Duke lacrosse coach: A mob victim

A month ago Ruth Sheehan, news columnist for the McClatchy Company’s Raleigh News & Observer, helped lead a media mob demanding Duke University fire Men’s lacrosse coach Mike Pressler.

From Sheehan’s April 3 column:

Upholding Duke's standards, [senior vice president for public affairs] Burness said, was lacrosse coach Mike Pressler's responsibility.

So dump him.

Duke initially stood by Pressler as many staffers there, former players and their parents, opposing coaches, neighbors and others spoke out on his behalf.

But the mob continued to howl, egged on by some angry faculty who attacked the university for protecting, as English Department Professor Houston Baker put it, “a violent and irresponsible group [behind] timorous piety and sentimental legalism.”

Duke soon buckled and forced Pressler’s resignation.

Now, exactly one month to the day Sheehan demanded Duke “dump” Pressler, we read in The N&O of a Duke faculty committee’s just-released report on the lacrosse program. Here’s some of what The N&O reported:

The professors who conducted interviews and examined internal records found that Pressler took action to punish his players -- when he was informed about their misconduct.

Sometimes he made them run laps; in 2005, when the team made it to the national championship game, he suspended two players from post-season play.

But most of the time, Pressler was unaware of his players' troubles with the law or with the internal disciplinary system at Duke.

Except [for Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs ] Bryan and Pressler, the faculty report said, "no other administrator appears to have treated the lacrosse team's disciplinary record as a matter of serious concern."
…
Once Pressler learned of the disciplinary record, he asked Bryan to notify him of future infractions. But Pressler apparently was made aware of misconduct only sporadically; the last communication was in November 2005.

The report was welcomed by Pressler's defenders.

"The perception that he let his players run amok was ironic, because he's tough," said Kerstin Kimel, the Duke women's lacrosse coach. "His reputation among the other [Duke] coaches is he's a disciplinarian with his players, maybe to a fault sometimes."
…

Pressler is married and has three children. The Pressler’s don’t talk publicly about it but the family’s been through hell these past weeks.

I’d like to ask Sheehan and anyone else in the mob two questions:

1) What should Pressler and his wife tell their children when they ask why people demanded Duke fire their father?

2) Where should Pressler go to get his reputation back?

Folks,

You can read a copy of the faculty report here.

It’s lengthy (25 pages with footnotes), but well worth reading. It has a lot of information that's been widely available but the MSM hasn’t gotten around to reporting. Example:

In 2005, twenty seven members of the lacrosse team, more than half, made the Atlantic Coast Conference's Academic Honor Roll, more than any other ACC lacrosse team. 9

Between 2001 and 2005, 146 members of the lacrosse team made the Academic Honor Roll, twice as many as the next ACC lacrosse team. The lacrosse team's academic performance generally is one of the best among all Duke athletic teams

I’ll bet this is the first time you’ve read any of that. But the information’s been out there for a long time. Athletic teams are proud of that sort of accomplishment. They eagerly publicize it.

That we haven’t heard about the team’s academic accomplishments tells us a lot about MSM reporting of the Duke lacrosse story.

I’m sending links to this post to Sheehan and N&O executive editor for news Melanie Sill.

If you care to contact either of them, their email addresses are:

rsheehan@newsobserver.com

melanie.sill@newsobserver.com