Duke’s student newspaper, The Chronicle, polled at its website on the question:
Do you agree with the ex-lacrosse players' decision to file a federal civil rights lawsuit?Respondents were given a “Yes” or “No” choice.
The poll, of course, is unscientific.
That acknowledged, as of 10 P.M. Eastern tonight, 91% percent of respondents said, “Yes.”
That left 9% of respondents saying, “No.”
A friend and member of the Medical School faculty offered this interpretation of poll results so far:
“It’s hard to say anything about the 91%.
The rest? The 9%?
I’ll guess they’re trustees, administrators and A&S faculty.
Who else would say those kids shouldn’t sue?”
2 comments:
Duke is already paid (part of) their Danegeld, so why would Dukies care?
It's not really traditional Danegeld, because they did give the real berserker's tenure, but leave that aside.
And it's not like the multi-billion dollar endowment is going to be hurt by the payoffs.
But the reputation of the place can only really be saved by a good opening up of suppurating wounds.
Good thing for discovery.
-AC
The Duke Chronicle Poll is highly subject to manipulation. There does not seem to be any kind of screen to limit votes to one per computer IP address.
During the early polls on the Duke lacrosse case, the results were almost always, regardless of the question, about 90% to 10% in favor of the players.
There then came a period in which poll results would begin overwhelmingly in favor of the players, before shifting in the middle of the night to oppose the players. Eventually, there was an article in the Chronicle that this "vote stuffing" phenomena was coming from repeated votes recorded off one computer in the office of a Duke faculty member. Perhaps some TA was being paid with Duke funds to re-vote over and over again.
I have no doubt that most "fair" polls within the Duke community would be at least 90% in favor of the players, but there is a 10% minority at Duke that will always be against them. These are the same people who were participating in the "potbanger" rallies and passing out copies of the notorious "vigilante" posters.
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