Only Race Matters: A Duke Woman Speaks About A Disturbing Aspect of the University’s Response to the Lacrosse Scandal

I am a woman who graduated with an English degree from Duke in the late 1990s. My all-time favorite course was Professor Laurie Shannon’s thought-provoking Shakespeare class. I was heartbroken to learn that Professor Shannon signed both the Group of 88’s “listening” ad and the Concerned Duke Faculty’s non-apology.

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I remember my English department having some unusual quirks when I was there, including a finalist in a search for department head who researched pornography and a prolific romance novelist. These quirks always seemed harmless and predictable eccentricities of academia. However, with many of the English Department’s members still “Concerned” and major publications shooting down it’s postmodern metanarratives, I’m now openly embarrassed.

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I love my alma matter, which, I’ll be honest, shows the most during basketball season. While at Duke, I dated a fellow student who I later married. We now have a young daughter. Watching my daughter play over my laptop as I write this, I can’t begin to express the extreme sadness I felt reading Shadee Malaklou in the Duke Chronicle say, “what's stupefying is why the women of Harvard, Yale and (presumably) Duke have chosen the traditional role of mother.”

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How depressing that someone would not only feel this way but take the time to express this sentiment to others in the pages of the student newspaper. I don’t suppose that Shadee--or the professors who have apparently validated her bizarre views--much care what I think. Not only do I now stay home to take care of my daughter, but I was in a “core four” sorority while at Duke. Shockingly, my sorority on occasion hired strippers and we even drank beer while we watched them. This now appears to be enough to be disowned by the University. However, last I checked I’m still getting solicitation requests for the Duke Annual Fund, so I’m going to go ahead and give my perspective anyway.

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When I first heard the rape allegations, I was appalled but mostly confused. The facts of the night, as suggested by D.A. Mike Nifong, didn’t seem logical. Moreover, I couldn’t believe that the lawyers would say their clients didn’t engage in any sexual activity instead of preserving a consent defense following the lead of Kobe Bryant. As the facts of the case have fallen apart and the obvious fraud has been exposed for what it is, more attention has been directed in recent weeks to Duke’s response as an institution.

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Looking back over the history of this hoax, it seems to me that women’s voices and perspectives are being overwhelmed and ignored. More importantly, the fact that women stood up early and often to denounce the hoax and support the principles of justice is conveniently being cast aside. When a woman is asked for her opinion on television, that woman is often not only uninformed but a caricature of an anti-men feminist. For example, recently, Wheelock College professor Gail Dines made a fool of herself on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” and in a shrill follow-up blog entry complaining about the appearance. Angry that she received less airtime than promised and that her fellow panelists were beneath her, Dines directs most of her ire towards the producers who told her that they only wanted to focus on racial issues and purposely did not want to discuss gender.

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While I greatly disagree with Dines on almost everything about both the world and the Duke lacrosse case, I must admit that she did stumble on an important point. Why is a national story of alleged sexual assault treated as a racial issue rather than a gender issue? Why did Duke treat it this way? Why does Duke continue to treat it this way? Do the answers to these questions give some insight into why when I visit the website of the Duke Women’s Center I am greeted by a picture of Shadee (choosing motherhood is “stupefying”) instead of the many heroic women who have fought for justice in the lacrosse case, starting with women’s lacrosse coach Kerstin Kimel (a successful athlete and herself a mother of two young children)?

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Bowen-Chambers-Woman as a Footnote Report

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If you are a woman, you likely know someone who has been sexually assaulted. I do. While many disagree about the “prevalence” of sexual violence and whether it is more common on college campuses than elsewhere, no one can deny its presence and its horror.

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Why then, with respect to the lacrosse case, weren’t women’s views consulted and actively sought when it appeared there was a sliver of a chance the allegations might have some merit? It seems to me that women have the most to lose if the University fosters this supposed “atmosphere that allows sexism, racism, and sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus” that the “Concerned Faculty” identified.

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It also seems to me that women have the most to lose if a dramatic rape allegation turns out to be transparently false. Who will believe future real victims? Given this, what is the explanation for not seeking out a woman for the committee that investigated the University’s response to the allegations?

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One might have thought that a scholar of sexual assault law and an expert in University polices with respect to campus incidents would have been a good choice. Instead, the University chose collegiate sports critic William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton University, and Julius Chambers, a reputable African American defender of affirmative action policies and former chancellor of North Carolina Central University. These choices clearly reflected the fact that the University viewed the allegations as involving (i) white athletes and (ii) African Americans.

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What about women?

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A footnote on the first page states that Bowen and Chambers “took the liberty” of adding a Dr. Ramdath, an African American female, to the committee, as an apparent afterthought. Shouldn’t the Women’s Center be screaming about what belatedly adding a woman to the committee and noting that in a footnote says about the University’s concerns? This appears particularly ironic given the statement in the Bowen-Chamber-Woman as a Footnote report that

“Any number of people with whom we spoke commented on how much better it would have been if a wider array of life histories and perspectives had been brought to bear on what were sensitive and highly charged issues. We agree, and we know that President Brodhead agrees.”

What does it say about Duke’s priorities and sensitivities that this statement would be made in a report issued by two men commenting about the University’s response to allegations of sexual assault? I think it says that even before the allegations were an obvious fraud (if there ever was such a time), Duke’s administration, faculty members, and the media have never been interested in gender issues and have instead been overly concerned with race and taking shots at universally evil “white males.” In the process, incredible insults to women have been overlooked and incredible instances of courage have been ignored. The following is a discussion of various instances demonstrating this disturbing pattern.
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Duke women's lacrosse players, from left, Katie Chrest, Caroline Cryer, Michelle Menser, Leigh Jester, and Carolyn Davis celebrate a goal earlier this season. MSNBC

The Duke Women’s Lacrosse Team

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Last spring, one of the only groups that stood up against a tirade of prejudices were the members of the Duke Women’s Lacrosse team, led by their courageous coach, Kerstin Kimel. While the rest of the world was condemning the Men’s Lacrosse team as guilty, Coach Kimel was actively supporting the students and her players' choice to show their support by wearing wristbands with the numbers of the indicted players. Rather than highlight the fortitude and commitment to the truth of these accomplished female athletes, the media rained criticism down in the most sexist and dismissive ways. Some examples:

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Duke Free-falling from Grace (Stephen A. Smith)

“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.”

Duke Women Not Innocent (Kevin Sweeney)

“And what lesson has the women's team taken? They apparently have learned that pack behavior is a good thing. They are speaking as one, and are proclaiming the entire men's team, as one, to be innocent. Team unity trumps all.”

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“By making such a public stand of unity before the facts come out, by saying so clearly that the accused is a liar, the women of Duke's lacrosse team won't make it any easier for other women to step forward. I can only hope that none of them will ever be in such a position -- where they may be a victim, want to step forward, but sense ultimately that it just isn't worth it.”

Duke Women Show Lack of Sensitivity (Jeff Schultz, quoting Katherine Redmond)

“These are stupid, spoiled little girls. It smacks of high school. Maybe one day when they’ll read about one of their friends who was raped. Then they’ll rethink this.” said Kathy Redmond (founder of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes).

Redmond goes on to say, “More than any other sport, there’s this mentality with women lacrosse players of, ‘We’re as tough as the men.’ It’s almost like a competition. It’s like they try to carry themselves with a masculine edge. They want to be looked at as being just as good as the men, yet they still look to the men for validation."

Coda: Bodies of Evidence (Karla Holloway)

“They were athletes themselves, as well as "true fans." In a moment that called on more action than I had will for, I wanted to write to them to ask if they might, instead, consider writing the word "justice" onto their gear, a word whose connotations run deeper than the team-inspired and morally slender protestations of loyalty that brought the ethic from the field of play onto the field of legal and cultural and gendered battle as well.”

Amazingly, in face of all of this unsupportable ridicule, Coach Kimel told reporters after the women lost in the semi-finals:

“Any attention we got for the wristbands paled in comparison to having the media staked outside of our practice and the girls' dorms. Of watching your friends be arrested; watching your fellow students not support fellow students; watching professors not support students." Comcast

Did Duke professors choose to support these female students dismissed as “little girls” in the press? Was calling collegiate women “little girls” a social disaster? Apparently not. Has anyone come forward now that the women’s lacrosse team was obviously correct to acknowledge their heroic courage and apologize for the response they received? Such an apology was glaringly missing from Stephen A. Smith’s almost mea culpa written in December.

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When I was in college people thought that Title IX and the rise of women’s athletics was important to produce women of the caliber of these lacrosse players and dispel patronizing attitudes that female students were “little girls” incapable of expressing reasoned opinions and taking positions on public issues. Where are those Title IX defenders now? Hasn’t the honorable conduct of the women’s lacrosse team proved their point? Why not say so?

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Rolling Stone’s “Sex and Scandal at Duke”

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Instead of highlighting the courage of the women’s lacrosse team, the media brought us Rolling Stone’s pop culture critique of Duke’s campus as half “The Devil Wears Prada” and half “Girls Gone Wild.” The transparently stupid article by Janet Reitman furthered the media firestorm that Duke was chock full of “drunk,” “horny” women whose lives consist of studying while on the treadmill and finding hot guys to hook up with. You see, it wasn’t intelligence, intuition, or courage that caused these women to support the men’s lacrosse team. It was, instead, the fact that they were sex crazed, stupid, and ignorant. (Someday, someone will have to explain to me how this qualifies as a “feminist” perspective.) Reitman completely exaggerated the Duke social scene by following several “core four” sorority girls who happen to support the lacrosse players and, therefore, according to Reitman, have subverted their feminist predecessors in order to emulate Britney Spears.

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Personally, I still don’t understand how “laxers,” who make up 0.01175% of Duke undergraduates could that big of an influence on the social scene. I think I remember one from my time at Duke and recall far more Duke women jokingly lusting after the assistant men’s basketball coach Quinn Snyder than any lacrosse player. That’s right, everybody, basketball, not lacrosse, is the sport that dominates the social scene on Duke’s campus. Reitman, however, writes about the lacrosse team:

“It’s something that frustrates and often baffles other young men, particularly those who’ve had girlfriends stolen by these guys.”

Okay, even if every lacrosse player stole at least one girl (an absurd suggestion), that makes only 47 frustrated men, hardly a social predicament.

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I agree with the excellent comment that was left at the Rolling Stone comments section by Duke Sorority Girl 04:

“This by no means constitutes a set of social norms as portrayed in the article. I attended Duke on financial aid and loans and thank the Lord that I had the chance to do so. To see it represented in the public spotlight in such a negative and inaccurate way is very painful and makes me wonder why so many people are going to such great lengths to portray the student body as foolish, rich, white, superficial, sexually promiscuous and shallowly insecure. I have tried not to take it personally but the attacks on duke students as a whole are so rampant and so untrue that I feel as though lies are being told in the national media about me and my classmates. I take that very personally.”

Did any faculty members express similar views? In fairness, women’s center director Donna Lisker penned a thoughtful article describing her contact with Janet Reitman and the deficiencies in the Rolling Stone piece.

Lisker wrote:

“I spent two hours with the Rolling Stone reporter when she was on campus. I agreed with her that some undergraduate women lead social lives that seem incompatible with their intelligence and ambition. We talked about why that happens, about how pleasing male peers becomes more important than staying true to one’s self. I talked about patriarchy, about effortless perfection, about the insidious nature of female socialization. I also told her – over and over and over again – that the social scene she was witnessing represented just one subculture at Duke, and that many Duke students would find it as unfamiliar as she did. Unfortunately, the reporter did not include that context in her article, which made it a one-sided piece, an incomplete and inaccurate portrayal of Duke.”

Reading this I wasn’t sure whether Lisker would assert that Duke Sorority Girl ’04 above and I live lives incompatible with our intelligence, but I appreciated the effort to more fully describe campus culture. Given Lisker’s comments about Reitman’s poorly researched, misleading article, shouldn’t there have been many other “concern faculty” members outraged at the cheap shots taken at female students and the gross irresponsibility of the press?

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DSED Slammed by Grant Farred and Hindered by Duke Administration

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Duke Students for Ethical Durham (DSED), a student group composed primarily of women, was a valiant group dedicated to helping Duke students register to vote in order to elect a district attorney who was actually fair and just. Its two spokespersons, juniors Emily Wygod and Christiane Regelbrugge, were beyond-their-years sharp when discussing their group on Fox’s “On the Record” with Greta Van Susteren. In addition, members of DSED bravely stood their ground with Mike Nifong by purposely not shaking hands with him.

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However, Professor Grant Farred (Group of 88 and Concerned Duke Faculty member) wrote to the Heard-Sun and belittled this activism. Farred criticized DSED’s efforts and stated:

“By transferring their registration from other places, by enfranchising themselves in Durham, these students’ only intention is to oust District Attorney Mike Nifong. This selective intervention amounts to nothing so much as the deliberate act of closing ranks against Durham. What Duke students becoming Durham citizens does is displace the problem of racism from the lacrosse team and the university to Durham’s political system.”

One might have thought that the problem with Durham’s political system was a corrupt and unethical District Attorney making a mockery of the justice system and one might have thought that faculty members would have applauded Duke women for becoming politically active in their community to respond to this problem. Even more disturbing is that administrators and security officials actually prevented DSED from distributing voter registration materials in a parking lot outside the homecoming football game Sept. 30.

This event disturbs me on many levels. Did the Duke administration dislike the eyesore of students expressing their right to vote? Or, did they not like that DSED might register voters who would vote against Mike Nifong? Maybe instead they just wanted to stop the image these commendable young women doing more on behalf of their fellow students than the administration and faculty combined.

Alex Rosenberg’s Interpretation of the “Listening Ad”

The Group of 88 have offered a variety of interesting and at times bizarre explanations for the “listening ad.” This past week, Professor Lee Baker mumbled on the O’Reilly factor, “We presumed innocence…At least I did.” I still find it bizarre that faculty members believe signing the ad looks better if they thought the players were innocent. Even more bizarre, however, are the sexist and nonsensical explanations from philosophy oracle Alex Rosenberg. Here, I will have to defer to the comments of Professor Michael Gustafson, who described Rosenberg’s statement the best.

Gustafson writes:

"Dr. Alex Rosenberg, for instance, apparently misread the ad. He signed it, according to...himself...in the New York Sun, because "...he was concerned with the prevalence of alcohol on campus and bothered by 'affluent kids violating the law to get exploited women to take their clothes off when they could get as much hookup as they wanted from rich and attractive Duke coeds.'' The ad does not speak to drinking, nor to Dr.
Rosenberg's apparent opinion of the sexual availability of Duke women. Dr. Rosenberg's statement does speak to Dr. Rosenberg, however."

I’m as baffled as Gustafson about Rosenberg’s answer. I’m also insulted as a former female student. Does he really see his female students as objects that provide as much sexual satisfaction as male students want? Perhaps Dr. Rosenberg should turn off “Animal House” (or something worse) and actually meet some Duke women.

Even if he was joking, I wonder if this professor has ever googled the word “coed.” The first site to appear is a porn site called “Coed Chicks” and, needless to say there are plenty of XXXs throughout the rest. Therefore, when this obvious insult is thrown down, where are the feminists and other faculty members running to the defense of their students?

We Want Apologies (Just Not For Women)

Apologies, retractions and explanations have certainly been demanded by the faculty for other reasons, race being the primary hot-button. One example is the immediate reprimand of Professor Baldwin, after he wrote an excellent guest column in The Chronicle and used the common phrase “tarred and feathered, ridden out of town on a rail” when he voiced his feelings toward faculty members who publicly denounced the lacrosse team.

The very next day, Women’s Studies Professor Robyn Wiegman wrote a letter to the editor reprimanding Baldwin’s use of the term “tarred and feathered” due to the fact that it’s the “language of lynching.” Not surprisingly, Wiegman did not give any facts or basis for her determination because it seems to have been formed in her own head. My own internet search failed to connect these terms, and wikipedia’s definition shows only colonial and frontier roots.

Perhaps Wiegman should spend more time thinking about how to help Duke women and less time inventing new ways to be racially sensitive. Unfortunately, I’m rather doubtful, as I see Wiegman has joined the Concerned Duke Faculty, after previously not signing the Group of 88 ‘Listening Ad.’ Perhaps she felt like she was missing out on something.

Women, You’re Just Not PC Enough To Praise

Regardless if these faculty members had the basis to ask for an apology, why do the slights against female students of Duke go unanswered? No professor wrote to support the Women’s Lacrosse team after they were vilified by the media. No faculty members sent letters to the editor of “Rolling Stone” to say that their depiction of Duke women was exaggerated and unfair. The Duke administration never apologized for their reprehensible actions to DSED (only sending noted truthteller John Burness to write a letter to the Chronicle claiming it was a misunderstanding). And no colleague confronted Professor Rosenberg for his insult of female students.

Even today, I find no articles or statements by Duke faculty members, including those “experts” in women’s issues, about the accomplishments and class shown by Duke female students during this ordeal. This makes me sad, as I am extremely proud to be associated by Duke affiliation with the Kerstin Kimels, Emily Wygods, Christiane Regelbrugges, and Kristin Butlers of the world. When people put “Duke” and “women” in a sentence, I want them to think of these heroes, not the dismissive insults and cartoonish views of Rolling Stone, Shadee Malaklou, Robyn Wiegman, and the rest of the English and Women’s Studies Departments.

Who do you think I want my daughter to grow up to be? Or is that a question only a “stupid, spoiled, little girl” would ask?

Meadow