“Highly Unacceptable Behavior”

The '60 Minutes' story came and went Sunday night. Many of us who have been following this case, and devoting hours a day to its dissection had unrealistic expectations. We expected Ed Bradley to explain to our families, friends, and work colleagues just exactly why this case has weighed so heavily on our hearts and minds. During the past seven months, we have found answers to numerous questions. We have been able to answer these questions with citations to motions, news reports, and other blogs. After all, it’s not that hard to explain why you can’t rape someone while you are standing in front of an ATM machine a mile away. Want to know when Nifong first mentioned condoms to downplay the DNA tests that were originally supposed to clear the innocent? It was March 30th in the News & Observer (16 days after the accuser stated otherwise to the staff at Duke Hospital and 8 days before she repeats the contradiction in her written police statement).

What we haven’t been able to explain, however, is why we care so much. For some reason, we expected '60 Minutes' to make others understand. After the show, when others greeted us with, “Okay, they’re innocent, but I still don’t understand why you care,” it was hard to take.

All those closely following the case here in the blogosphere have their reasons, and I’d like to explain mine. I graduated from Duke. I am proud of this fact. I had wonderful friends. I’ve been to their weddings in the Duke chapel. I’ve seen their newborn babies dressed in Duke blue. This is why it’s so painful to read this quote from Reade Seligmann:

"I chose Duke to be my home for four years. And to see your professors … go out and slander you and say these horrible, untrue things about you and to have your … administration just … cut us loose for, for, based on nothing. Duke took that stance that “We wouldn’t stand for this behavior.” They didn’t want to take a chance on standing up for the truth. I can’t imagine representing a school that didn’t want to represent me." CBS News 10/17/2006

The reason that this quote is painful is that for all my pride in Duke, I can’t give Reade Seligmann one reason why he should return when this is over. Every word he says above is true. As extensively documented on Professor KC Johnson’s Durham-in-Wonderland blog, Duke’s response to the lacrosse allegations has been appalling and absolutely shocking. Duke President Richard Brodhead scoffed at Ed Bradley’s question whether Duke rushed to judgment in this case. He defended Duke’s actions by stating that the lacrosse players had engaged in “highly unacceptable behavior.” His smirk in response to this question can only be compared to DA Nifong’s laugh at Reade Seligmann’s alibi in court back in May. To attempt to justify Duke’s conduct in this case by citing underage drinking, hiring an exotic dancer, and one argument (not involving the indicted players) using racial slurs reveals the tragic deficiency in Duke’s leadership—the complete inability to appreciate context and understand proportion.

To deflect criticism for rushing to judgment, Duke faculty and administrators have consistently pointed to three things that constitute this “highly unacceptable behavior”: (i) underage drinking; (ii) hiring strippers; and (iii) racial slurs. Duke often cites this as the “acknowledged conduct.” The first, underage drinking, is laughable. Yes, consuming alcohol under the age of 21 is unlawful. However, the faculty citing this behavior almost surely drank alcohol while in college, whether the drinking age was 18 or 21. The vast majority of students on campus drink alcohol at some time or another. Are all these students engaging in “highly unacceptable behavior”?

The criticism of hiring an exotic dancer is slightly more valid. However, it’s harder to take this claim seriously when Group of 88 signatory and leader of the witch hunt, Mark Anthony Neal writes in the July-August 2006 issue of Duke magazine:

“[t]he strip club is the new church. That raises all kinds of interesting possibilities around spirituality and black bodies, dealing with issues of spirituality outside traditional notions of what spirituality in a church is supposed to be….When we think about women who work in strip clubs, the key component there is that word "work." In some ways this is legitimate labor, and we need to be clear about that. And women make these decisions based on what kind of legitimate labor is in their best interest. While it's important that black women's sexuality not be exploited, at the same time, I don't want to get into the business of policing black women's sexuality, which is just as dangerous.” Duke Magazine

I guess that hiring an exotic dancer, however, is “highly unacceptable behavior,” and condemning this activity shouldn’t be confused with policing sexuality, which according to Neal is highly dangerous.

That leaves the racial slurs, which are clearly the most troubling aspect. As Reade Seligmann told Ed Bradley,

“If that comment was said, it's disgusting. And there's no way I can defend that. You know, that's a horrible thing for anyone to say. It's just, I couldn't even imagine saying it and, I'm not gonna be accountable for, you know, another person's, you know, unbelievably horrible remarks. I won't. I won't, you know, accept responsibility for that, 'cause I would never do it myself.”

More important, however, is the context for the use of racial slurs, as told by Kim Roberts. She acknowledged three important things during her interview. First, the racial slurs were limited to one exchange outside the house right before the dancers left. Second, Roberts herself admitted that she provoked the comments. Third, the exchange did not involve any of the three indicted players.

"I called him a little [expletive] white boy," she recalls laughing. "And how he couldn't get it on his own and had to pay for it. So, he was mad. And it ended with him callin' me the n-word. And it echoed, so you heard n….. once, and then you heard, n….., n….., n….. ."

Roberts’ comments don’t justify the response, but they at least go part of the way to explain it. The exchange is a stark contrast from a house full of lacrosse players verbally assaulting the dancers with racial slurs as soon as they began dancing, which is the image the News & Observer painted, Mike Nifong abused, and Duke faculty members echoed. Surely Duke is not relying on one heated exchange involving an unindicted player and Kim Roberts at the end of the evening to justify their response? Can any of those at Duke who made statements to the press alleging that the lacrosse players racially abused the dancers seriously maintain that this is what they understood the facts to be? Furthermore, as confirmed by Kim Roberts, the three accused "never used racial epithets." The bottom line is that all of the behavior of the lacrosse team can be described as regrettable, but none of it, save the use of the racial slurs, should be regarded as all that surprising or appalling. Duke’s behavior, on the other hand, continues to be shocking and raises significant questions.

As reported by KC Johnson, when police first started investigating the claims of the accuser, Duke actually told the lacrosse players (i) not to tell their parents and (ii) not to get lawyers. With one of the nation’s biggest media stories about to break and one of the most unethical District Attorneys about to frame three students, Duke’s response was to discourage consulting legal counsel. Was this “highly unacceptable behavior”?

When the allegations hit the press, the faculty rushed to judgment and began demanding immediate action before any facts were known. English Professor Houston Baker wrote an incredibly embarrassing letter that he made public, demanding the lacrosse team be immediately disbanded. He wrote:

“The lacrosse team - 15 of whom have faced misdemeanor charges for drunken misbehavior in the past three years - may well feel they can claim innocence and sport their disgraced jerseys on campus, safe under the cover of silent whiteness. But where is the black woman who their violence and raucous witness injured for life? Will she ever sleep well again? And when will the others assaulted by racist epithets while passing 610 Buchanan ever forget that dark moment brought on them by a group of drunken Duke boys? Young, white, violent, drunken men among us - implicitly boasted by our athletic directors and administrators - have injured lives.” Baker Letter

Never mind that there were no “others assaulted by racist epithets” and never mind that the captains gave uncounseled statements to police and the entire team submitted DNA samples, hardly hiding behind a “silent whiteness.” A search warrant was enough for Professor Baker to conclude the lacrosse players were violent and had injured a black woman for life. At a time when the District Attorney was fanning the flames of community outrage, Professor Baker sought out the media to pour his own gasoline on the fire. Was this “highly unacceptable behavior”?

Professor Baker joined 87 other professors to form the now infamous Group of 88 and take out a full page ad in the Duke student newspaper declaring “what happened to this woman” a “social disaster” and thanking protestors on campus who had distributed wanted posters of the lacrosse team and demonstrated with signs saying “get a conscience, not a lawyer” and “The DNA will talk, even if the cowards of men's lacrosse won't." The Group of 88 ad appeared during the height of the media frenzy, ironically after the DNA had already “talked” and the District Attorney had been left to order a faulty line-up to indict people anyway. Was the Group of 88 ad “highly unacceptable behavior”?

The faculty misconduct wasn’t limited to members of the Group of 88. Faculty members jumped at the opportunity to criticize the lacrosse players and even took it upon themselves to deliver their own justice. For example, John Walsh told the following story to the Chronicle in July.

Upset with the teacher's inability to empathize with his personal situation, Walsh recalled that he said, "Well, I'd just hoped you'd have some sympathy, it's not the easiest time in the world right now."

"Yeah, well if you guys really were innocent, I would feel sorry for you," he remembered the teacher telling him.

"I couldn't look the teacher in the eyes again," Walsh said. "I never want to see her again."

Living A Nightmare [The Chronicle]

Was this treatment of a student “highly unacceptable behavior”?

Perhaps the most horrifying public display has been from Professor Peter Wood. Wood hasn’t missed a chance to give negative quotes to the press about the lacrosse team. The New York Times, the News & Observer, The Independent, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker have all gotten pull quotes for Peter Wood attacking the lacrosse team, athletes, and Duke students. These comments have ranged from the petty to the unsubstantiated to the ridiculous. He started his media barrage with the claim that lacrosse players once missed class to attend practice. He stepped up his attacks in the New York Times by contrasting the lacrosse team with the football team, who in Wood’s description “are often rural white boys with baseball caps or hard-working black students who are proud to be at Duke.” Not content with this shameless stereotype, Wood went so far as to pose for a photo in front of the lacrosse field and offer his view that Duke students were “Cynical, arrogant, callous, dismissive—you could almost say openly hostile.” Not stopping with this unsubstantiated charge, Wood went a step further in the New Yorker and speculated that a student who made an offensive joke on an anonymous course evaluation was a lacrosse player. Wood’s evidence for this speculation was that there were 10 lacrosse players in his class of 65 students. Again, this bizarre obsession with determining the identity of anonymous commenters and the ludicrous notion of probability (1 out of 6.5 equals certainty) reminds one of only DA Nifong. Were Peter Wood’s shameless media-seeking comments, groundless speculations, and unsubstantiated insults “highly unacceptable behavior”?

What makes Wood’s behavior worse is that he actually was one of Reade Seligmann’s professors. What makes this horror even more depressing is that Wood wasn’t alone among Seligmann’s professors in making truly asinine comments. Seligmann also had Professor Alex Rosenberg for Introduction to Philosophy and Professor Orin Starn for Cultural Anthropology. Rosenberg signed the Group of 88 ad and brushed off questions about doing so by calling KC Johnson a crank. Starn has used the lacrosse incident to campaign against all athletics in general, going so far as to suggest Duke withdraw from all Division I competition. This crusade against sports drove Starn to misrepresent comments made by men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and accuse Coach K of not appreciating the racial aspect of the lacrosse incident. Is capitalizing on the malicious prosecution of a student to advance an agenda “highly unacceptable behavior”?

Finally, in an event that might wake up alumni to what’s going on at Duke, campus administrators and security officers forced students to stop distributing voter registration materials in a parking lot outside the homecoming football game. Not content to simply shut down the activities, administrators forced students to remove or turn inside out T-shirts that read only “Voice Your Choice.” The Chronicle

Was suppressing student voting activities in the name of public relations “highly unacceptable behavior”?

These questions linger and hang heavy over all alumni. For me, the disappointing behavior of the faculty and administration won’t cause me to stop raising my arm during chants of “Let’s Go Duke.” It is however, the reason my arm will continue to sport a blue “innocent” wristband. It is also the reason that my head will hang in shame until Duke manages to address the real “highly unacceptable behavior” in this affair.