Duke Lacrosse Hits Back

38 unindicted players on the now-infamous 2006 Duke University lacrosse team are suing the university, and I am thrilled.  In announcing the suit, lead attorney Chuck Cooper said that the “lawsuit is born out of Duke and Durham’s sustained wrongdoing and callous conduct against the players.”  That’s putting it mildly, which is, I suppose, how things have to be put when you’re an attorney announcing a lawsuit against a university like Duke.  More appropriate wording might be to say that the lawsuit is born out of Duke and Durham’s ignorant, stupid, and dangerous enabling, and even prosecution, of radical leftist thought against young men who were guilty of nothing more than being white males.  Alas, I didn’t get to draw up the paperwork…

The three young men who were indicted are suing the despicable former prosecutor Mike Nifong, the city of Durham, and the police detectives who were involved in the case.  To that end, all decent people can only hope that Nifong, the detectives, and Durham city employees are all driven into homelessness as a result of that litigation.  The young men and their families apparently reached a settlement with the university last year, but it clearly was not for enough money; had it been, the school would be in receivership right now.

Actually, my target in this piece is not Mike Nifong, who, if he had done to my son what he did to Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Reade Seligmann, would have a lot more to worry about than disbarment or declaring bankruptcy, nor is it the accusers, who are barely worthy of discussion at all.  Instead, it is Duke University and a culture of liberalism and insane political correctness that has been allowed, for far too long, to take root and flourish in vile ways at Duke and at campuses all across the country.

Put simply, Duke University…the administrators, the teaching staff…should be made to pay as much as possible for their recklessness, as well as made to serve as an example of what can and should happen when campus liberalism and politically-correct zealotry is allowed to become dangerous to the young people who attend school.   

When I was a young man in pursuit of my BA degree, I split my time between two universities.  My first two years were spent at Boston University, and my second two years were spent at Stetson University.  At both schools I had teachers who exhibited some overt expressions of personal liberal thought in the classroom, but in neither case was it anything I couldn’t block out with relative ease.  In no case were the expressions of such magnitude that the moments of leftist ideological expression trumped the inherent value of the subjects being taught.  Upon reflection, I now realize I was lucky; for too long, America’s children have had instructor-espoused radical liberal thought crammed down their throats, and it is frequently at such a volume that it becomes impossible to divorce such messages from the legitimate classroom instruction on which they’re piggybacked. 

Campuses will always be replete with irresponsible loudmouths like Karla Holloway and Houston Baker, two of the faculty members (Baker is now at Vanderbilt) who signed the now-famous “ad” in the Duke Chronicle that, for all intents and purposes, encouraged the lynching (figuratively, at least) of the lacrosse team before the investigation, such as it was, had barely begun.  It is, therefore, incumbent upon the universities…including the trustees, who, at Duke, seemed to be shamefully absent throughout all of this…to maintain order and ensure that a semblance of common sense permeates their campuses.

College has always been the home of an often-confusing juxtaposition of personal life stages – it is the quintessential middle ground in which young people leave home as kids, spend some time as both kids and adults, and emerge simply as adults.  The lines that divide each of those changing maturity stages are impossible to discern precisely, so it’s not out of the realm of expectation that young people who are more kids than adults should find themselves dealing at times with situations normally reserved for the exclusively-adult world.  That said, under what circumstances should our college-attending kids justifiably find themselves to be the targets of mob justice orchestrated and supported by the very faculty and staff that students expect to regard as mentors and sources of guidance at their home away from home? 

Responding to the suit filed by the unindicted players, Pamela Bernard, Duke’s vice president and general counsel, said that “we have not yet seen the lawsuit, but if these plaintiffs have a complaint, it is with Mr. Nifong.  Their legal strategy – attacking Duke – is misdirected and without merit.”  Wrong, Ms. Bernard.  While it may be fair to say that all of the players…especially the three indicted…have a highly-legitimate claim against Mr. Nifong, the behavior displayed by the university at its own behest…which included canceling the team’s season and doing nothing while the team members were openly abused and harassed…was way out of bounds and entirely its own responsibility.

To the wronged members of the Duke lacrosse team, I say, “Go for it.”  Go get ‘em; get every last person who even indirectly allowed the events related to this mess to occur (I haven’t heard about any suits filed against any of the 88 faculty members who signed the aforementioned open letter, but any such considered suits enjoy my heartiest endorsement).  Please excise as many pounds of flesh as you can…and maybe, just maybe…other schools and their associated communities will be much less inclined to stand by idly when the forces of campus idiocy conspire to compel dangerous behavior against students, particularly students who are guilty of nothing besides being born a race and gender that, at least for now, seems incapable of receiving even a modicum of acceptance from the liberal intelligentsia.

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Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Contributing Editor - www.ChristianMoney.com