Happy Graduation to the Members of the Duke 2006 Lacrosse Team

Today is Graduation Day for Duke University. For those members of the 2006 Duke Lacrosse Team who were freshmen it means the end of a long journey.

Our congratulations to the Graduates and their Families. You deserve this day!

The Duke Chronicle did a retrospective of the Class of 2009. Sally Fogarty, whom I believe is a Lacrosse Mom to two Lacrosse players and Duke Graduate herself, had this comment.

Sally Fogarty
posted 5/08/09 @ 2:35 PM EST

There are members of the mens'lacrosse team who were freshmen four years ago and now graduating seniors. For them, the "Duke lacrosse scandal" brought much more to the forefront than "town gown relations and campus culture." As freshmen,their Coach was fired; their season cancelled; their complete support system dismantled. They had to leave campus every weekend because of threats of drive by shootings and the threats of the Black Panthers. They were harassed by fellow students and humiliated by professors.Posters with their pictures hung all over campus accusing them as rapists or those who supported rapists. Other schools which had heavily recruited them would not reconsider them because they were "radioactive." They had to endure the constant fear that they might be the next one arrested while they suffered tremendously for their friends and teammates, Colin and Reade, and for their coach whom they loved and respected, Mike Pressler.

Critics charge that this was "just one example of an off campus social scene that had spiralled out of control." What about a dishonest, corrupt prosecutor who spiralled out of control and an administration that did nothing to help and support innocent students?

These former freshmen who are now seniors at the very least deserve a line in your article that states that there was no rape; there should have been no scandal; and that the whole thing was handled horrendously.

For all the student athletes and their families who endured this and still are dealing with the aftermath, it was an excruciatingly anxious time when those in the midst lost all faith in truth and justice and authority. It was impossible to fathom that the administration of the university that they had so carefully chosen over many others didn't care enough about them to take even the most obvious and basic measures to learn the truth. The truth did not matter and the truth was unacceptable because the truth did not meet the misguided agenda of political correction.


Addendum: John-In-Carolina has a great post up about the Chronicle's Journalism

http://johninnorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2009/05/dukes-chronicle-gets-journalism-lesson.html