Duke case spurs US colleges to clean up campus culture

While the case is over for the former lacrosse players, it has prompted soul-searching at many colleges and refining of student policies.

By Patrik Jonsson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 13, 2007 edition

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ATLANTA - For three lacrosse players at Duke University, the year-long ordeal of defending themselves against incendiary sexual-assault charges is over, the case dropped Wednesday after North Carolina's attorney general declared the three "wrongly accused." But it's not over for the broader campus community.

Concern about the alcohol-fueled party that provided the backdrop to the case prompted Duke administrators and faculty to undertake an introspective examination of campus culture – a process that is outlasting the case itself. It's forced a closer look at everything from the unofficial school motto – changed from "Work Hard, Play Hard" to "Work Hard, Play Well" – to ideas for closer supervision of student drinking to why 44 percent of black students had complained of racial discrimination by their sophomore year.

The notoriety of the case forced Duke to the front of academe in this evaluation of student life and campus culture. But colleges across the US are also soul-searching and refining policies in the wake of the case, recognizing that Duke is not the only campus where the confluence of race, sex, privilege, and booze could spark a scandal.

"In part because of the Duke scandal, there's a trend in higher education towards increasing accountability for perpetrators, more and better support for victims, and ... more intensive prevention programs," says Alan Berkowitz, a social justice consultant in Trumansburg, N.Y.

The case began when three Duke University lacrosse players were indicted last spring on charges of rape, kidnapping, and sexual assault. A woman told police that she was assaulted at an off-campus house in Durham, N.C., where she had been hired to perform as a dancer during a team party March 13, 2006. In the aftermath, Duke canceled the rest of the team's 2006 season and the lacrosse coach resigned. Then in December, the district attorney dropped the rape charges against the players after the accuser "could no longer testify with certainty that it occurred," according to court documents.

To some critics, the affair spoke volumes about how universities sometimes are willing to compromise their ideals to protect lucrative programs.

"The very first thing is [for colleges to] meet the minimum standards of behavior in society, and they can't even do that," says Mal Kline, director of Accuracy in Academia in Washington. "It comes back to the schools, really."

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