One of the first calls that Duke University’s president made after learning about an alleged rape by members of the men’s lacrosse team was to the chancellor of North Carolina Central University, on the other side of town.
President Richard Brodhead, a 19 Century American literature expert in just his second year at the school, was feeling his way in a budding crisis. He hoped to head off racial tensions by reaching out to the historically black public university where the alleged rape victim–a 27-year-old stripper and mother of two–is a student.
But more than that, Brodhead was beginning an examination by Duke of strains in its relationship with the world beyond its lush campus.
The highly touted university, proud of its reputation for producing scholar athletes in more than name only, has had to confront the fact that some of its players are hardly national role models. In Durham, the scandal has exposed that while Duke has made strides from the years when it was nicknamed the “The Plantation,” it is less than a perfect neighbor.
Durham City Council member Eugene Brown said there had long been signals, if Duke cared to look, that lacrosse team members’ behavior had crossed a line.
“There is an arrogance and an entitlement,” Brown said. “They see themselves as cool cats and our neighborhood as their sandbox.”
History of legal problems
The university does not dispute local published reports that nearly a third of the team’s 47 lacrosse players have been charged with minor offenses in the past few years, most related to alcohol or rowdiness. Athletics Director Joe Alleva said at a March 28 news conference that team members are “wonderful young men. They are young men, and sometimes young men make bad decisions, bad judgments.”
One of the captains told authorities he used an alias to hire the woman, along with another exotic dancer, to perform at a party, according to court records. The woman told police she was pulled into a bathroom in the early hours of March 14 and raped by three men for 30 minutes.
Medical records and interviews “revealed the victim had signs, symptoms and injuries consistent with being raped and sexually assaulted,” said a search warrant application unsealed recently.
No charges have been filed and authorities continue to investigate. Duke announced last week that it was canceling the rest of the team’s season after the disclosure that a team member had sent an e-mail after the party saying he wanted to bring in more exotic dancers, kill them and strip their skin off.
In the past three weeks, Duke has been caught between asserting the legal rights of team members — who have proclaimed their innocence–while assuring Durham and North Carolina Central officials it is not coddling players. The balancing act hasn’t been easy.
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In Durham, “I think the sense of the community is they want some answers probably faster than is happening now,” said Mayor William Bell.
That’s also the sense among many students at North Carolina Central, a 10-minute drive from Duke.
The campus is crisscrossed by busy streets and feels more attached to Durham than does Duke. North Carolina Central also is more rooted to the area demographically. Eighty-nine percent of its students are from the state and pay $8,152 a year for tuition, fees and housing, according to U.S. News and World Report.
By contrast, 85 percent of Duke’s students come from outside North Carolina, and they pay yearly tuition and housing costs of $41,240.
Several NCCU students said the alleged victim is typical of many people enrolled there because of her age–it has a lot of “non-traditional” students–and because she has a job.
NCCU senior Maya Jackson said she hopes the woman’s claims aren’t denigrated because she is a stripper.
“From my perspective, women of all races, particularly if you’re a single parent, do what they have to do to put themselves through school,” Jackson said. “The majority of the students at this university work.”
NCCU students, as well as Durham’s mayor, expressed frustration that they knew almost nothing about the incident until about two weeks after it happened.
An appeal for calm
NCCU Chancellor James Ammons has appealed for calm. “We do not want anyone from the NCCU family to seek retribution or take matters into their own hands,” Ammons said in a message to students.
Duke’s campus has been inundated with rumors that its students are targets. On March 31, Duke officials alerted students to a rumor of a planned “drive-by shooting” of a house near where the alleged rape occurred but emphasized there was no reliable information.
Ammons and Bell were among a half-dozen black city leaders invited by Brodhead to a private meeting at Duke after the rape allegation. Among the issues discussed, the mayor said, were whether student athletes get special privileges. “We talked about some of the kids being in cocoons in the communities where they come from, and then they come to Duke and they’re still in cocoons.”
Bell said the city’s relationship with Duke, its largest employer, has changed markedly over the years. “I don’t mind saying that people in the ’60s and early ’70s referred to Duke as `The Plantation,”‘ he said.
Today, Bell said the university sends students as mentors to city schools, helps raise money to improve neighborhoods and is contributing $5.5 million toward a planned $32 million performing arts center in the city.
Duke history professor Peter Wood, who played lacrosse at Harvard, said he considers it one of his challenges to entice students to explore beyond their own campus and cliques.
“We’re all wrestling now with whether they had more than just team closeness, but rather were a unit gone bad,” Wood said. “And if that does happen–whether it’s a fraternity or an Army platoon–is it a few bad apples or something else?”
Several university officials declined comment.
Wood said there is a student chant at men’s basketball games at Cameron Indoor Stadium that could apply to the lacrosse team members’ behavior.
“When Duke is losing, the students will chant `Not in my house!’ To me, this is the chant we should use now–`Not in my house!”‘