It wasn't until Tuesday morning that two members of the men's lacrosse team at Duke were arrested and charged in the ongoing rape case in Durham, N.C., involving a house party and a hired stripper. The two student-athletes are now accused rapists and kidnappers, and according to the district attorney, a third will soon be charged.
Jumping to conclusions seems to be a pattern in cases that involve athletes, such as the Kobe Bryant case, but that just doesn't make sense to me.
The judicial system was created for a reason and the public should wait for a judgment before deciding how to react.
Until a gowned judicial officer smacks his or her gavel and declares this case closed, I'm just going to be suspicious of everyone-the players, who are known on campus for their partying ways and their overt raucousness; and the alleged victim, who took her clothes off at a party for money and was found passed-out drunk in a stranger's car at a nearby grocery store.
Duke University, however, has decided to cancel the team's season and allowed its head coach to resign.
Twelve days after the allegations were first brought to the police's attention, Duke said that the team, which made it to last year's championship game, will not be taking the field for the rest of the season. Some ridiculed the school for not taking actions earlier but, according to the Duke Athletics website, the captains of the team proposed the suspension of the season until DNA results came back. Those results did come back and none of the 46 samples taken matched the DNA from the alleged victim.
But before the results could even come back, Director of Athletics Joe Alleva decided to take it a step further and cancel the team's season.
Duke's President Richard H. Brodhead said in a press conference that the decision to suspend the season was made "based on facts team members acknowledged about their March 13 party. A majority of the team members attended the party, which included underage drinking and the hiring of private party dancers."
Let's be real here. Underage drinking happens on college campuses. House parties also happen. And I assume that occasionally, strippers are hired for said parties. But, as NCAA student-athletes, expectations are higher and the members of the team agree to a code of conduct. However, I would like to see where it is said that breaking this code of conduct can lead to the culmination of a season, especially when it has be noted that the entire team was not present at the party.
Duke buckled to outside pressures and did what it felt it had to do, not necessarily what it should have done. If Duke is genuine about the cancellation being due to the underage drinking and a stripper, the termination of an athletic team's schedule is over the top.
It seems as if the end of the season came once the allegations were widespread in the public eye and the university faced scrutiny. If so, Duke should have waited until there was more information available to them regarding which players were involved in the incident and suspended those individuals. Why penalize an entire team for the actions a few?
On ESPN.com, an article regarding the case features a picture of a poster that was spread throughout Duke's campus. It featured 43 of the 46 white members of the lacrosse team with the bold heading "PLEASE COME FORWARD." Unfortunately for the poster's creators, the university took down the other three individuals' pictures before they could be added to the collage of photographs.
I don't understand why it was necessary to try to depict the entire team on this poster and accuse them in the court of public scrutiny. The woman claims that three men raped her, therefore there were at least 40 innocent men playing literal poster boys to a rape case.
In reality, every member of the Duke men's lacrosse team is innocent right now and it will probably be a month before that changes, if it ever does. I think it's time people realize that.
