith’s article is no longer available where it was originally posted, at http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/sports/colleges/14693440.htm. I managed to find a copy at Slant Truth, which (so far as I can tell) quoted Mr. Smith’s entire article.

Mr Smith’s comments in blue, mine are interspersed in black and in [brackets].

I never believed the day would come when we’d see an educational institution so flagrantly stupid, so selfish, so conspicuously aloof. Evidently it’s Duke, supposedly one of America’s more honorable institutions of higher learning.

A few days before losing in the NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse semifinals on Friday, members of the Blue Devils team told the world they would wear wristbands with the word innocent emblazoned on them during the game, in support of three Duke men’s lacrosse players indicted on rape charges stemming from a March 13 team party.

These 18-, 19- and 20-year-old women evidently were either ignorant or insensitive to the fact that there were 94,635 rapes in the country in 2004, according to the FBI. Or they weren’t aware that rape is one of the most underreported crimes, which one would think should heighten any female’s sensitivity radar.

[Note that Mr Smith is concerned that the members of the Duke Women's Lacrosse team are ignorant of, or insensitive to rape statistics. We'll come back to that. ]

Let us, instead, focus on Duke University, a renowned institution of learning, the same institution presently giving Jim Carrey’s depiction of Dumb & Dumber a serious run for its money.

The word innocent was going to be sprayed on wristbands, and Duke said it planned to do nothing about it. It planned to do nothing even though that declaration was going to be made public, in an NCAA-sanctioned venue, by representatives of the institution, and Duke practically condoned it with no regard as to how this may look.

[I see. It was entirely appropriate for 88 Duke professors to sign an inflammatory document prejudiced against the Duke men's Lacrosse players, but it was inappropriate for fellow students to show support for them. Duke University should have acted to silence them.]

To think, once upon a time, academic institutions were held in high regard, a transitional haven for those moving from their teenage years to adulthood. What are we to think now when it’s clear that even at places such as Duke there’s an absence of common sense?

It’s worth repeating that the three men who have been accused - Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans - are innocent until proven guilty.

The rape accusation by a 27-year-old, African American female student at North Carolina Central University, moonlighting as a stripper, hardly proves their guilt, which will be decided by the courts. But it also doesn’t let anyone off the hook, regardless of the “No Excuse-No Regrets” motto or the “45, 13, 6? jersey numbers of the accused men that the Duke women’s lacrosse players decided to wear.

After learning about the wristbands, John Burness, Duke’s vice president of public affairs, said: “They don’t clear those things with us ever. We’re not sitting here looking over people’s shoulders quite that much.”

That is not only negligent, it’s hypocritical.

The same university that begged the nation to avoid rushing to judgment, that during the Final Four had employees intercept questions directed at the Duke women’s basketball players - seven of whom are black, by the way - turns a blind eye and deaf ear away from 31 female lacrosse players - 30 of whom are white - clearly trying to swing the national pendulum in favor of the accused.

[It seems the pendulum has swung. The women's loyalty has been vindicated. I wonder whether Mr Smith still believes that Duke University should have silenced them?]

Perhaps, at some point, it would be wise to inform these ladies about the FBI’s rape statistics. If they sat down and talked with law enforcement officials, two things would be learned:

The numbers are much worse than what’s actually reported.

[OK, here it comes. The punchline, the thing I could not let slide.]

Females ignorant to that fact can’t possibly assist in alleviating this problem.

[This arrogant clown goes too far. He presumes to lecture the ignorant females about rape. OK, let's talk about the role of women in alleviating the problem of rape. Ask yourself what effect false accusations of rape have on the treatment of actual rape victims by the criminal justice system. Perhaps Mr Smith can enlighten us.]

What we’re sure about is that Duke should not be oblivious to any of this. Certainly not when it was found, over the last 5 1/2 years, to have had 52 disciplinary incidents at a rate that was accelerating, according to the New York Times.

There were strippers, alcohol and disorderly conduct at the men’s lacrosse team’s party. How anyone who wasn’t there could possibly think they know anything is beyond me. But that’s why we call them kids.

[Mr Smith, were you there?]

The adults at Duke are an entirely different matter.

“Any attention we got for the wristbands paled in comparison to having the media staked outside of our practice and the girls’ dorms,” Duke women’s lacrosse coach Kerstin Kimel told reporters after the team’s loss Friday. “Of watching your friends be arrested; watching your fellow students not support fellow students; watching professors not support students.”

She left out a few other possibilities, but we don’t need to go there.

[I wish I knew what Mr Smith was implying, but I have no idea.]

Then again, she’s working for an institution that allowed a bunch of kids to nearly run amok in a public venue with Duke’s name on their jerseys, bringing more unwanted attention to the deficiencies of a university deemed nearly perfect before a woman huffed and puffed and blew its house down by screaming “rape.”

[Ms Mangum screamed rape, but Duke University blew down its own house.]

Considering these latest signs of negligence, who knows what else is possible?

[I suspect there are many interesting revelations still to come]

[tags]Duke lacrosse nonrape[/tags]

Posted on December 29th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: culture