The Duke rape case

I know the last thing the internet needs is another post about the Duke lacrosse team, but something I heard over the weekend hasn't sit very well with me. In watching the San Diego-New England game, CBS was promoting that evening's "60 minutes" broadcast, where one of the stories was about the Duke case, including interviews with the parents. In the ad, this was the "tag quote":

"Every mother of a son in this country should be scared to death that this was so easy to perpetrate."
-Kathy Seligmann, mother of one of the accused lacrosee players

Every time I heard this line, something in the back of my head was like "hey...that doesn't sound right." I finally realized what was bothering me - in the entire coverage of this case, the story has turned into an overzealous prosecutor going after these boys and turning them into victims, that if the prosecutor had done his job right, these boys should never have been indicted. In the interview (transcript here), the previous quote continues:

All that it's based on is a woman's word and she's changed that story seven, eight, nine times. And we still sit here. Our families have been held hostage of this D.A., of this woman, of the police department," says Kathy Seligmann.

Let me be clear - if the prosecutor is pursuing this with the lack of evidence, the hammer should come down on him. Same goes for the woman if she's lying about the situation. Both of these are completely unacceptable.

That said, why are we avoiding the critical part of the story? Why is nobody making the point that we shouldn't even be having this conversaion if the boys behaved maturely in the first place? I read through that entire transcript looking for some indication of this direction, and the only thing there was a throw away question:

"When you talk to your kids about what happened, what went on, do you say to them you should never have been drinking? What were you doing?" Stahl asks.

"It was a mistake that was poor judgment. But then what you need to do is separate that from felony charges, talking about moral questions. These are felony charges. And if they did make a mistake, even though they did what many other students have done, they have paid for it dearly," says David Evans Sr.

Every time I read that, my chin wants to hit the floor. I don't want to believe that a parent actually believes that. We have to separate talking about the felony charges and the moral questions? Um, Hello? McFly? If the moral questions are handled properly, THERE ARE NO FELONY CHARGES TO WORRY ABOUT! This is a no brainer - if you raise your kids to behave in a moral manner, the likelihood of them placing themselves in an environment where they could be acussed of committing a felony is greatly reduced. But when a parent's position is that his kids just "did what many other students have done," exactly what is he trying to teach his kids? Clearly not that the behavior is overall wrong. It sound like the parents are driving at something along the lines of "if you're going to do something stupid, don't get caught." In the end, they're certainly not getting the message that hiring strippers to come to a college party where there's a ton of drinking involved is a bad idea.

This goes way beyond just Duke, and the high profile of this case should be a driving force to every university in this country. There is nobody naive enough to believe this doesn't happen at most universities. It's a lifestyle that has been outright glorified ever since "Animal House" - student organizations throwing wild parties where all manner of drinking and sexual behavior are encouraged, while the university just looks away with a wink and a nod. These students were invited back to Duke? Um, no. You keep them out, and you kick out anyone else that was involved in the party. You do that to every student organization that behaves in this manner, and if that means coming down on the glorified Duke basketball team, so be it. Clearly the parents aren't teaching these children, so somebody needs to step in. And not just at Duke, but nationwide, this sort of behavior is destroying the university system, and it needs to be stopped.

If the prosecutor is wrong, he should be disciplined. If the woman is wrong, she should be disciplined. No matter what, the people involved at this party were CLEARLY wrong - and they should be disciplined.