BSN'S Jackass of the Week!
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This week's winner is more than just one person. It's an entire institution of
people. These folks jumped to immediate conclusions and made fools of
themselves. It all started about a year ago and culminated in the past week.
This week's winner is the entire administration at Duke University.
Last March, the nationally ranked Duke Lacrosse team had a party at one of
their houses. At the party, they had a keg and a stripper. The stripper
happened to be African American. Nothing wrong there so far. Well, after the
party, the stripper made accusations of rape. She claimed that three of the
players; Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans, were the ones
who committed the awful crime. If these words and accusations were true,
these guys should have gone directly to jail. However, in order to prove guilt,
you must find evidence, witnesses and be tried in the court of law. In this
country, you're supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty". However, in
this particular case, these guys were guilty until proven innocent. The DA
jumped all over the case to help garner the African American vote in his
reelection campaign. Rather than waiting to hear the full story, rather than
listening to it's student athletes claims of innocence and rather than waiting
for the case to run it's course, Duke decided to cancel the lacrosse season,
fire the lacrosse coach and expel the students from school. Eighty-eight Duke
University professors essentially declared the students guilty, publishing a
letter thanking those on campus who had distributed a "wanted" poster of
the lacrosse players, branding them "rapists." They turned their back on
every single one of the athletes on the team, but specifically the three
accused of the crime. Well, in the year since then, the case has fallen apart.
The accuser has changed her story on several occasions, there was no DNA
evidence found, there were alibis confirmed and this week the declaration of
innocence was made. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said: "We
have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house on that
night, In this case, with the weight of the state behind him, the Durham
district attorney pushed forward unchecked. There were many points in the
case where caution would have served justice better than bravado. And in
the rush to condemn, a community and a state lost the ability to see clearly."
Exactly. Caution would have served justice better. Couldn't have said it
better myself. Duke, the heralded institution of higher learning, one of the
"elite" universities in our country, who supposedly pride themselves on
moral and ethical standards threw these kids under the bus. They turned
their backs on them before they knew the truth. Sure, the kids were found
innocent of any wrong doing, but don't tell me justice was in any way served.
These poor guys have gone through a year of hell. Their names were
disgraced, they were tossed out of school and turned on by their institution
and community and they were judged guilty in the court of public opinion.
They incurred millions of dollars in legal fees and will forever be remembered
for a crime they didn't commit. SOME of their hardships could have been
avoided had the Duke University administration not reacted so quickly and
harshly and gathered the facts first. But since they didn't, one year after the
fact, when this case was finally broken open for what it was, the Duke
University administration earned the BSN JACKASS OF THE WEEK!
