Updated - today's items:
David Wharton, LA Times:
Duke lacrosse bracing its way (sub. reguired) — The once-disbanded Blue Devils team is now No. 1, and rape charges have been dropped, but underlying resentment remains. McFadyen admits mistake, tells of 'American Psycho' reference. — The Duke lacrosse players clamber off their bus, upbeat, joking, spilling into the chilly evening for a late practice.
Television crews record their arrival, cameras tracking each shoe that gets laced, each helmet strapped on. Only a few players notice — the constant scrutiny feels normal.
"As normal as it's going to get," senior Casey Carroll said. "There's always that extra aura surrounding our games."
Even in Southern California, where lacrosse seems as foreign as an ice storm, where four teams have come for a weekend tournament, Duke expects to be watched.
The players have been big news since last spring, when an exotic dancer they hired for a party claimed she was brutally raped.
With national media characterizing the incident as proof that college sports had spun out of control, the team was disbanded at midseason and the coach resigned. In Durham, N.C., tensions flared between the elite university and its less-affluent surrounding community.
"We had to stick together," senior Matt Danowski said. "It was tough." . . .
discussion:
LieStoppers: McFadyen Speaks Out, LA Times Article
Friends of Duke Univ.
LaxPower.com:
Interview with Duke's John Danowski at the First Four (with video) — John Danowski became Duke's eighth head men's lacrosse coach on July 21, 2006. Now in his 25th season as a collegiate head coach, he spent the previous 21 seasons at Hofstra, where he compiled an overall record of 192-123 (.609), including eight NCAA tournaments.
LaxPower's Steve Layne interviews Danowski at the First Four in California. He talks about what led him to decide to go to Duke, what it's like to take a program over from Pressler, this year's team and some of the high points on offense and defense, and his advice for potential recruits. . .
Tim Sullivan, San Diego Union-Tribune:
Top frosh of lacrosse stuck through Duke muck — Max Quinzani was wavering. He had agreed to play lacrosse at Duke, but the team had temporarily ceased to exist. The nation's most prolific high school “attacker” found himself strangely stuck on the defensive last spring, an absentee victim of explosive allegations, sweeping judgments, rash decisions and relentless scrutiny.
Quinzani had missed the lacrosse bash heard 'round the world, but it had not missed him. It was turning his young life upside down. “It was such a strange situation,” Rob-Roy Quinzani said last night, recalling his son's plight of last spring. “We didn't know if there was going to be lacrosse at Duke. One day at dinner, (Max) said, 'I don't know if you can tell, but I'm freaking out here.' ”
In the aggravated aftermath of the March 13 party that spawned rape, sexual assault and kidnapping charges against three members of the Duke team, the university offered to release its incoming recruits from their letters of intent. Yet despite Max Quinzani's lofty academic standing at Duxbury (Mass.) High and his national-record 577 career points, both Princeton and Penn declined to reopen their admissions process to consider him.
Happily, Quinzani's freaking-out phase appears to be over. Duke's lacrosse program has been revived after a one-season hiatus and, amazingly enough, has attained the nation's No. 1 ranking entering tonight's First 4 Invitational at the University of San Diego. . .
Richard Bertrand Spencer, Duke grad. student, AmConMag.com:
Rotten in Durham — How Duke’s academic mandarins became a lynch mob - The phenomenon of the “Duke Lacrosse Case” has left serious people with a sense that something has gone terribly wrong with Duke’s academic culture. Following news of the allegations, students predictably banged pots and pans, raised banners reading “castrate,” and passed out wanted posters with the photos and e-mail addresses of all the white members of the lacrosse team.
The most irresponsible and irrational claims came not from college co-eds, however, but from a broad swath of the faculty. The so-called “Group of 88,” a circle of mostly humanities professors, signed a full-page manifesto—“What does a Social Disaster Sound Like?”—published in Duke’s student newspaper, The Chronicle. The Group announced that the lacrosse case was a consequence of a longstanding “disaster” at Duke created by institutional sexism and racism. . .
That the sundry statements of the Group of 88 are incoherent, illogical, and generally poorly written is beside the point. . . The fact that a large portion of Duke’s faculty operates in this manner is as significant a problem as District Attorney Mike Nifong’s misconduct and cable news’s love of a good witch hunt. As is often the case, those who seek power usually have the greatest pretensions of authenticity and moral outrage.
discussion:
KC Johnson: The Group's Intellectual Origins
Forum topics of note:
LieStoppers: April 6 Conflicting Statements of CGM & JJ . . . [still going strong]
TalkLeft: Preciousgate:Those April 6th Notes
LieStoppers: Crimestoppers Nifongery?, Revisiting the Wanted Posters
