Challenges between Professors, Student-Athletes & Media

[Water Pony]

Article from U. of Penn Student Paper: Alleged rape at Duke has been overblown by the media

The Duke University campus has become a stomping ground since allegations of a rape emerged several weeks ago. On one front are the media, which have spent the past few weeks "standing on campus ... until one tiny piece of news comes out. ... It doesn't change anything," Duke senior Christian Kunkel said.

Even though indictments were only filed on Monday, over the past few weeks the dominant media outlets have engaged in lazy journalism by slipping into predictable discussions of race in America.

Smaller -- and nastier -- media outlets have seized onto the lack of DNA evidence to smear the alleged rape victim as a race-baiting liar.

"The media is not tuned at all to what Duke is feeling. ... People on campus just want to know what happened," Kunkel said.

Unwilling to wait for the facts to emerge, the second wave of premature judgment has come from the academic world; academia's curious propensity for hyperventilating has been on full display since this scandal broke out.

At Duke, "some people are saying that some professors on campus were really quick to demonize the team, [and] that they are trying to get press for themselves," said Danny Willner, a University of North Carolina junior who spent a semester last year at Duke.

Indeed, even before Monday's sealed indictments, some at Duke had already made reckless outbursts in response to this case.

Houston Baker, a Duke English professor, demanded in an open letter that the panicked Duke administration do more to stop the "drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us" by expelling the entire lacrosse team and its coaches.

The uncertainty of the case did not stop Duke's Progressive Alliance, a student activist group, from distributing flyers imploring members of Duke's lacrosse team to "please come forward." To help interested parties find and "encourage" these team members, the poster featured the names and photos of as many lacrosse players as they could get before Duke pulled the head cuts from their Web site to protect the safety of the team members.

The common thread running through these irresponsible reactions and this lazy journalism is that they relentlessly emphasize the whiteness of the Duke lacrosse team and the blackness of the alleged rape victim. These gestures suggest that the vile depravity of the alleged rape is outweighed by the race of those involved and the airing of grievances about Durham's town-gown troubles.

"A lot of people get focused on her identity, and we kind of lose a little bit of how this is a crime against women," said Robert Korstad, a history professor at Duke.

"People are using this [issue] to advance their own agendas," Kunkel said. "A girl was probably raped. She should be the one getting the attention and the support."

This is indeed the wrong time for the media and academia to saddle this case with more emotional baggage than it needs. If Duke students are convicted of rape, they will be found guilty on the basis of their individual choices.

Given that academia is supposed to be the realm of balanced, patient inquiry, it is disheartening to watch the academic ideal spill blood on the soil of Durham. And I doubt that such a crisis would play out any better at Penn or at many other universities. There are many colleges that have tense relations with their surrounding environments, spoiled jocks and overzealous academic and community leaders. All it takes is a single spark before everyone is spinning a vile incident into a circus.

People "jump to incredible conclusions," Korstad said. "They have so little evidence in front of them and are trying to piece this together. If you don't know very much, it's hard to come by an educated opinion about it."

To the academics, activists, pundits and reporters who are writing about this case: Remember that the world is not always as clear as it seems from behind your computer screen. Without realizing it, you may be prejudging, overanalyzing and inciting.

As Duke Provost Peter Lange said in an e-mail responding to professor Baker, remedying this situation "will take less rhetoric and more hard work, less quick judgment and more reasoned intervention, less playing to the crowd [and more] entering the hearts and lives of those [whom] we wish to restore and heal."

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Eric Obenzinger is a junior history major from New York. Quaker Shaker appears on Wednesdays.