An interesting passage from this week’s Newsweek article on the case:

Two sources close to the team, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that the e-mail was a reference to a movie called “American Psycho.” In the movie, which the sources described as a cult favorite that had been viewed by a number of players on the team, a Wall Street banker goes crazy and kills several women, though possibly only in his dreams. After seeing the e-mail, sent on McFadyen’s e-mail account, one of the team members remarked, “I’ll bring the Phil Collins music,” the sources said. In “American Psycho,” the killer delivers a tribute to the music of pop singer Collins as he cavorts with intended victims.

The sources suggested that the e-mail was intended as an ironic joke. If so, that may say something about the humor of Duke lacrosse players. College students, and not just athletes, can be astonishingly raunchy and degraded in their recreational behavior. Interestingly, McFadyen was seen at a Take Back the Night rally held by Duke students protesting sexual violence and the alleged rape itself two weeks after the incident.

Advantage, SN.

Sunday’s Herald-Sun reports that attorneys for players accused in the Duke lacrosse rape case have photos taken at the party that contradict the victim’s account of events:

The photos show the woman attempting to get back inside the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. where the attack allegedly occurred on the night of March 13–14, said attorney Bill Thomas, who represents one of the lacrosse players.

“She had a big smile on her face,” Thomas said.

Then the woman fell down at the back door of the house and lay on the ground “for quite some time” as if she were intoxicated or asleep, Thomas added.

In addition, the time-stamped photos indicate the woman was severely bruised on her legs and face, and had cuts on her legs, knees and feet when she arrived at the home—and before the rape allegedly occurred—Thomas said.

One wonders if the photos siezed by the police in their two searches are consistent with—or contradict—these. Without some serious forensic investigation of the source media, forging the timestamps on pictures to make them look like they were taken at a time other than when they actually were is almost trivial. And even if the woman did arrive at the party with visible bruising and cuts, that doesn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t raped at the party.

Another story looks at the trial-by-media atmosphere surrounding the case.

At the Herald-Sun’s competitor, in the silence of Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong, the News & Observer tries its hand at a bit of jury tampering of its own:

But taken as a body of work, the charges track the noisy passage of a championship lacrosse team with a reputation for a swaggering sense of entitlement and privilege. They underscore the hard-drinking image of the Duke lacrosse team—which some residents say is a super-sized version of the university’s elitist, party-hearty ethos.

“There is a culture at Duke of an entitlement to be drunk in the evenings and on the weekends,” said Robert Panoff, a former Notre Dame club lacrosse player who has lived for more than a decade in Trinity Park, the neighborhood on the edge of Duke’s east campus where the lacrosse team captains lived.

“That’s the attitude that pervades the Duke campus, and it’s not just the lacrosse team,” said Panoff, founder and executive director of a nonprofit research and education organization. “There is a particular swagger at Duke. Is there a particular machismo and variation of that swagger on the lacrosse team? Absolutely.”

Panoff is quick to point out that lacrosse is not a monolithic culture. But for other Durham residents, the lacrosse imbroglio has raised racial tensions.

Although it’s not a huge deal at this point, WRAL has confirmed defense claims that the woman responsible for the first 911 call (allegedly from passersby complaining about people at the house at 610 Buchanan using the “n-word” in reference to them) is the same woman identified as “Kim” heard in the background of the second 911 call from the Kroger security guard. WRAL also indicates that police have interviewed “Kim,” but no specifics from the interview have been divulged, although presumably the timeline of events in the two search warrants are based on the accounts of Kim and the alleged victim.

This clarifies one question I received today from a reader, who wondered why the police or DA had not made a specific appeal for the first 911 caller to come forward, even though having an additional eyewitness to the party would have been helpful.

It also raises a second question that’s been swirling around in my head. This account, like all others, says she “only met the victim that night at 610 North Buchanan.” They worked for separate agencies, and presumably didn’t know that the other was going to be there. Yet both women left in “Kim’s” car—this seems indisputable; in fact, it’s about the only thing everyone agrees on besides the existence of the party. How did the victim get to 610 North Buchanan at 11:30 pm on a Tuesday night? DATA? Taxi? Did she drive herself, or get a ride? The warrants are of no help; neither lists “car keys” as an item to be located, and while the first warrant included a “purse” as an item to be searched for, none was located.

Just another of those little puzzle pieces that’s bothering me… and it’s probably insignificant.

The boss just suggested a new tagline for the blog: “All lacrosse dicks, all the time.” I’ve got to admit, it’s pretty catchy.

I’m hoping, though, that I’ll soon be able to return to sane, normal stuff like mocking Chronicle articles on freshman student dining and inane student op-eds. Somehow, though, I suspect that Mike Nifong won’t let me off the hook that easily.

Boston Cote today proves that you can get a Duke education and turn out to be more intelligent than at least one of the college’s tenured faculty members:

On MSNBC, Rita Cosby pressed [professor of English and African-American Studies Houston] Baker for a practical solution in begging the question “what should be done?” Given his chance to finally say something constructive, Baker simply replied that we need “a restoration of confidence” in our institution.

I’m sorry, but that is not a practical solution. That’s not even an appropriate response to the question at hand. A “restoration of confidence” is not an action that “should be done.” A “restoration of confidence” is a consequence of what can be done. And unlike Brodhead, nowhere in his open letter or in his many media appearances did Baker offer a sensible proposal for how the University can help restore confidence in its intellectual or academic mission without resorting to the eradication of athletic programs.

Individuals and groups that feel slighted by the University’s moderate response to the allegations ought to be more proactive in their criticisms. It is shamelessly insufficient to claim: “The University has not done enough! Enough steps have not been taken!” Protesters ought to be drafting recommendations-not asking pointless rhetorical questions and answering them with more pointless rhetorical questions. Because frankly: You. Aren’t. Helping.

The rest of today’s Chronicle coverage is pretty meh; go and read it if you like, I don’t care. In big media, the situation is worse; the Herald-Sun at least is continuing to cover the story, but a look at the front page of the News & Observer website would leave you wondering if there were anything going on at Duke at all.

Well, well, well—it turns out that Durham’s going to have to shoulder at least some of the blame for the “out of control” student population in the neighborhoods around East; most egregious paragraph in bold:

[Council member Thomas] Stith’s point about a crackdown addressed neighborhood complaints that lax [not lacrosse – ed.] code enforcement by the city has contributed to a party atmosphere on the edge of campus.

In addition to police, who deal with overt disturbances of the peace, the job of enforcing Durham’s regulations belongs to the City/County Planning Department and the city Department of Housing and Community Development. The planning office handles zoning matters, while the housing department probes violations of Durham’s minimum housing code.

City/County Planning Director Frank Duke said Thursday that his department hadn’t received or investigated any complaints about 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in the past four years, and had handled only two complaints targeting houses anywhere on North Buchanan Boulevard in that time.

Both those complaints targeted homes on the 700 block. One alleged that a house had too many occupants, but was dismissed because the landlord proved he was entitled to an exception because the practice was entrenched long before the city established a maximum number of occupants, Duke said.

The other alleged that Duke students living in a house had posted commercial beer signs on the building. Inspectors upheld the complaint and made the students remove the signs, Duke said.

A similar accounting was not forthcoming Thursday from the housing department.

Its director, Mike Barros, said he’d forwarded an inquiry from The Herald-Sun e-mailed to him on Tuesday to his assistant director, Constance Stancil, and that she was looking into the matter.

So, we have private property owners and leaseholders of legal contract age, and yet the university gets the blame for the rowdy behavior that goes on outside its jurisdiction. A pox on all my neighbors, student and Townie alike.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the white, upper-class “preppy” origins of the Duke lacrosse athletes—heck, I’ve contributed somewhat to it myself—but I think there’s also an “athlete’s privilege.” People who excel at things can get away with things that the mediocre cannot—I know in my high school days I got away with a lot of stuff because I was smarter than the average student, and a similar (but magnified) privilege works for athletes. Allen Iverson would never have been allowed to set foot on Georgetown’s campus—they’d have called security on his ass, and rightly so given his criminal history—if he couldn’t dunk a basketball. Shelden Williams faced rape allegations before he came to Duke—you think he’d be here if he wasn’t an athlete? This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to athletes—Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and George Bush all got away with stuff because of political ties or family clout—but I dare say it’s more prevalent among athletes than anyone else.

Anyway, I found this related post in Google’s blog search and thought it was worth singling out.

Laura Collins of Survival Theory links a WRAL story that quotes Joe Cheshire, an attorney for Dave Evans, one of the Duke men’s lacrosse team captains, giving the partygoers’ side of the story:

Cheshire… said members of the highly ranked lacrosse team hired two dancers for a party on March 13 and paid the women $800 for their services, but that they did not provide the services they promised.

“These two girls were paid a tremendous amount of money to dance for two hours,” Cheshire said. “We can show, and will show if we have to, that they danced for only three minutes and decided to take all that money with them.”

The alleged victim told police she became fearful that night when the players became aggressive, and that is why she left. She told investigators that the men convinced her and the other dancer to go back inside the house, and that was when she was assaulted.

Cheshire said the men at the party were frustrated and angry, and points to an e-mail message recovered from [Ryan McFadyen]’s computer that was contained in a search warrant released Wednesday.

The message, Cheshire felt, was written out of frustration for an evening that did not live up to expectations. The e-mail, he said, shows nothing more.

“Some of the boys felt ripped off and angry,” Cheshire said. “And so they were angry. Were the words spoken inappropriate? Yes. Did any rape happen? No.”

Police also took other e-mails that also talked about the party, but not in an offensive manner, Cheshire said.

Cheshire also says ”[w]e’re absolutely positive that the [first 911] caller was not the accuser, but the other young lady there.”

Collins says:

So the attorney says that the woman danced for three minutes, took the $800, and lied and said she was raped. I could see someone claiming they were raped so they wouldn’t have to give up the money. Then again I can see it being easier to just take the money and go. If the men told the police that she stole their money, she could just say no. She could have just hidden it. Claiming rape when no rape occurred is a crime. If she’s lying she’s facing jail time. Wouldn’t you think any woman would know that? She would also have to consider all the publicity and the pain of having to go to court.

Damn peculiar. The “three minutes” claim doesn’t square with the public timeline of the case, although it’s more plausible if we buy that the “nosy neighbor” is imputing times from media accounts (primarily the 911 call times) rather than a reliable timekeeper. If we buy Cheshire’s timeline, and ignore the neighbor, we have something like this for March 13th/14th; times in bold are established by police:

• 11:30: women show up at house. (This may be the booking time, in which case we could treat it as more-or-less known.)
• 11:35ish: women start dancing, quickly get pissed off (broomstick?), and stop.
• 11:38ish: women leave; one is sweet-talked into returning into house.
• 11:38–12:08ish: woman 1 is allegedly raped, woman 2 cools heels in car.
• 12:08ish: woman 1 leaves, one player yells cotton shirt comment, women leave
• 12:10ish: players skedaddle from house (Player emails start soon?)
• 12:53: first 911 call from mystery woman, probably woman 1
• 12:55: police show up at house, find evidence of party, nobody around
• 1:06: police depart
• 1:22: second 911 call from Kroger security guard on Hillsborough Rd
• 1:58: Ryan McFadyen sends sick, depraved email from dorm room on campus

That leaves us somewhere from 45 to 75 minutes roughly unaccounted for. On the other hand, it’s more plausible than the women dancing for an additional 45 minutes and then deciding that the crowd is too rowdy. Still, I don’t buy this timeline; the women had to be there longer, or had to show up later, or something—McFadyen’s email is too irrational to have been sent over two hours after the end of the party; I’d think he’d have calmed down by then, although maybe meatheads remain angry longer than most people.

WRAL also reports that the alleged victim has a criminal record of her own that’s more substantial than previously revealed:

New information about the victim has been divulged, concerning charges arising from an incident that occurred several years ago. According to a 2002 police report, the woman, currently a 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University, gave a taxi driver a lap dance at a Durham strip club. Subsequently, according to the report, she stole the man’s car and led deputies on a high-speed chase that ended in Wake County.

Apparently, the deputy thought the chase was over when the woman turned down a dead-end road near Brier Creek, but instead she tried to run over him, according to the police report.

Additional information notes that her blood-alcohol level registered at more than twice the legal limit. ...

[Her former attorney Woody] Vann also said that the allegations that that his former client was trying to hit the sheriff’s deputy were in error, and that she was merely trying to turn around. The case was resolved when she admitted she made a mistake, paid restitution and served probation and some jail time.

This revelation doesn’t exactly square with the News & Observer’s front-page interview from March 25th with the alleged victim, in which it is strongly implied that she had only worked in the adult entertainment business for two months.

Partially inspired by UD’s post that notes Mr. McFadyen’s quotable presence at the “Take Back the Night” rally, here are my rough thoughts on the accusations against him, originally drafted in the form of a comment to her post—so go read that, then come back here. (I’m also violating my “don’t talk about students” rule, but he’s an ex-parrot at this point and I’ve never taught him myself and probably never will. Not to mention that I reserve the right to make exceptions.)

I think using the term “planned” (as Margaret did in her post) implies he intended to do what the email says. If he did plan to do kill and skin a pair of strippers, I doubt he’d have wanted who knows how many witnesses and incriminating emails. Nor would he do it in a dorm.

This reads like an email from a kid who thinks he got screwed (figuratively, not literally) by a stripper. Not to say he didn’t deserve to be punished—and I think the combination of his presence at the party, just given the established facts about he party, that two women were hired to “perform” in some way and that he engaged in underage drinking, and this dopey email (which doubtless violates the campus appropriate use policy) justifies some sort of punishment—and not to say that it’s some dispositive evidence that he knew nothing about the attack, but I think the idea he actually intended to kill anyone is risable. The email does prove he’s a meatheaded dipshit who has no business on a university campus again until he gets some serious therapy, though.

Incidentally, whatever lacrosse player (and, let’s be honest here, McFadyen only sent it other laxers, otherwise he would have signed it with something other than his jersey number) gave that email to the police did the right thing. I suspect there is much more cooperation with the authorities than Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong and the players’ attorneys would like to let on at this point. More, please.

Commenter Igor provided a link to this article in Tuesday’s St. Petersburg Times that looks at the efforts of NCCU Campus Echo reporter Kristiana Bennett to get local residents to go on record with “unflattering things about the accuser… that defense attorneys hire[] private investigators to find.” Another Echo reporter talked with local escort services and found that it is unusual for adult entertainers to work without bodyguards or bouncers.

Ralph Luker links a NBC 17 story from last Friday that includes some quotes from an attorney representing one of the leaseholders on the 610 house that I hadn’t seen before (most interesting part bolded):

Meanwhile, defense attorneys continued on Friday to question the allegations of wrongdoing, including a 911 call made shortly before the alleged rape was reported.

In that call, a distraught woman said men in the house where the lacrosse team party was being held shouted racial slurs at her outside. Attorneys pointed out some discrepancies in the caller’s version of the incident and in the timing of the call.

“I listened to that first call, and I thought, ‘You called 911 because someone said something offensive to you?’ That’s just weird,” said Kerry Sutton, who represents lacrosse team member Matt Evans.

Evans is one of three captains of the team and lives at the Buchanan Boulevard house where the party was held. Sutton said Evans cleared out the house and locked it up when the party got too raucous.

“I believe my client. He says he didn’t do anything, and he believes nobody else did anything,” Sutton said. “No matter how this turns out, it’s a terrible thing for somebody.”

That explains why everyone disappeared from the house, although it doesn’t explain why nobody (including the nosy neighbor) seems to have witnessed it.

This raises the need to better pin down the timeline. Team member Ryan McFadyen’s email is apparently one of many sent in the period after the alleged rape went down, but the only one we have evidence of to this point. Duke’s email system records timestamps on every message passed through it, and all emails sent or received via the Duke email system require a username and password—so where’s the subpeona for all these records? Is it hiding somewhere under seal along with the search of McFadyen’s room, which only came to light because a student witnessed Durham police entering Edens 2C?

There were laptops and wireless cards siezed at the party—were there emails sent before, during, and after the entertainment? Not to mention timestamps on digital camera photos and call records and GPS locations of players’ cellphones—the latter of which would at least be able to show who (or whose phones) were there.

I’m not asking for a lot of Charlie Epps rocket science here… just the basics. Use the technology help to figure out what the hell actually was going on here, and cut out the nonsense.

Today’s Herald-Sun, er, today: reports on the unsealed email sent by Ryan McFadyen and the resignation of Mike Pressler, both with all the quotes and reportage one might want to read about the case. They also report a statement by NCCU Chancellor James Ammons, in which he asks that Central students kindly refrain from beating on Cameron Crazies.

Related to this reporting is a brewing controversy about the timing of the unsealing of the warrant, during a period of self-imposed incommunicado by Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong; the dukeobsrvr thinks the decision to unseal the warrant was driven by Nifong lacking confidence in his case, while the Herald-Sun attributes the release to pending legal action by the paper’s attorney.

Duke student Allison Clarke thinks there’s one thing everyone, no matter their views on the Duke lacrosse situation, can get behind:

Within the maelstrom of guilt and blame and recrimination, there is a rock. I think it’s safe to say that everyone at Duke and in Durham believes in this one fundamental principle:

Mike Nifong is an asshat.

I sincerely believe that there is not a single living soul left in Durham County who has confidence in the DA. The reasons for this lack of confidence differ, but include the following:

The taking of DNA evidence en masse from team members before charges were filed violates their civil rights (bullshit);
By talking smack about the case all up and down the media Nifong is seriously reducing the probability of anyone getting a fair trial here, plus I think there’s something in his job description about not really talking to the press all that much, right?;
Nifong’s imminent re-election is of far more importance to him than the ultimate well-being of this woman;
Announcing the results of the DNA evidence would be released this week, no, last week, no, next week, no, this week, isn’t helping anyone to cope with any of this in a helpful way;
If he doesn’t keep his flipping mouth shut starting yesterday, the Very Expensive Defense Attorneys are going to find something they can latch onto to use against him and the woman will be denied justice for what will happen to her;
and last, YOU‘RE GOING TO GET SOMEONE HURT, DIPFUCK.

Meanwhile, President Brodhead has spoken, and there shall be a plethora of committees, and they shall go forth and multiply across the land. The bureaucratic impulse to apply the default mode of operation—for academics, the convening of committees—to any new problem strikes again. We shall have sanctimonious statements, lamentations about institutional culture, and all that fun jazz. All I can say is, thank God I’m leaving.

This just in to SN: the Herald-Sun reports that men’s lacrosse coach Mike Pressler has resigned and that the administration has decided to cancel the remainder of the lacrosse season, presumably in light of the latest developments in the case. The implication is also that Ryan McFadyen has been suspended from school on an interim basis, although apparently a direct statement of that action would violate FERPA.

More from the Chronicle here; brief statements from President Richard Brodhead and AD Joe Alleva are also online.

Brendan Nyhan points out a Charlotte Observer story that says that the alleged victim’s father went on Rita Cosby on Monday night and claimed that she had conclusively identified all three attackers. Brendan asks why 43 other players were asked to give DNA samples, but my question’s a little more fundamental: if three guys have really been picked out by the victim, why on earth aren’t they in jail? Then again, the father could be wrong.

Well, now we know what that search in Edens 2C was all about:

Police obtained an e-mail from a confidential source sent from [Ryan] McFadyen’s Duke e-mail address March 14 at 1:58 a.m., right after the party.

“After tonight’s show, i’ve decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c,” the writer of the e-mail wrote, noting, however, there would be no nudity. “i plan on killing the [bitches] as soon as [they] walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off while [ejaculating] in my duke issue spandex.” [I slightly unredacted the Chronicle version of the quote here.]

Lovely. On the bright side, at least there would have been no nudity. And what’s up with the spandex reference?

The News & Observer provides their version of the story, which reports the defense angle on things:

Joe Cheshire, a lawyer representing one of the team captains, said the e-mail helps support the team's story. Team members told police, according to Cheshire, that they hired women to dance and those women left the party early.

"This e-mail, while the wording of it is, at best, unfortunate, if you read this e-mail and you also are aware of other e-mails that exist contemporaneous with these events, it's quite clear that no rape happened in that house," Cheshire said. "These boys were frustrated because they, as is already been reported, they thought these women had come and taken a bunch of money and started dancing and just decided to leave."…

Cheshire and other defense lawyers involved in the case have been critical of Nifong's public statements. He said the unsealing of the warrant today shows desperation on the part of investigators.

"If you see this case with things the police have not released, you see this case in a different light than the prosecutor going out there and saying, ‘they're guilty,'" Cheshire said. "Is it a horrible e-mail? Yes. Does it make the writer look good as a human being? Are there all kinds of moral and social issues that can be discussed about what went on that night? This e-mail does not in any way shape or form show that there was a violent sexual act that went on in that house. I would tell you that it in fact shows the opposite."

Sure, Joe, whatever…

Perhaps of more interest: the warrant for this search has more details on the allegations and the list of items siezed, including $60 cash and “piece of paper in vehicle — suckie suckie $5.00.” It also includes the full text of McFadyen’s email on page 7 of the warrant (I've adjusted the blockquote above accordingly).

Update: Aquaman writes:

I don't think this e-mail's author raped anyone. But the damage he's done to himself is just staggering. Think about it -- any future employer will Google him and find this. …

The author went to the prestigious Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey, before moving on to Duke. Both schools are probably in the process of removing all web mentions of him right now.

The lesson? Save your insane ramblings and scary threats for the phone.

Update 2: There is some speculation here that the quote is a riff on something from either American Psycho or Fight Club; having seen neither, I cannot judge, but it certainly wouldn’t have been out of place based on these quotes from American Psycho. Not really sure that helps McFadyen’s case all that much, though.

Update 3: A commenter at Through a Glass Darkly says that the “suckie suckie $5.00” reference is from South Park.

UD points to today’s New York Times, which finds that one of the Duke lacrosse players physically assaulted a man in Georgetown last fall and is currently in a diversionary sentencing program. Now, if only Righteous Townie DA Mike Nifong could figure out some way to use this information to help him investigate the case (he allegedly went to law school—so hopefully he can figure this one out on his own), we might finally get somewhere.

Elsewhere, DukeObsrvr moves into new digs, the Chronicle editorial board takes shots at Nifong (stealing my schtick), a theme echoed in the letters to the editor, and the state NAACP president valiantly tries to make his organization relevant for the first time in a decade or so.

NCAA stooge Myles Brand, who may now become a leading contender for Captain Obvious, reacts to the Duke lacrosse rape allegations thusly:

NCAA president Myles Brand said behavior at a Duke men’s lacrosse party last month was inappropriate, regardless of whether the alleged assault of an exotic dancer results in criminal charges.

Meanwhile, people are joining together in support of the alleged victim and feeling the love over at NC Central:

“There’s a lot of potential violence once Central students really grab hold of this,” said Jami Hyman, a freshman from Winston-Salem. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone got shot or something.”

With comments like that, I’d be in retreat too.

Finally, we see a classic example of everyone reading whatever they want into the situation; case in point, Old North Durham neighborhood ringleader John Schelp manages to work in his peeve about "campus retail plans," his codeword for the Central Campus Redevelopment project, which some Righteous Townies think is a Duke Plot masterminded by Nan Keohane, Dick Brodhead, Tallman Trask, and the Trilateral Commission to wipe out the 9th Street retail corridor (such as it is) rather than a much-needed effort by the university to replace the armpit of campus with something vaguely aesthetic.

It’s another day without any satellite trucks parked in front of the Duke Chapel. A return to normalcy, or the eye of the storm? I don’t care; I have to deal with some grading and Duke’s IRB. Priorities, priorities.

Your daily Chronicle fix includes a report on Monday’s protest at North Carolina Central University, the historically-black public university where the alleged victim of the Duke lacrosse rape was a part-time student, a look at the effects, or lack thereof, on student recruitment, and a sports columnist ponders the value of non-revenue sports like men’s lacrosse in the wake of the rape allegations.

Last, but not least, go read the op-ed page, because fundamentally I’m too lazy to add all the links.

A couple of Duke lacrosse-related links for your edification before I turn in: a pseudononymous student posts his lengthy reaction, while Provost Peter Lange and Prof. Houston Baker have a frank exchange of views.

I generally make it a policy not to discuss, directly or obliquely, students in this blog. That said, I think I need to stake out a few positions (particularly for people who are new readers).

First and foremost, I tend to have a very snarky aspect of my personality that gets emphasized in the blog. You may find it inappropriate given the weighty subject matter of this case, but it’s just how I treat more or less everything that gets discussed here—most of all myself.

Let me make something else clear at the outset: I have no qualms about students—even those under the legal drinking age—consuming alcohol (or other drugs) in a responsible, restrained manner. I also have no objection to adults purchasing the services of other adult escorts, “private party performers,” and the like for fully consensual activities. I fundamentally subscribe to the libertarian harm principle—if one’s actions don’t cause harm to others, they should be legal. (This doesn’t resolve all issues or legality or morality, but it covers those at least.)

What is perfectly clear at this point is that the young men present at the party at 610 Buchanan (who may or may not be the same set of individuals as the men’s lacrosse team) behaved extremely poorly and went beyond the boundaries of good taste. It is also clear that there is strong evidence that the alleged victim experienced physical trauma consistent with rougher-than-typical sex, perhaps even rape. What is not perfectly clear at this point is that this woman was raped by three men who were at this party, much less three members of the Duke men’s lacrosse team.

There are a number of troubling aspects to the evidence in this case, many of which revolve around the timeline of events. We are to believe that at least 40 people disappeared completely from a house in a residential neighborhood in less than eight minutes (by the neighbor’s account), perhaps as few as two minutes (if the “passerby” responsible for the first 911 call was actually at the scene at the time the call was made and is not, as is widely believed, the driver/second performer), with nobody seeing where they went. We are also to believe that the driver waited outside for around 30 minutes for the alleged victim to emerge from the house, after already fleeing said house after hearing racial slurs and the subject of the broomstick was broached, apparently without the slightest curiosity about what was taking so long. We are also to believe that the driver and the victim decided to go on a 20-minute cruise through west Durham, in the opposite direction of the victim’s home, after the victim was allegedly assaulted.

Another aspect of the case that’s troubling is what was found—and not found—at the home on 610 Buchanan. The DA has asserted that the DNA evidence in the case may be insignificant because the attackers may have used condoms—yet no condoms were found, despite the police finding a veritable treasure trove of evidence left behind by the alleged victim. If there had been a rape at the house, would they get rid of the condoms—but not anything else, including the false nails that (according to the victim’s account) could have skin cells from one of the attackers? In addition, the most celebrated piece of evidence—the bottle of K-Y jelly—doesn’t even appear on the search warrant as an item to be siezed, even though it is an item you would think would have been mentioned in the victim’s account of the events.

The behavior of the county’s district attorney in the case has also been, to put it mildly, disturbing. He has sought DNA evidence from 46 people, potentially in violation of state law and the U.S. Constitution, then discounted whether the evidence will actually have any probitive value. If the victim had identified an attacker or attackers from the photos of the team members (which were available to Durham police from the Duke athletics website), the dragnet was inappropriate; if she hadn’t, that would be reasonably strong evidence than none of the lacrosse team members were responsible.

He has also insinuated that team members’ decisions to avail themselves of their constitutional right to legal counsel is somehow an effort to obstruct justice in the case. And, his interest in appearing before the cameras somehow dries up when he is asked to respond to these serious issues.

All that said, I’ll tell you something: the victim is probably telling the truth, and she probably was raped that evening (I don’t know if it happened at 610 Buchanan; it may have happened before or after she came to the house, perhaps even at the hands of other perpetrators). But the idiotic behavior of Mike Nifong and her companion that evening has poked enough holes in her case that, in the absence of DNA evidence, it is going to be exceedingly unlikely for anyone to be convicted in this case.

The one exception, of course, is if the “wall of silence” breaks down. I suspect, however, given Nifong’s tactics in this case, it will not. The African-American and Trinity Park communities in Durham are looking for scapegoats, and in the absence of DNA evidence anyone at that party (or on the team, save the lone black player) can be a scapegoat. My guess is that a conviction for obstruction of justice and underage drinking is much more appealing to these kids than the possibility of facing rape charges against a jury full of Righteous Townies, even if the jury verdict doesn’t hold up on appeal.

Of course, the acid test will be next week, when Nifong claims (at least now) that he will file charges. But I will be very surprised if he can identify three—and only three—alleged rapists.

Since there’s no real news today (again, doubtless because Mike Nifong is well away from the nearest camera), here’s the latest on the media navel-gazing.

Rush Limbaugh has helpfully lived up to his reputation as a big fat idiot by referring to the alleged victim in the case as a “ho.” Yet another person to add to the pile of media morons loosely connected with this case.

Meanwhile, another media crapstorm has emerged as the News and Observer’s public editor takes the paper to task for its decision to publish an unrebutted interview last week with the alleged victim in the case, a choice defended by the paper’s executive editor. One wonders about this little tidbit of the editor’s response:

We took care in editing the story not to introduce new accusations—the basics were the same as in police reports, which had already been made public.

This would seem to indicate that the alleged victim had additional accusations beyond those previously alleged—you don’t need to be careful if no more accusations were made.

In other N&O business, John in North Carolina notes that a person claiming to be the mother of one of the members of the lacrosse team has posted a comment to the blog of the paper’s Metro columnist, Ruth “Don’t Call Me Cindy” Sheehan, who has taken to the paper’s pages on two occasions to excorciate the whole men’s lacrosse team.

There’s two rape investigation stories in today’s Duke Chronicle: probably the more interesting is this piece by Ryan McCartney, which looks at what the other half thinks of Duke. Included is what may rate as a candidate for Dumb Townie Quote of the Day:

“Most people have been upset about what’s happened in those houses for a long time,” said Trinity Heights resident Wendy Goldstein. “It’s almost like it’s over the wall-it’s the city’s problem.”

I’ve got news for you, Ms. Goldstein: over the wall, it is the city’s problem. These young people are legally adults, and they live on private property. It’s up to the city—not the Duke University administration—to be the primary enforcers of zoning regulations, noise ordinances, and the state alcohol laws. These kids are bad neighbors, by and large, because the City of Durham lets them get away with being bad neighbors by failing to enforce the existing housing codes and the like against the property owners and tenants.

In the other story, Adam Eaglin fills in the details on the reported assault on two Duke students at the Cook Out restaurant on Hillsborough Road, as well as reporting that Duke plans to continue the stepped-up DPD presence around the campus perimeter indefinitely. A sidebar also looks at the legality of the mass DNA testing that was ordered in the case.

On the op-ed front, the editorial board thinks some campus protesters have lost their grip on reality, while columns from Sara Oliver and Daniel Bowes are also worth a read. Finally, Jack Bauer’s Bidet has choice words for many principals and extraneous figures in the case.

In the blogosphere, dukeobsrvr links to the latest in anti-Righteous Townie fashion. I’m pretty sure you won’t be seeing those at the Duck Shop.

Today’s theme is alcohol; UD points to Allison Clarke’s lengthy post on the culture of drinking at Duke, while Paul Bonner of the Herald-Sun catches up with William Willimon, the former dean of Duke Chapel who wrote a report on Duke’s drinking culture in the early 1990s.

Elsewhere in the legacy media, Newsday reports that attorneys for the lacrosse team members plan to release the DNA test results, even if Righteous Townie AD Mike Nifong doesn’t, the New York Times reports that the alleged victim has joined the lacrosse captains in self-imposed exile from their homes due to the media attention, and Filip Bondy whines in the New York Daily News that he can’t get any juicy quotes from the women’s basketball team, who presumably have better things to do than opine about the rape allegations to ninth-tier sports reporters who normally don’t give a shit about women’s college basketball (or lacrosse, for that matter).

Since Nifong is away from the cameras much of this week, I don’t expect any major developments… but I’ll keep an eye on things nonetheless.

Here’s the Newsweek story, which surprisingly is the first I’ve seen that quotes a student I happen to teach, while Bryan notes that it’s made Outside the Lines, the weekly program where ESPN pretends (mostly unsuccessfully) that it can cover serious sports news.

Meanwhile, the Herald-Sun reports that some students on the men’s lacrosse team, in addition to facing past charges for such common collegiate misdemeanors like underage drinking and public urination, had the temerity to not be all they could be in a class on Native American history:

History professor Peter Wood said Saturday he complained to athletic department representatives after it seemed to him a group of half a dozen or so men’s lacrosse players didn’t take one of his classes seriously in the spring semester of 2004.

The course was a survey of Native American history that Wood said has been popular among lacrosse players because of the sport’s roots in American Indian culture.

Wood’s unhappiness with what happened in the spring 2004 class focused on what he termed the players’ “lack of engagement in classroom activities and discussions, and giving priority to unnecessary athletic commitments created by the coaching staff, such as a practice called during class time at 10 a.m. on a Friday.”

The professor didn’t put his concerns in writing and now wishes he had done more at the time.

Wow, student athletes slacking off. I’m shocked and appalled that such things might ever go on at a college campus, and even more shocked and appalled that this phenomenon is apparently unique to student athletes in Wood’s experience. I look forward to other stunning revelations, like names of the lacrosse players who have speeding tickets, the list of scofflaws who had to go to detention once in 10th grade, and a report detailing the kids who didn’t file to pay the state sales tax on their Amazon.com purchases over the past year.