Duke lacrosse: A small step toward fairness (Post 2).

On Aug. 19 I posted “Duke lacrosse: A small step toward fairness (Post 1).”

That post reported the results of a matter I’d brought to the attention of John Burness, Duke’s Senior Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations, in an Aug. 16 email.

The matter: When I searched Duke’s website using the input words “Duke lacrosse” its search engine returned hundreds of "hits" with the header:

Duke Lacrosse: Information on Sexual Assault…

I could somewhat understand why that header might have been used when the hoax claims were first made, but not now in August.

I also failed to understand why many of the “Duke Lacrosse: Information on Sexual Assault…” headers linked to items such as the university’s announcement of its appointment of John Danowski as the new Men’s lacrosse coach and even in one case to The Coleman Report.

I asked Burness for an explanation and corrections.

On Aug. 19 David Jarmul, Associate Vice President, Office of News & Communications, responded on Burness’ behalf.

Jarmul acknowledged the headers were inappropriate; and said the university had moved to correct them. He regretted that hadn’t been done sooner.

While never doubting Jarmul and the university genuinely sought to correct the headers, a second search using “Duke lacrosse” revealed there were still some headers that had not been corrected.

I called that to Jarmul’s attention in an email in which I included a link to “Duke lacrosse: A small step toward fairness (Post 1).” I made sure to say in the email that I had no doubt of Jarmul and the university’s genuine wish to correct the headers. We can all miss some things.

On Wednesday, Aug. 30, I received from Jarmul an email that included:

After I returned this afternoon, I had a chance to look into this more closely.

I had a colleague check through the first 150 results of a search on "Duke lacrosse" from duke.edu's search box.

The "title tag" language that concerned you before did not appear in the results. Likewise for a search on "sexual assault." He also tried another combination, "lacrosse and assault," and found nothing in the first 10 pages of hits with the language you saw earlier.

I told you that my web colleagues probably hadn't had a chance yet to make these changes but it appears they made them shortly after you and I last corresponded. (Keep in mind that there can be a lag of several days for the search engine tool to "crawl" through all of these updates.)

I’ve just sent Jarmul the following email:

Dear David:

Since I’m a tech dummy, I don’t understand the tech issues but it looks to me as though you and others at the university have succeeded in making this matter right.

I too searched using various combinations and found nothing that I’d flag.

I want to express my appreciation to you and the others who helped resolve this matter.

I plan to send John Burness a brief email telling him things worked out and that you were very helpful.

I’ll send you a copy of that email and include with it a link to a post, “Duke lacrosse: A small step toward fairness (Post 2)," which lets JinC readers know how you and others helped resolve the header matter.

Again, thank you. And have a nice holiday weekend.

Sincerely,

John
www.johnincarolina.com

It's a nice outcome but there's so much more to do.