Jack Hardcastle

After hearing what happened to Duke’s lacrosse team, I am reminded of a similar story from Rice last year.

Why is this what people do when they get to college? Plan parties, get wasted, and do really idiotic things. Lack of supervision and first taste of freedom aside, is this really fun? It doesn’t sound like fun. Watching a friend struggle through the day with an overwhelming hangover doesn’t look like fun. Suing the University to graduate doesn’t look like fun.

I guess someone could say the same things about my college career. Sitting on the Parking Committee doesn’t sound like fun. Being one of the only sober people at a party of 1800 people doesn’t look like fun. Getting yelled at by the University President after criticizing his administration’s decision making doesn’t look like fun either.

Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, I guess.

Edit: It appears that there is more to this story than I originally found out. Not only was the victim black and the team white, there are also third-party police reports of racial epithets being shouted. It seems there are motives beyond just “having fun.” Absolutely disgusting.

Edit 2: (March 25, 2007) The story that won’t die. The SuperSpade has an excellent breakdown of the whole “Duke Rape Case”. Apparently the whole thing is almost over. The prosecutor may have committed prosecutorial misconduct, the victim and her friend have been contradictory, the University is making some policy changes, and most of the athletes have moved on now that the indictments have been dropped. I still support my earlier statement that all of this is ridiculous, and it’s disgraceful for these teams to be sponsoring these events. Hiring strippers and tying underclassmen to trees and pouring alcohol down their throat does not sound like appropriate team behavior to me.