Duke and Selena Roberts' column: 1, 2, 3

Readers Note: This post contains:

1) information concerning an event at Duke open to the public at which New York Times columnist Selena Roberts will be a panelist;

2) a copy of Roberts’ Mar. 31, 2006 column in which she savaged the Duke Men’s lacrosse players in a manner befitting Mike Nifong and many of Duke’s faculty Group of 88;

and 3) commentary on Roberts’ March 31 column by historian KC Johnson, pundit Stuart Taylor and myself as well as a link to Roberts’ NYT profile.
_______________________________

PART 1:

From Duke News an announcement of an “academic conference” to be held on campus this Friday, March 23:

[…] The event, called “Tiger Woods ©: American Empire, Global Golf and the Making of a Megacelebrity,” will be held from 1:30 to 5 p.m. Friday, March 23, in Room 240 of Duke University’s John Hope Franklin Center, 2204 Erwin Road. It is free and open to the public.

Panelists include Selena Roberts, New York Times sports columnist; Edward Wanambwa, editor of African American Golf Digest; Bruce Selcraig, investigative sports journalist; and Anna Grzebien and Jennifer Pandolfi, members of Duke’s NCAA championship golf team.[…]

Also on the panel are Duke faculty members Orin Starn, a cultural anthropologist and a conference organizer; Grant Farred, a literature professor; and Rachael Miyung Joo, a visiting professor of cultural anthropology. […]

PART 2: Roberts’ March 31, 2005 column

Sports of The Times; When Peer Pressure, Not a Conscience, Is Your Guide

By SELENA ROBERTS

ON the front page of Wednesday's USA Today, there was a photo of a man wearing a T-shirt with a traffic sign and a message for rat finks written in graffiti type: ''Stop Snitching.''

As the story detailed, this is the bold new wardrobe of drug dealers and gang members engaged in an anti-snitch campaign that is frustrating authorities.

Imagine a T-shirt as a tool of witness intimidation. Now imagine it as the undershirt of the male athlete in a locker-room culture devoted to its own code of silence, of a male athlete who thrives inside hostile arenas where the Vegas rule of ''what goes on here, stays here'' creates the tacit acceptance of denigrating behavior.

On a team, there are players reared on misplaced war-room jargon, conditioned to equate teammates with soldiers, locker rooms with foxholes and Patton with the coach. In an arena, fans are roped off from the norms of decent behavior, provided anonymity by the cover of a crowd, free to mock their foils without repercussions.

Want to challenge an opponent's manhood? Mock him by turning the serenade of ''Brokeback Mountain'' into a gay slur. Care to test the tolerance of an adversary who has been arrested? Taunt him with the rattle of handcuffs. Go ahead and break any social code necessary for the sake of the team.

At the intersection of entitlement and enablement, there is Duke University, virtuous on the outside, debauched on the inside. This is the home of Coach K's white-glove morality and the Cameron Crazies' celebrated vulgarity.

The season is over, but the paradox lives on in Duke's lacrosse team, a group of privileged players of fine pedigree entangled in a night that threatens to belie their social standing as human beings.

Something happened March 13, when a woman, hired to dance at a private party, alleged that three lacrosse players sexually assaulted her in a bathroom for 30 minutes. According to reported court documents, she was raped, robbed, strangled and was the victim of a hate crime. She was also reportedly treated at a hospital for vaginal and anal injuries consistent with sexual assault and rape.

Players have been forced to give up their DNA, but to the dismay of investigators, none have come forward to reveal an eyewitness account.

Maybe the team captains are right. Maybe the allegations are baseless.

But why is it so hard to gather the facts? Why is any whisper of a detail akin to snitching?

''The idea of breaking ranks within a team is identified as weak,'' said Katie Gentile, an assistant professor and the director of the Women's Center at John Jay College, adding, ''The bottom line is, your self-esteem is more valuable to you than someone else's life.''

There is research Gentile cites to back up the analysis. What do women fear the most? Rape and murder. What do men fear most? Ridicule.

The stigma as a traitor -- and the threat of repercussion and isolation -- is more powerful than the instinct to do what's right, a pattern perpetuated on every level of sports, from prep to pro.

At Long Island's Mepham High School, older members of the football team were accused of sodomizing junior varsity players with broomsticks, golf balls and pine cones at a camp in 2003. It took nearly a month and 12 subpoenas to prompt the team's cooperation with authorities.

On a lake in Minnesota last fall, a group of Vikings were accused of treating their boat cruise hostesses as grab bags. With teammates employing a ''loose lips sink ships'' strategy when questioned on the incident, the most salacious disclosure from the case thus far has been a legal debate over what constitutes a lap dance.

There are more cases all the time, often depicting a group of players against one woman. Some involve male players sexually molesting a handful of rookies in hazing rituals. Is it heterocentrism, homophobia or homoeroticism?

Whatever the root, there is a common thread: a desire for teammates to exploit the vulnerable without heeding a conscience.

At Duke, a day after the team provided DNA samples to the police, players went back to practice as normal. ''All our focus is on trying to beat the Hoyas now,'' the lacrosse coach, Mike Pressler, said.

Public outrage had more traction than Pressler's warped priorities. For now, the season has been suspended while the investigation continues. For days, Durham residents and Duke students have rallied on behalf of sexual-assault victims, banging pots and pans, hoping to stir more action out of Duke's president, Richard H. Brodhead.

The indignation has been heartening, but it may also be hypocritical.

How many of the offended are among the offensive? Have any of them cheered when the Cameron Crazies -- who have been known to deride an opponent accused of a sex crime with a sign that read, ''Did you send her flowers?'' -- cross the boundaries of decency?

Has President Brodhead reveled in the Crazies' witty ability to belittle villains in an environment that only serves to nurture the entitlement of his own athletes?

Does President Brodhead dare to confront the culture behind the lacrosse team's code of silence or would he fear being ridiculed as a snitch?

Correction: April 6, 2006, Thursday The Sports of The Times column on Friday, about the investigation involving a woman who said she had been raped by three players on the Duke University lacrosse team misstated the nature of the players' cooperation with the authorities. The police in Durham, N.C., said that although most team members had not voluntarily submitted to police interviews and DNA tests, the three residents of the house where the accuser said the incident occurred had done so.PART 3: Commentary

Pundit Stuart Taylor was among the first to call attention to Nifong's frame-up and its enablement by many, including those in media who gave the public hateful and error-filled rantings instead of information and reason. Of Roberts' March 31 column Taylor's said:

Selena Roberts helped set the tone [for The Times’ treatment of the case as a fable of evil, rich white men running amok and abusing poor black women] in a March 31 commentary seething with hatred for "a group of privileged players of fine pedigree entangled in a night that threatens to belie their social standing as human beings."

All but presuming guilt, Roberts parroted false prosecution claims that all team members had observed a "code of silence." (A correction ran six days later). She likened them to "drug dealers and gang members engaged in an anti-snitch campaign."

Historian, professor and blogger Robert KC Johnson has done what hundreds of Duke professors and administrators have been unwilling or unable to do: one, give the public facts and reasoned assessment of what happened the night of March 13/14; and two, challenge and expose Duke's home DA Mike Nifong and certain Durham Police officers' frame-up of innocent Duke students. Of Roberts' column KC's said:

Writing only a week after the first reports about the incident, sports columnist Selena Roberts indicated that, “According to reported court documents, [the accuser] was raped, robbed, strangled and was the victim of a hate crime. She was also reportedly treated at a hospital for vaginal and anal injuries consistent with sexual assault and rape.” (Roberts oddly deemed an affidavit for a search warrant a “court document” revealing uncontested facts, while her description of the medical evidence proved wildly overstated.)

“To the dismay of investigators,” Roberts asserted, no players “have come forward to reveal an eyewitness account,” all part of the “lacrosse team’s code of silence” in which offering “any whisper of a detail [is] akin to snitching.” (This claim continued Roberts’ pattern of uncritically accepting Nifong’s version of events, and as a result making factual errors: the three captains voluntarily gave authorities lengthy statements and even access to their e-mail accounts.)

Folks, here’s my commentary and questions:

It's good that we can all have a look at Roberts' column. It's especially important we have that look as Roberts comes to Duke.

The conference organizers should have made Roberts' column available on the net because it provides such a good basis for people to know "where she is coming from." Knowing that will help conference attendees to place Roberts' comments within he "belief frame."

I plan to email the principal conference organizer, Orin Starn, and ask him why Roberts's column wasn't made available on the net.

I also plan to ask Starn how he came to select Roberts for the panel. There are thousands of sports writers in America. A look at Roberts' NYT profile doesn't suggest she has any special expertise concerning golf.

Was it her column’s sliming, possibly even libeling, of Duke students and telling Brodhead, in effect, to "Dance, Dick, dance" to Leftist hate-mongering that earned Roberts' an invite to an event hosted at Duke's Franklin Center, where the Group of 88's "listening statement" was made up?

I've got some heavy traveling coming up in the next few days but I'll comment again on Roberts' column because it’s so revealing of the “truth-standards” and social attitudes of so many at Duke who enabled Nifong.

Related JinC post: Duke's Starn's Latest Round