In early January the AP reported that administrators at the university have invited two of the lacrosse players accused of raping a stripper to return to school. In a letter to the students the campus’ vice president for student affairs said, “As circumstances have evolved in this extraordinary case, we have attempted to balance recognition of the gravity of legal charges with the presumption of your innocence.”
But as Dorothy Rabinowitz notes in The Wall Street Journal, it was a full seven months into this affair before Duke President Richard Brodhead even mentioned the accused players’ right to a presumption of innocence. Moreover, soon after the story surfaced his administration suspended the entire lacrosse team for sponsoring parties featuring heavy drinking and strippers – while taking no action regarding the same transgressions by numerous other campus groups, including other sports teams.
The university administrators (and the ever silent, complicit campus trustees) are trying to cover their unprincipled, dishonorable, cowardly traces. They deserve to be scorned.