Duke Lacrosse--The University's Inept Blame Game

Yeah, this Duke lacrosse rape/no-rape thing is an unpleasant business, but great for local news and tabloid "news" shows like "A Current Affair," etc. I can't tell you who's in the wrong and who's in the right, but the principals on both sides sure are a seamy and quite plainly stupid bunch. You'd think they'd be smarter about their activities and actions, given their respective pasts, but then again, if they had any common sense, they wouldn't have gotten themselves into trouble way back when, either. Bad situations come out of nowhere, and you've got to be alert for them, and exit immediately when things go south.

But most intriguing was the bit I heard on the radio this morning, that a Really Special Commission ordered by the Duke president has determined that the Duke lacrosse team has a long history of irresponsible and unacceptable behavior. Whoa, no shit? Really? How about that.

So, in the spirit of university inquiry, let's deconstruct this.

Lacrosse is a varsity sport at Duke, and has been throughout the period of this Really Special Commission report. As such, this is not a club, not just a bunch of guys who just get together and play for the fun of it, for the parties, etc. This is a sport formally approved by the university, funded by the university, with a team consisting of officially enrolled students, a team that is answerable to a coach who is hired and paid by the university, under the larger auspices of the Athletic Department and ultimately the university as a whole. And monitored and run under the guidance of the NCAA, for that matter. The Duke lacross team is an official representative of the university, that is, an extension of the university itself.

But now the school is putting them down, hard. The report cited alcohol violations and petty theft, and there's probably a lot more. I'm sure they got rowdy from time to time. That's kind of the point of sports in general (the rowdiness, that is). The report apparently didn't specify details of these violations, or what actions the coach took to address them. Nor did it specify actions the Athletic Department took to spur the coach to action to address this apparently long record of misbehavior. Nor was there any mention of the university itself showing concern with the Athletic Department's lack of action because the coach wasn't doing the job he was hired and paid to do, namely look after the single team he was assigned to manage, coach, and lead. Yeah, the team members over the course of a number of years (how many years, well, that's not offered for consideration, apparently) got away with a lot, but no one took any action, at any level. You've got to wonder if anyone noticed. You have to figure that the coach was aware, and probably the athletic director, too. But did they tell anyone up the chain? Who knows. And was the NCAA aware, and did they take any action, or even recommend any action?

So Duke is bold enough to come out and say that their varsity lacrosse team, their official representative, consistently acted outside of the bounds of good taste and behavior and consideration for the larger public as well as outside of established Athletic Department and university rules and regulations, but no one in the entire chain of command ever really took notice, and more importantly took any action to put an end to this behavior? What idiot at Duke thought up this novel approach to address this crisis? What moron or group of morons running that school thinks that this is a good way to seize the legal and moral high ground in this situation? If I were a lawyer for either of the two ladies involved in this issue, I'd be writing thank-you letters to them this morning, telling them how happy I am that they've given me more than enough information to make it so much more easy to take them to court for recognizing an ongoing problem yet consistently failing to address it. And if I were a defense lawyer, I'd be mighty happy that Duke had given me more than enough evidence that the university had not only created, but had over the course of a number of years fostered a highly permissive environment in which bad behavior was noted but tolerated, where it was in fact unofficial, unstated team policy to be bad boys. What a fantastic windfall, for both sides.

It'll be mighty interesting to see where this all goes. I expect lots of out-of-court settlements in the next month or two.