Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?

Ostertag retires, world shrugs

Utah Jazz player Greg Ostertag has decided to call it quits after 11 seasons in the NBA. Since my only lasting impression of Ostertag is that his name always struck me as likely to be the German word for “slow, untalented white guy” I for one won’t be missing him. Matter of fact, I think today was the first time I realized he was still in the association this season.

At least we still have Darko and Kwame to kick around…

Seligmann indictment oddities

The latest from The New York Times adds to the confusion as to why Seligmann was one of the two players indicted:

At least one of the two players charged will be able to show an A.T.M. receipt and a record that he called a restaurant to order food and picked it up before the alleged assault, according to a defense lawyer involved in the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because the charged players were not clients.

Julian Mack, a lawyer for Mr. Seligmann until Monday, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Seligmann had an excellent alibi, which the district attorney had never asked about.

“The evidence will clearly show that there is no way he could have been at that place at that time,” Mr. Mack said. He declined to be more specific.

A court filing by the district attorney’s office on March 23 indicated that Mr. Seligmann was one of five players who investigators had been told were not at the party.

Has anyone seen this March 23 filing, presumably the one that Nifong used to get his order for the players to produce DNA?

Me, in transcript form

For those of you who missed my 15 minutes of fame, here’s a transcript from CNN. I’ve tried to reconstruct what I said in the audio gaps from the webcam to the best of my memory.

VELSHI: Now campus reaction to the Duke University rape investigation has been mixed. Students, faculty, surrounding community, all of them divided over who is at fault and what should be done. Our Internet reporter Abbi Tatton has been digging into this topic online, and she says it’s been a busy one.

Abbi, what is it looking like?

ABBI TATTON, CNN INTERNET REPORTER: Ali, absolutely. It’s staggering how much discussion, commentary this story is producing on local blogs, on national sports blogs, on message boards all over the place.

One local blogger is actually a Duke professor who has been blogging about this, usually blogs about political science. But his blog has all but turned over to the Duke investigation. He’s been following it. His name is Chris Lawrence. He is joining us from his home in Durham, North Carolina, via Webcam.

Chris, thanks for joining us.

CHRIS LAWRENCE, BLOG.LORDSUTCH.COM: You’re welcome.

TATTON: You’ve been calling this “Duke under siege” when you’ve been blogging about it. And just turn to the campus reaction first of all. You’ve been talking about rows of satellite trucks. How are the students dealing with all of this media attention?

LAWRENCE: I think for the first week it was kind of like [a novelty and people would] stand by and look at it. You know, it’s unusual, it’s disruptive. And I think by now, though, I think the students have really sort of almost tuned it out. I think they’ve gotten used to it. And, you know, they walk past reporters like there’s nothing much going on. So it’s kind of unusual.

But, you know, this past weekend, of course, we have had prospective students here and stuff. And they’re reacting for the first time as though they’re seeing for the first. So it’s kind of a weird mix between the regulars and the prospective students, I guess.

TATTON: And I was interested in how you’ve been dealing with it on your blog. You’ve actually posted a warning to people about people posting comments in the comments section to keep it to some standards. How has that come about?

LAWRENCE: Well, there was one person who I—you know, I don’t know who it was exactly, who posted the name of the accuser that he had found out from a news search based on the account of her 2002 arrest. And so I had to remove that comment and—or, remove the name from the comment, and post the notice that that was something I wasn’t willing to put up with [exposing the] accusers or the alleged attackers at this point to any sort of public ridicule.

TATTON: Ali, I know you have a lot of questions from the audience over there.

VELSHI: This is incredibly energetic, this conversation. The response is now part of that is because so many of our students are—so many of our audience members are students. Can I ask—you said you had a question. Stand up and tell us what is, where you are from and what your question is.

QUESTION: Hi, I’m Megan (ph) from Colorado. I was wondering if the case has hurt the amount of incoming freshmen to the school.

LAWRENCE: I know that [the university has sent out letters,] you know, letters of acceptance to people. I don’t know what the specific rate is of acceptance or anything like that. I mean, you know, the scuttlebutt is that it hasn’t had that much effect except perhaps on the lacrosse program.

I know that there has been some students who had promised to come to the lacrosse team that have since had been released from that obligation. But I don’t know how it’s been running as far as the general student body.

VELSHI: Chris, you know, we were just talking to Jason Carroll about how he covers this knowing all the passions that surround this case. You’re not a journalist. Do you come into it with some knowledge of all those passions around the case? And are you careful about how you represent it? Or do you have a position on this?

LAWRENCE: Well, you know, I guess, you know, yes, I guess I’m not formally a journalist or anything like that, you know, worked for my college paper. But that was a long time ago. But, I mean, I think that, you know, both the professional journalists and the bloggers that are interested in this case on both sides really want to find out the truth here and realize that—you know, I mean, as bloggers we’re probably a little bit less objective as perhaps journalists are trained to be or, you know, as…

VELSHI: Well, let’s bring Jason in. Let’s bring Jason in. Jason, talk to Chris about that. You know, one of the things about this case is you do a lot of complicated cases, but this one is really tricky because you’ve got to get your information from right there and the sources all have different things to say.

CARROLL: True. And basically, what you have to do with regards to that is just follow the facts and stick to the facts and just do the best you can to keep your personal opinions and thoughts out of the process.

I do want to bring up one point that Professor Lawrence made about some of the students and the students taking it in stride. And I wanted to ask him about this because I think some of the students at Duke have been very gracious, as well as at NCCU, North Carolina Central University, the university that the young woman attends.

But I’ve also run across a lot of anger, too, from both universities, especially at Duke, some riding by on their bikes saying, hey, go home, it’s time to go home now. It’s over. Get out of here. So I have run across some of that. And I’m just wondering what sort of frustration he’s experienced on the part of students there.

LAWRENCE: Well, I mean, certainly there’s that element. I think there’s a lot of students that at this time in the semester, they have final exams in a week-and-a-half or two weeks, and they’re senior, they’re trying to get their graduation arrangements in order, and all of these things that are really—and this is just one more thing that they don’t really need to worry about.

And so they kind of feel like it’s a distraction from what they’re trying to—what their [daily business] and so, you know, I think there’s kind of an undercurrent of that, particularly this week since the DNA evidence came out. There’s been a lot of [that like] you said.

As you were saying in the previous segment, you know, it’s like—you know, perhaps it should be over. And a lot of questions are, well, why isn’t it over…

VELSHI: Chris, we’ll leave it there. Abbi…

LAWRENCE: ... at least as far as the allegations?

VELSHI: Chris, thanks very much for that. Abbi, there’s just so much discussion about this. We didn’t get a chance to get to all of it, but I’m sure you’ll be covering a lot more of it in the days to come.

TATTON: Absolutely. And, Chris, thanks so much for joining us. Ali, back to you.

« All done!

Edens: where all the action is

Apparently, Durham Police have a fetish for searching Edens Quad:

Hours after charging two Duke University lacrosse players with rape, Durham police searched a dormitory room on the Duke campus for more evidence in the case.

Investigators executed a search warrant and searched a room at the Edens 2C Residence Hall. There was no immediate word on what police hoped to recover in the search.

Since Finnerty and Seligmann both live(d) in Edens (although it’s not clear if they live in building 2C, which is where Ryan McFadyen lived), it is possible that one of their rooms was the one that was searched, and the search would require a separate warrant from their arrest. On the other hand, maybe the cops just can’t find any other dorms and keep going back to Edens…

Elsewhere, WRAL has the arrest paperwork for Finnerty and Seligmann. Interestingly, both say they were ordered sealed on April 13th, last Thursday, before the grand jury met.

New Ron Moore Q&A

Ron Moore has a new Battlestar Galactica Q&A up at his blog, with a few teeny spoilerish things about Season 3 and the (to me, at least) quite fascinating story of how he washed out of Navy ROTC in college.

Moneta to world: read between the lines

Without federal regulations, what would we do? I hand over the mike to Duke’s own Larry Moneta:

Two Duke University students have been indicted by a grand jury investigating allegations of sexual assault against a Durham woman.

The university is prohibited under federal privacy regulations from releasing information regarding student disciplinary matters. (For more information about the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act—FERPA—see http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html.)

Historically, it has been the university’s practice to issue an interim suspension when a student is charged with a felony or when the student’s presence on the campus may create an unsafe situation.

Translation from Moneta-ese: Finnerty and Seligmann are suspended. But I didn’t tell you that, because if I had, I’d have violated FERPA, so I didn’t. Hopefully your head now hurts enough that you won’t sue me. Thank you; I now have to go back to my sole reason for living: honking off the residents of Trinity Park.

JBB: on the money

I didn’t read Jack Bauer’s Bidet yesterday, but it’s looking eerily prescient today:

Q: How do you tell the difference between one New England Establishment Pretty-Boy and another New England Establishment Pretty-Boy three weeks after you meet them?

A: You can’t.

JBB also takes a few other shots that are worth a laugh or two, although I doubt anyone over 30 or so will get the Oregon Trail references.

Your arrestees, including a familiar name

From the Duke Chronicle: the two players who were indicted are now identified:

Durham law enforcement officers arrested two lacrosse teammates early Tuesday morning in connection with allegations members of the team raped a woman at a March 13 party.

The two students, sophomores Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, each are charged with first degree forcible rape, first degree sexual offense and kidnapping, said Colonel George Naylor, director of the sheriff department’s detention facility.

Finnerty and Seligmann each have a bond of $400,000. If they do not make bond, their first appearance in court could be Tuesday. “There is a process going on,” Naylor said. ...

Finnerty is currently facing charges in Washington D.C. of simple assault. According to court records, Finnerty allegedly assaulted a Georgetown player after he called Finnerty gay in the early morning of Nov. 5, 2005. [this account is inaccurate; see below - ed]

Sucks to be them, I suppose…

I have some work I need to be doing the next few hours before teaching at 1:15, so don’t expect a lot of updates until this afternoon.

Update: The New York Times gives a different account of Finnerty’s 2005 arrest; Seligmann has been released on $400,000 bond, while Finnerty’s release is pending.

Update 2: Another high-quality witness identification, if this is to be believed:

Sources close to the investigation told CNN Tuesday that the defense will present evidence—including ATM receipts and a cab driver—that neither Seligmann, 20, nor Finnerty, 19, were at the team party at the time the alleged rape took place.

In her defense, I’m told all white people look alike…

Update 3: Via email from a reader, the officer’s statement from Finnerty’s November 5 arrest; the Chronicle excerpt above managed to butcher the whole account.

Here’s my post from when the Finnerty arrest first surfaced in the papers; for those of you keeping track of the time the IDs were made, the story surfaced on the 4th or 5th, around the time the alleged victim is said to have identified her attackers.

Alleva: Pressler was already on probation

Duke AD Joe Alleva and VP Tallman Trask already had the performance of ex-lacrosse coach Mike Pressler on their collective radar screens, according to Tuesday’s Herald-Sun:

A high-level review of the men’s lacrosse team’s disciplinary records last year prompted Duke’s athletics director to warn the coach his team was “under the microscope” and that players needed to improve their conduct, the director said Monday.

At the time, the team’s reputation nationally was for winning games. Today, the team stands disgraced, with two players indicted on still-undisclosed charges stemming from an alleged gang rape at a team party, the season terminated and the coach forced out of his job.

Although the team’s reputation for drinking and debauchery has drawn attention since the rape allegation last month, an explicit warning to Coach Mike Pressler about the team’s behavior has not been previously revealed.

Will Alleva be the next to go? Only the Magic 8 Ball (and Dick Brodhead) knows…

Tuesday, 18 April 2006