At Duke, hard questions about lacrosse culture

"They've gone to private schools where they've had little contact with minority students and, probably all their life, they haven't been disciplined or punished for these kinds of things," says Robert Korstad, a Duke professor.

Critics say that instead of opening up players' minds, Duke's atmosphere may actually fuel a sense of entitlement. Former students describe Duke as a "kind of Oz," where even after a hurricane, when nearby towns lie dark, the campus is lit and quickly cleared. And in this at-times magical place, the lacrosse team is at the social apex, say Mr. Johnson and others.

"It's the power aspect that you can't help but notice," he says. "I think that these guys know they have it, I think the university knows it, and that's why people are upset."

Critics say the university has moved too slowly. President Richard Brodhead first suspended, then canceled, the lacrosse season. Last week, the coach, who was said to facilitate a particularly aggressive style and esprit de corps on the field, resigned under pressure.

For many, it is not enough. "A lot of staff would have liked to have seen the headline, 'Lacrosse coach fired' instead of 'Lacrosse coach resigns,' " says Professor Korstad.

None of this is new to the surrounding community, says James Coleman, another Duke professor. Though a major biomedical center, Durham's city center is awash in poverty, much of it African-American, and it has a high murder rate.

"Some locals say that, if this happened, it's more extreme, but still consistent with behavior they see every day, that these kids live here for three or four years. They don't act as if they're part of the community," says Professor Coleman, who is heading up a university committee to investigate the lacrosse culture.

The task for the university is to decide whether the team members were simply incorrigible, or "whether we're harboring a rapist among us," says Coleman.

"The question is: Did anyone in the university know about it and, if they didn't know, was it because they were sort of willfully blind or was it because we don't have a system in place to make sure that we can learn about this behavior?" he says.

Such questions are quite familiar to some members of the campus community, after a female student reported she was sexually assaulted in a dormitory bathroom in 2002. After the same student claimed she was assaulted again in 2004, however, it was determined that neither incident took place, according to Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle.

• Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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