I’ve had a little bit of fun with Ruth Sheehan in the past, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you in the direction of her News & Observer column from today. I’m not sure if it’d be worse if the allegations were untrue, but I do think it would be quite disturbing. That said, I think we all hope and pray that this woman really wasn’t assaulted, much less that she was assaulted by people that are part of our community—in particular, the possibility that I may have taught one of the assailants is almost too horrible to contemplate.

The catchphrase of Greg House is “everybody lies.” As a professor, I probably get lied to at least once a day; there’s the occasional whopper, like the student I had at Millsaps who fabricated a whole conversation with me to get out of a co-curricular commitment she made, but most are rather more mundane. The whoppers are rare, but they do happen. I really don’t know whether to hope this is one of those or not.

Tim Whitmire of the AP reports that the one of the responding officers to the Kroger 911 call found the alleged victim to be highly intoxicated:

A woman who claims she was raped by members of Duke University’s lacrosse team was described as “just passed-out drunk” by one of the first police officers to see her, according to a recording of radio traffic released Thursday.

The conversation between the officer and a police dispatcher took place about 1:30 a.m. March 14, about five minutes after a grocery store security guard called 911 to report a woman in the parking lot who would not get out of someone else’s car.

The officer gave the dispatcher the police code for an intoxicated person. When asked whether the woman needed medical help, the officer said: “She’s breathing and appears to be fine. She’s not in distress. She’s just passed out drunk.”

Meanwhile, different attorneys for different lacrosse players have reached different conclusions as to whether DA Mike Nifong will seek an indictment at the grand jury on Monday; the grand jury will also meet in two weeks, on May 1, the day before the Democratic primary which likely will decide the Durham County DA’s race. Speaking of the DA, some people actually want him to briefly come out of hiding to say something substantive about the case:

Outside of a forum at North Carolina Central University and a district attorney’s candidate forum Wednesday night, Nifong has not spoken publicly about the case. He has not granted a substantive interview in more than a week, even declining to clarify remarks he made at the N.C. Central forum that left Ekstrand and others confused about where the case stands.

For example, Nifong said at the forum “there was no identification of any member of that lacrosse team until last week.” But it wasn’t clear if he was referring to a positive identification made by the alleged victim, or the release of a court document that included an e-mail sent by a lacrosse player, who was identified in the document.

Later in the forum, Nifong told a questioner who asserted the victim had positively identified her three attackers that her information was wrong.

“I think everything the prosecution has said in this case had been unreliable,” Ekstrand said Thursday.

Finally, ABC 11 reports that grafitti was found near the NC Central Campus using “a racial slur” and the term “Duke #1.”

Silly me thought the media circus was gone—until I wandered over to the Bryan Center to mail some Easter cards and found four satellite trucks parked in the vistors’ parking lot, in addition to Dan Abrams and (I think) that ESPN guy whose name I haven’t learned yet (George something or other, I think). I hope Duke is charging them all $2/hour per parking slot, like we peons would have to pay, but somehow I doubt it.