Let’s take a test. (Don’t worry, there’s only one question.)

What group of individuals at one of the country’s best universities…

…is extremely close-knit
…does well academically and has a 100 percent graduation rate
…is not generally known for racist or sexist behavior
…and has alumni known for their public service?

If you guessed the Duke lacrosse team, you would, apparently, be correct. That’s according to a report released by a Duke faculty panel commissioned by President Richard Brodhead.

Those results aren’t quite what you’d expect if your opinion of the Duke lacrosse team was shaped by newspaper writers such as Allan Gurganus* and David Brooks, who were quick to decry the team’s jock culture—not that they actually knew whereof they wrote.

The report does come to two predictable conclusions: alcohol is a big problem for these athletes, and on the Duke campus generally; and the Duke administration has an ambivalent relationship with alcohol, often letting its own policies on alcohol consumption go unenforced.
As a result, according to the Raleigh-Durham News & Observer, the team has a “pack” culture and an alarming record of alcohol-related misbehavior.

Meanwhile, two of the defense lawyers in the rape case have asked that D.A. Mike Nifong be removed from the case, claiming that he is more interested in politics than justice.

Mike Nifong responded by saying that he had not read the lawyers’ court filing. “I just don’t have as much time for reading fiction right now,” Nifong said.

Given Nifong’s apparently astounding incompetence, these lawyers should be careful what they’re asking for, lest they get it…..

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* “When the children of privilege feel vividly alive only while victimizing, even torturing, we must all ask why.”
—Allan Gurganus, New York Times, April 9, 2024