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piny

Kevin linked this statement from UBUNTU, and I’m just gonna highlight this part:

A priest, a rabbi, and a nun walk into a bar. They sit down and the bartender tells them that the best joke gets a beer on the house.

The nun looks up, excited, and says, “Your mother is so old, her social security number is 1.”

The rabbi follows, “What do you call a fish with no eyes?” The others look around with anxious smiles on their faces, “A fsh.”

The priest blurts out, “I’ve got one that’s going to slay you. Tonight I’m having some women come to my room to dance and strip for me. I’m planning to kill them, mutilate their bodies, and be sexually satisfied by the whole thing.”

The nun gets her pint.

The priest’s joke, of course, doesn’t work; specifically because it’s not a joke, it’s a threat. And it would be read as even more of a threat if the priest had just come from a retreat where some members of the priest’s, shall we say, lacrosse team, had hurled racist epithets at a pair of women they paid to dance for them and brutally sexually assaulted one of them. In fact, if this was the case, no one in the bar would read the statement as a joke, but an unambiguous assertion of power. Seemingly, there isn’t a setting in the world, whether a barroom, a party, a street corner, a classroom, or a church, where this kind of statement could be understood as appropriate. It does nothing but dehumanize women and sex workers, encouraging violence.

97 thoughts on Geddit? GEDDIT?

  1. I read the post and also agree with one of the commenters there who posted. The Unversity, whether it likes it or not, is tied to the system it has created with collegiate sports and all its attendent garbage.

    That colleges and universities have developed and become dependent on sports to generate large amounts of revenue, as the poster says, stymies them in their ability to act appropriately to the duke rape case.

    Truth be told, most universities and colleges do very little to eschew or even teach questioning the power structure in our society and conversely, many exist only to give the students the skills to work within such.

    Duke is doing exceptionally well in this latest lesson of “How to exploit your societal lessors and come out swingin'”

  3. I actually came across this blogoff a link about the Duke incident. At that time I wasn’t willing to say that I disbelieved the statements of the alleged victim, but I maintained that the facts on the table, regarding the botched lineup and Reade Seligmann’s evident alibi, made it impossible for me to believe that any of the defendants could be convicted by a reasonable jury.

    In light of intervening circumstances, I now believe that no rape occurred there, and I think this is an unavoidable conclusion from the facts made available. The woman lied, and the DA lied.

    I said at the time that McFayden’s statements could merely be a drunken, private expression of anger subsequent to what he believed to be an incident of the players getting ripped off by strippers who were supposed to perform for several hours and did not. Now that all the evidence suggests that no rape occurred, I think this continues to be relevant.

    I’m sure many of us have transmitted private communications we’d prefer not to have publicized and many of us have said things we later regretted when we were drunk or angry. Cut this kid a break.

  4. I am a Duke alum. Graduated this May.

    Lacrosse players have a very bad reputation on campus. A minority of people, particularly insecure girls, worship them, but most of us keep a wary eye on them. They’re wankers: sexist, racist, over-privileged little wankers.

    When I first heard about the alleged rape, I was 99% sure that the lacrosse players were to blame.

    Now I no longer have the same confidence as I did before.

    McFayden is a tosser like the rest of them, but what really happened on March 13th is unclear. I can only hope that justice will be served, but I’m running out of hope fast.

  5. Daniel@NYU, the doctors who examined the woman right after the incident found medical evidence that a rape occurred, as in blunt force trauma to the woman’s genitalia. What new evidence are you talking about that would erase that?

  6. I’ve managed not to actually talk about dismembering strippers, even at my angriest moments. I supose I just have an unusual amount of self-control.

  7. Daniel@NYU, the doctors who examined the woman right after the incident found medical evidence that a rape occurred, as in blunt force trauma to the woman’s genitalia. What new evidence are you talking about that would erase that?

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13392547/site/newsweek/

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13249625/site/newsweek/

    http://www.nbc17.com/news/9385362/detail.html

    No. The DA claimed that she had suffered injuries consistent with rape. When he turned over his evidence to the defense attorneys, they found that when he made that announcement he had not even seen the medical report.

    In fact, her medical exam revealed only “diffuse swelling of the vagina,” which is consistent with consensual sexual activity. She’d had sex with at least two men that week and had been performing with sex toys that night.

    So her injuries are completely explained by her other sexual activities. If the rape she alleges had taken place, she would have manifested more severe injuries. Incidentally, at one point, she claimed to have been raped by 20 men, and at one point, she also claimed Kim Roberts, the second stripper participated in the rape.

    Roberts told police on the night of the event that she had been with the accuser the whole night and that the rape allegation was “a crock.” She became less certain after Nifong gave her a favorable plea agreement in an unrelated matter.

    Additionally, the suggestion that the accuser’s apparent state of incoherent intoxication was brought on by the administration of date rape drugs by the players was not borne out by toxicology tests; the accuser admitted to mixing alcohol with prescription medication.

    Meanwhile the lineup procedure used for the identifications was flawed to the point where it is unlikely to be admissible. Ordinarily possible suspects are presented surrounded by people unconnected to the crime. The accused players were picked out of a lineup exclusively consisting of photos of the lacrosse players.

    Seligmann has presented a detailed alibi, backed up by cell-phone records, an ATM receipt and his scan of his ID at his dorm, that makes it impossible for him to have committed the act he is charged with.

  8. I’m trying to come up with a context in which “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if somebody died?” is “funny”. I don’t quite see the humor potential here, even though lots of conservative commenters and bloggers do.

  9. I’m sure many of us have transmitted private communications we’d prefer not to have publicized and many of us have said things we later regretted when we were drunk or angry. Cut this kid a break.

    And what evidence do we have that he regrets it? Where is the “I am horrified by the things I said. I am ashamed of myself and the pain and fear I caused in others.” You don’t get breaks for things like this.

  11. EvilFizz –

    Why do we need evidence that he regrets it? The email (however tasteless) wasn’t meant for anyone but the people he sent it too. Last I checked, having a lousy sense of humor wasn’t a crime.

  13. Several commenters have said things along the lines of “it was a mistake, a slip, forgive him, what’s the big deal?” Maybe it was a mistake, but mistakes have consequences. I have said things that I regretted, and suffered the consequences, including losing a job – and I have apologized.

    McFayden made a threat. He should face the music. Further, he is totally unapologetic, and Duke is making a hero out of him. We’ve been cutting men a break over statements like this for far too long, and it’s time we stop.

    Let’s turn the tables – suppose a female Duke student sent out an e-mail saying how she’d like to invite the lacrosse team to her place, and then lock the door and castrate them all. Do you really think that Duke would spirit her away for her own protection, and then lionize her and make her into a hero? I think not.

    I will also bet that if McFayden was of color, he would not receive such kid-glove treatment.

  14. I can’t even believe how far some people will go to justify the most foulest of shit. Cut this kid a break? Fuck that. I have never, even in my most angriest of moods (and I’m in one of them this very moment), said anything like what this asshole wrote. My momma raised me better than that.

    This is not a joke, people. What McFayden wrote is seriously fucked up. This is not a case of having a lousy sense of humor.

  15. I’m trying to come up with a context in which “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if somebody died?” is “funny”. I don’t quite see the humor potential here, even though lots of conservative commenters and bloggers do.

    Do you watch even watch TV?

    They have jokes about killing people all the time on cartoons like “South Park,” “Venture Brothers” and “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” They absolutely make jokes out of people getting dismembered, decapitated, eyes being gouged out blood spurting and all that stuff.

    Family Guy, which runs on network television, had an episode with a running gag about killing a stripper, and there was an episode of “American Dad,” where the main character goes to a strip club and beats up all the strippers. The guy who makes that show, Seth MacFarlane, has been lauded repeatedly in liberal publications because he makes fun of the Bush administration. The show has a running gag where one of the characters is essentially a pathological sex offender.

    And if you rent “The Aristocrats,” you will see famous comedians mining rape, child sexual abuse, sexual torture and murder for comic value. And it’s funny.

    People think this stuff is funny. I personally think this stuff is funny. If the standard for what was to be presented as funny had to comply with your standards of politically permissible, I don’t think very much would be funny.

    Now I don’t think MacFayden’s letter was funny. He was probably drunk off his ass. But I think the events at that house happened exactly how the lacrosse team said they did; The team had paid $800 for two dancers to perform for several hours, the dancers were unattractive and the accuser showed up inebriated or quickly became inebriated, the dancers had not been expecting 40 people to be at the party and the crowd was rowdy and they got uncomfortable. There a confrontation, and the dancers left having only performed for a few minutes.

    McFayden, drunk and angry at the strippers expresses that privately in a communication that later became public in the contest of a rape allegation. That allegation now appears to be almost certainly a complete fabrication.

    If McFayden had made that statement knowing that one of the dancers had been gang raped at the party, it has a very different connotation than him just blowing off steam because the dancers took $800 and only danced for five minutes.

    Think about the worst thing you ever said in private conversation, and imagine having it released to the world completely out of context, and think about how you’d come out looking. I feel sorry for this kid.

  16. I now believe that no rape occurred there, and I think this is an unavoidable conclusion from the facts made available. The woman lied

    It’s hard to see what her motive is to fabricate the entire thing – after all the harassment she’s endured and even an offer of a cool $2million isn’t enough to make her drop it – I’m inclined to believe her more – not less.

  17. It doesn’t matter if people agree that McFayden’s email was funny.

    It does appear that he’s an asshole. But if being an asshole was justification for expulsion we’d lose half the population of private colleges south of the Mason Dixon line.

    Now *that* was funny.

    It does appear that the rape allegation is falling apart. The media (e.g. Time, Newsweek) have bent over backwards to report inconsistencies after being very aggressive at first.

    McFayden made a threat. He should face the music. Further, he is totally unapologetic, and Duke is making a hero out of him.

    RachelPhilPa – I don’t see any evidence that Duke is ‘making him a hero’. There were and will always be a fringe that attack women who publically acuse men of abuse, but let’s not make them powerful by assigning them more influence than they deserve.

    False accusations of abuse against women are devastating to the cause of making people aware of the extent of the problem. For every false accusation there are many times more incidents of abuse that are not reported.

    We need to be careful to not blindly defend all accusations that fit a profile and stay focused on helping reasonable people understand the real issues of gender, class, power, and abuse.

  18. It’s hard to see what her motive is to fabricate the entire thing – after all the harassment she’s endured and even an offer of a cool $2million isn’t enough to make her drop it – I’m inclined to believe her more – not less.

    At an earlier point in this sordid tale, the fact that a woman has nothing to gain and quite a bit to lose by pursuing prosecution would have been a valid point to make on her behalf. The last time I posted here on this subject a couple of months ago, I told the commenters who were calling the accuser a liar who should, herself be prosecuted, that their allegations and conclusions were not warranted by the facts then available.

    That conclusion is now warranted.

    In light of what we’ve learned about Nifong, with regard to him making misleading comments about the woman’s injuries before he’d received medical reports, he’s no longer entitled to any presumption that he’s pursuing this prosecution in good faith.

    It’s true that the defense lawyers have only selectively disclosed facts from the 1300 pages of evidence that Nifong released to them, but if his total silence in the wake of disclosures by the defense (after giving 70 interviews in March), and his refusal to meet with defense lawyers about exonerating evidence that looks extremely persuasive indicates that he’s not carrying any secret silver bullets.

    The chain of events here isn’t hard to follow. Nifong needs the support of the black community. Nifong whipped the black community into an uproar by publicizing a horrific gang rape that he knew at the time probably didn’t happen, and he suggested that the woman suffered grievous injuries consistent with that kind of attack, even though he had not seen her medical records and they did not support this statement. When the black community demanded justice, Nifong rode to the rescue.

    A hundred and fifty years ago, a local official in North Carolina might have staged a lynching around election time to distract teh community from his incompetence. Clearly, things have become more progressive.

    As for the victim herself, I am very hesitant to accuse a victim of lying about this. But her allegations have been inconsistent and her injuries that night did not suggest a violent gang rape. Her story is not supported by the slightest shred of physical evidence, even though she was thoroughly examined by the rape nurse very shortly after the alleged attack was to have taken place. At least one of the men she’s accused has demonstrated what appears to be an ironclad alibi, and the second woman that was there that night said the rape allegation was a “crock.”

    It’s very rare that an innocent person accused of a crime can actually prove himself innocent, because proving a negative is an impossibility. We don’t impose that burden. Nonetheless, I would argue that the exculpatory evidence presented by the accused in this case is at least “clear and convincing” that this rape did not occur.

    She’s lying.

  19. Whether or not something could possibly be funny depends strongly on context, so the nun/rabbi/priest thing up there is fairly useless. In our culture, merely alluding to something has apparently become a sign of great wit (e.g., The Family Guy), and in this case I’ve heard that the email in question was playing with the text American Psycho. Personally it’s not my cup of tea, but I suspect that a lot of the humour that I do enjoy could be ruined or made obtuse by “the priest” treatment. Not all humour is about setup-punchline jokes. A joke in poor taste is not automatically a threat.

  20. But her allegations have been inconsistent

    Only if you’re expecting total recall from someone who’s just been gang raped, her inconsistencies are consistent with the behavior of someone who’s just been gang raped.

    And what else explains the scant physical evidence? Just because they can be something else, doesn’t mean they are, do they, or do they not, fit with her story?

    It’s very rare that an innocent person accused of a crime can actually prove himself innocent, because proving a negative is an impossibility.

    So on the one hand, you can’t prove a negative, on the other hand there’s proof of a negative?

    And why did she refuse the 2 mill, Nefong isn’t using magical mind control rays to make her do his bidding for no reason other than to save his reputation, is he?

  21. Only if you’re expecting total recall from someone who’s just been gang raped, her inconsistencies are consistent with the behavior of someone who’s just been gang raped.

    And what else explains the scant physical evidence? Just because they can be something else, doesn’t mean they are, do they, or do they not, fit with her story?

    She claimed to have been raped by 20 men and said the second stripper participated.

    And the “physical evidence” is “diffuse swelling of the vaginal walls” which was easily explained by her earlier consensual sex and her performances with sex toys. Her injuries are not consistent with the brutal gang rape she alleges.

    So on the one hand, you can’t prove a negative, on the other hand there’s proof of a negative?

    Can’t prove it conclusively because there isn’t evidence of the fact that something didn’t happen. On the other hand, significant inconsistencies between the allegations and the facts, the absolute lack of physical evidence supporting the allegation, the statement by the second stripper that the rape story was a “crock” all indicate that there is no reason to believe the rape allegation.

    Seligmann’s alibi is proof of the fact he was somewhere else while this rape was supposedly occurring.

    I can’t see how one could continue to reasonably believe this accusation in the wake of the evidence presented and in light of the prosecutor’s obvious political motivations.

    And why did she refuse the 2 mill, Nefong isn’t using magical mind control rays to make her do his bidding for no reason other than to save his reputation, is he?

    Phantom money from a phantom “prominent Duke alum.” If she’s lied about everything else, no reason to believe that happened.

  22. So on the one hand, you can’t prove a negative, on the other hand there’s proof of a negative?

    He didn’t say there was “proof” of a negative, just that there is “clear and convincing” evidence that Seligmann is innocent (which is pretty obvious to those of us with no dog in this fight). It is rare that an accused has such good evidence to back up his claims of innocence.

    Only if you’re expecting total recall from someone who’s just been gang raped, her inconsistencies are consistent with the behavior of someone who’s just been gang raped.

    Or with someone who is lying. I’ll admit that it’s possible that she was raped. Why is it so inconceivable to many of you that maybe she is lying?

  23. This is my litmus test: if I, as an employee of Duke Universtiy, were to write the very same email as McFayden I would lose my job, with no hope of future reinstatement. It would be seen as a threat, as harmful to others, and potentially as harrassment.

    My follow up litmus test: if I, as an employee of Duke University, have to interact wtih McFayden, even in the least tangential manner, I know how he feels about women. I don’t have a choice of whether I can avoid certain parts of campus in the course of my work. The University’s attitude towards him creates, in my mind, a hostile work environment. My boss isn’t allowed pin-up calendars; the University shouldn’t be allowed to trot out students that threaten to murder and mutilate women.

  24. I can’t believe Daniel just tried to justify that email with reference to Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

  25. She claimed to have been raped by 20 men and said the second stripper participated.

    No, the police misquoted her and everybody with an agenda has leapt on that statement ever since. Christ, could you be MORE obvious?

  26. Gee, DAniel@NYU the first two reports you cite rely on the defense attorneys’ comments and presentation, so no dice. Do you think they’re impartial witnesses or something? Are they your idea of sources? Explains a lot.

  27. Duke just doesn’t care about this kind of speech. Someone I know who went to Duke received death threats after he published a controversial piece in a student newspaper there and the administration did nothing.

  28. Betcha if the person getting death threats were a nice white boy, it would be taken very seriously.

  30. Zuzu, I can’t believe he tried to justify that email as some kind of boys will be boys TV sitcom kind of thing.
    And Seligman’s alibi is a tax receipt and a date stamp on a camera phone? Who asks for a taxi receipt? Date stamps can easily be changed, too.

  31. No, the police misquoted her and everybody with an agenda has leapt on that statement ever since. Christ, could you be MORE obvious?

    I have no agenda, I read Newsweek and the NYT, and the only leaping onto that statement I’m relying upon is its citation in those sources. I have seen nothing to indicate that this is the result of a police error.

    The agenda at Newsweek and the NYT has been basically that they don’t like printing stories that turn out to be largely untrue because people in official positions lie to them.

    Gee, DAniel@NYU the first two reports you cite rely on the defense attorneys’ comments and presentation, so no dice. Do you think they’re impartial witnesses or something? Are they your idea of sources? Explains a lot.

    They’re the only ones talking. Nifong replied to their discovery inquiries by disgorging 1300 pages of evidence, and they’ve selectively released large chunks of that to the media.

    The prosecutor has an obligation to give that up to the defendants, but neither he nor they are obligated to supply it to the public. He would be more ethically constrained in releasing actual evidence to the media than they would, especially since part of their job now is to rehabilitate the public image of all 46 of those young men.

    After giving 70 interviews in March, Nifong clammed up, and hasn’t had much to offer since. I think he knows he’s pursuing charges against innocent people and continues to do so regardless because he’d face political fallout from the black community if he doesn’t push this to trial. The fact that he’s ruining these men’s lives is immaterial, of course.

    However, ethics don’t require him to remain silent about issues like his apparent refusal to meet with defense counsel regarding exculpatory evidence. Unlike the defendants, who cooperated fully and never invoked their rights, Nifong is not entitled to have no presumptions drawn from his silence.

    I can’t believe Daniel just tried to justify that email with reference to Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

    Meatwad gets the honeys, G.

  32. Zuzu, I can’t believe he tried to justify that email as some kind of boys will be boys TV sitcom kind of thing.
    And Seligman’s alibi is a tax receipt and a date stamp on a camera phone? Who asks for a taxi receipt? Date stamps can easily be changed, too.

    No. His alibi is an ATM receipt, from when he stopped to get cash on the way home, the cell phone records that prove he was on the phone with his girlfriend and the cab company for a large part of the time the rape was supposedly occurring, and the testimony of the cab driver, whose time of arrival can be determined to within a range of several minutes based on his testimony and the time of the call, and then the dorm records that show when he scanned himself into the dorm.

    The woman claims to have been raped between 12:05 and 12:35. Seligman called the cab company around 12:15 and was on the phone with his girlfriend before that. Five minutes later, he was waiting at the corner for the cabbie, who confirmed that, and then they went to the ATM, stopped for food and he scanned into the dorm around 12:45.

    He was in the house for about five minutes overlapping the time of the alleged rape and during that five minutes he was talking on his cell phone.

  33. Daniel, I’m willing to believe she’s lying, but I’m also willing to believe the accused are guilty until I sit on a jury, hear all the evidence from both sides, and then make a decision. I don’t convict the accused in advance of being anything other than classles jerks, a few of whom seem to be teetering on the verge of serious sociopath-hood (as per the beating incident in Georgetown one of them was involved in, the e-mail, and the fact that they even organized this party in the first place) who I would not let anyhwere near my own daughters. The evidence may exculpate some or all of them; it may not rise to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But I’m not making up my mind unless I hear it ALL, and regardless of outcome, Duke should take a serious look at it’s student code of conduct, on and off campus, and who it wants associated with its name. Glad I did the womens’ college thing with a military academy style honor code. This kind of conduct would likely get you ‘separated from the community’ based on an honor code trial in front of your peers, regarless of whether a rape happened or not. Even the non-rape story is nothing to be proud of, and I’d think more than twice about sending a child to Duke.

  34. And Seligman’s alibi is a tax receipt and a date stamp on a camera phone? Who asks for a taxi receipt?

    I’ve gotten hundreds of taxi receipts. I’ve never had a driver’s license or owned a car (I’m a city slicker).

    And the strongest part of Seligmann’s alibi is the security camera at the ATM. Unless you think the bank is in on the conspiracy too.

  35. Zuzu, I can’t believe he tried to justify that email as some kind of boys will be boys TV sitcom kind of thing.

    Not just a sitcom, but a cartoon sitcom. And somehow he thinks that because Meatwad gets the honeys, this is somehow analogous.

  36. I comment here less frequently than do the other Ambers. A name change is in order.

    Nice try, ginmar, but the person I know who was threatened was a white male.

  37. Too often when people debate this case (or other rape cases), some of them forget that the options are not just “the defendants raped her” or “she is lying.” There’s a third possibility – somebody raped her, but not the defendants. I’m not interested in hashing out all the evidence in this case or even giving my opinion on it, but I do just want to point out that it’s entirely possible that she was raped at the party, but not by one or both of the defendants. So Daniel, even if your view of the evidence (e.g. the alibi evidence) is correct, it’s wrong to assume that therefore she must be lying.

    Of course, all of that is actually irrelevant to the topic of the post.

  38. Think about the worst thing you ever said in private conversation, and imagine having it released to the world completely out of context, and think about how you’d come out looking.

    Since the entire email has been published, how is it ‘completely out of context’? And what context would mitigate the horrific things he said?

  39. Does anyone really think that if a black guy accused along with some black athlete friends of raping a white woman sent that e-mail about killing white women that he would still be at that school? I don’t think so.

  40. So what, bamber? Do you really think one lone white guy getting threatened somehow erases all the women getting threatened?

    Yeah, so it was an ATM receipt. Wow, because it takes FOREVER to use an ATM, so that takes care of about five seconds. Then, too, there’s the way some people here are being deliberately obtuse—-drunken college boys asking for receipt? For why, exactly? Tax deductions? Maybe setting up an alibi in advance?

    Yeah, Danial, you’re being obtuse. The defense attorneys work for whom, exactly? The fact that they’re opening their mouths doesn’t mean shit. They’re defense attorneys.

  41. Do you really think one lone white guy getting threatened somehow erases all the women getting threatened?

    No. But you contended that

    if the person getting death threats were a nice white boy, it would be taken very seriously

    And I responded because that has not, in Duke’s past, been the case. They are apparently apathetic toward a broad spectrum of threatening or offensive speech targeted at different types of people.

  42. I’m sorry, but whether white guys get threatened or not really doesn’t matter to me. It’s not like they don’t back each other up or not. But white guys threatening women? The trolls have been doing nothing but since this case broke.

    So you know one guy who got threatened and nothing happened? Yeah, that helps.

  43. Does anyone really think that if a black guy accused along with some black athlete friends of raping a white woman sent that e-mail about killing white women that he would still be at that school? I don’t think so.

    Can you mention any incident where any person has been punished by a university for a privately circulated e-mail?

    I don’t think it’s Duke’s business to be snooping in people’s e-mails anyway. I think it’s Nazi-esque, in fact, for a university or a police agency to take disciplinary action against a person based on someone reporting private comments to authority figures. If those statements were made in the furtherance of a criminal plan, and if it was not, it’s private speech and nobody’s business.

  45. Duke is not a state actor. Just like an employer, it can get rid of a student or an employee for any reason or no reason based on the content of an e-mail. Remember the dozen or so people let go by the NYT for the content of “private” inter-office e-mail recently that apparently had nothing to do with the workplace? Same thing actually happened in this state to a certain state agency’s employees, and that involved a state actor (so the first amendment actually does apply, it just did not protect this particular speech because its content was merely personal). Check your own employer’s e-mail policy. This guy was using university e-mail. You can bet if the university wanted to, they could disallow his future enrollment. Since doing this would not be actionable, it would be hard to find mention of similar instances in the media. I mean, would the student normally want to publicize this kind of thing? Plus in this case, there was a definite threat in the plain language of the message. Whether he was kidding is a matter of interpretation. A lot of schools may want to play it safe, especially if the kid had a disciplinary record already. The student would be SOL with no cause of action to sue, hence we would probably never hear about it. You may disagree with them, but A LOT of schools have hate speech codes, and this e-mail could well be considered hate speech.

    You never answered my question. What if he were black and the threat were against white women? Fellow student white women, not ‘worthless’ sex workers? His own girlfriend? Would he still be at Duke?

  46. Well, that wasn’t hard. From the LA Times:

    Student’s Expulsion Over E-Mail Use Raises Concern
    CYBERSPACE: CALTECH HARASSMENT CASE ILLUSTRATES GROWING PROBLEM. BUT EXPERTS FEAR UNRELIABLE RECORDS.

    Amy Harmon
    TIMES Staff Writer

    — ——————————————————————————

    In a controversial decision that has polarized the Caltech campus, a promising doctoral candidate was expelled last month for allegedly sexually harassing another student largely via electronic mail.

    The unusual action has raised new concerns over the nature of harassment in a digital age, and the credibility of email records at a time when the use of the medium is steeply increasing, both on and off campus.

    Jinsong Hu, 26, who spent six months in County Jail before being acquitted by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury in June of stalking, insists that he did not send some of the email in question and that parts of the mail he did send were doctored.

    Jiajun Wen, Hu’s former girlfriend, also accused him of verbal and written harassment. But the bulk of the evidence examined in court and in the university’s disciplinary hearings was electronic mail.

    Complaints of email harassment at many of the nation’s universities have risen sharply over the last 18 months as students, faculty and staff have gained increased access to electronic communications.

    Given the ease and relative anonymity with which email can be sent, university officials worry that it’s an especially potent tool for harassment. But at the same time, it’s often possible for email to be manipulated or “spoofed” made to look as though it has been sent by someone else and thus many schools are treating email evidence with considerable caution.

    In the Hu case, for example, one of the apparently harassing email messages that Wen originally told campus authorities had come from Hu was later found to have been a joke sent by a friend of Wen’s new boyfriend from Salt Lake City.

    “Forging email is notoriously easy,” said Gary Jackson, director of academic computing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If you get a piece of ordinary email from me, you have absolutely no way of establishing that I sent it.”

    The Caltech case comes at a time when policymakers at the national and state level are wrestling with myriad questions about how to govern cyberspace. A congressional committee is debating several bills that would regulate the distribution of “indecent” material over the Internet and sexually oriented or harassing email could fit that definition. Connecticut recently passed the nation’s first anticomputer harassment law.

    But important precedents may well be set on university campuses, where most students get a free Internet account and daily tasks are migrating to cyberspace more quickly than anywhere else. Many schools have wired their residence halls to the global computer network, and students are doing homework online and attending “virtual office hours.”

    Caltech may be the first academic institution to expel a student for harassment primarily based on email records. Hu’s appeal to Caltech Vice President Gary Lorden was rejected last month.

    Students and faculty at Caltech say the case has divided the campus and especially its closeknit Chinese community.

    “Email is the bread and butter of an institution like this,” said Yuk Yung, a geology professor at Caltech. “But it is very hard to prove that the person whose name is on it indeed sent it, and that it has not been tampered with. Especially here, where these kids all have extraordinary computing ability.”

    Described by his adviser, chemistry and applied physics professor William Goddard, as a brilliant student who scored the highest of nearly 1 million students taking the Chinese equivalent of the GRE exam, Hu was one year away from finishing his degree.

    While a university computer expert testified that she traced the offending email back to Hu’s account, Hu’s defenders argue that Wen had his password, that others had access to his computer which was often left logged on and that email is easily edited once it is received. “Nobody should be convicted or expelled based on unencrypted email,” said Hu’s attorney, Anita Brenner, who has written several articles on cyberspace and the law. “Particularly in a campus climate of account sharing, sharing of passwords and mail spoofing.”

    Because of the difficulties involved in authenticating email and because the social and legal protocols defining electronic harassment have not yet been fully worked out many university administrators advise recipients of unwanted email simply to ask the suspected sender to stop. Many schools, including Caltech, also prohibit students from sharing passwords.

    Kathleen McMahon, assistant dean of students at UCLA, says email harassment has become prevalent in several forms. Four students were suspended last quarter for planting “email bombs” that disrupted the school’s computer system. And there have been several incidents of email threats of violence.

    Most common, though, is email harassment stemming from romantic troubles.

    “I’m amazed with the amount of sexual harassment among students and the use of email to express it,” McMahon said. “When relationships go bad, instead of stalking the student they send 10 email messages saying ‘I can’t believe you won’t go out with me.’ ”

    In cyberspace, where facelessness has often led to extreme forms of expression, from angry “flaming” to amorous confessions, some believe such messages may mean less than they do in other forms. Civil libertarians say that moves to restrict or monitor email may violate the First Amendment. And, they note, one can simply not read unwanted email.

    But antiharassment advocates say the scope of the Internet and the capability it provides individuals to publish their opinions widely make it particularly dangerous.

    Largely in response to the increased usage, the University of California recently drafted a systemwide email policy that critics fear will compromise the privacy of those who use a UC account to log on to the Internet.

    Cornell University is grappling with a similar issue this month. University administrators are getting barraged with email from Internet users across the country offended by an email message initially sent among four freshmen titled “Top 75 reasons why women (bitches) should not have freedom of speech.”

    “I think everybody who got it forwarded it to everybody they knew, and we’re receiving a tremendous number of complaints,” said Marjorie Hodges, Cornell’s legal policy adviser on computer matters. “It’s a perfect example of something that might not violate university policies but is indeed offensive and does disrupt university business.”

    Hodges says individual complaints regarding email harassment doubled last year and the previous year, and she expects the trend to continue as more members of the campus community go online.

    MIT’s Jackson, whose colleagues started calling him “Dear Abby” after he helped resolve a particularly convoluted email triangle across three campuses, says that most cases can be dealt with simply by getting those involved to ask for it to stop. At MIT, where email has long been the main form of communication, the university has implemented a system called “stop it” to handle harassment complaints.

    But the borderline between free speech and harassment can be blurry, especially when electronic harassment takes on particularly ugly forms. Last year, a racist message about Asians was posted to a widely read newsgroup on Chinese literature, under the name of an MIT student.

    The student denied having sent the message, but she nonetheless became the recipient of hundreds of angry emails. Jackson was unable to identify the actual sender.

    Further complicating the unfamiliar territory is the assumed authenticity of electronic records.

    “There is a tendency for noncomputer experts to believe anything the computer says because the computer says it,” said Steve Worona, a computer expert at Cornell. “But that’s just not the case.”

    There are several tools for encrypting messages and stamping email with an electronic signature to verify the sender, but no good way of telling if an unencrypted message is authentic.

    At MIT, Jackson handles about 50 harassment complaints a year. “But if there’s been an incident and all the woman has in her hand is a piece of harassing email and that is the sole evidence, there’s nothing you can do at that point,” he said.

    The Caltech case involved four pieces of email. The first one Hu allegedly sent to Wen when they broke up in August, 1994. The other three were apparently sent to Bo Yu, her new boyfriend, in January.

    Of those, the first described a sexual experience with Wen. “I would like to talk about our happy life in bed and her body which I know so well,” the email printout said, according to court records. The next one continued, “If you are beginning to suffer now, tell Jiajun about it. She knows what it means.” Hu maintains he did not send either of them. He says he first learned of messages allegedly being forged from his account when he tried to sign on one day in early January and found that it had been disabled by a campus computer administrator.

    Caltech’s dean of graduate students, Arden Albee, says that email is no different than any other form of communication, and therefore falls under the university’s harassment policy.

    “Just like phone calls, it typically turns out that the system keeps many more records of the email messages than most understand,” Albee said. “These can be traced if the need arises.”

    Albee was one of three faculty members on the panel that decided to expel Hu. The university said all disciplinary matters are confidential and declined to explain what records the committee relied on to determine who sent the email.

    The court case, in which many students testified on both sides, involved allegations of both verbal and electronic harassment and threats. Hu, who had been held on $150,000 bail, was acquitted after three hours of jury deliberations.

    Goddard says the main issue in the university’s investigation of Hu was whether he had an alibi for the times when the email message log indicated they were sent. And he did for two of them. But even then, administration officials noted that he could have written a program to have the computer send the mail while he was no longer at his terminal.

    “My own belief is that he didn’t send the mail,” Goddard said. “And in the worstcase scenario that he did send it, it’s not clear to me that it’s sexual harassment. It’s email.”

    Goddard has appealed the expulsion to Caltech’s provost.

    “My personal belief is that the underlying reason they took what I think is a very unreasonable position is that it’s the safest thing for Caltech. And that may be true, but on the other hand we’re supposed to be here for the students.”

  47. Student email is the equivalent of employee email. It is Duke’s buisness.

    Never been to Duke, but both the universities where I have studied had extensive privacy policies regarding student e-mail and internet usage.

    It’s not consistent with the academic mission for the schools to go around acting like the thought police.

    Duke is not a state actor. Just like an employer, it can get rid of a student or an employee for any reason or no reason based on the content of an e-mail. Remember the dozen or so people let go by the NYT for the content of “private” inter-office e-mail recently that apparently had nothing to do with the workplace? Same thing actually happened in this state to a certain state agency’s employees, and that involved a state actor (so the first amendment actually does apply, it just did not protect this particular speech because its content was merely personal). Check your own employer’s e-mail policy. This guy was using university e-mail. You can bet if the university wanted to, they could disallow his future enrollment.

    For what purpose? Just because the university is not technically bound by the first amendment doesn’t mean they should go expelling students for pure speech because you find it offensive.

    People get fired for embarrassing their employers, and that’s why people are advised to keep their office communications office-related only, and some employers closely monitor their employees computer use to prevent time-wasting on the clock. School internet connections are there for broader use and, in my experience, come with privacy guarantees.

    And it makes no difference if he was black, and, in the absence of proof, I don’t believe that schools apply their disciplinary policies in a racist manner.

    If the student had made a serious threat against a particular person, such as his girlfriend, then action might be taken to protect that individual. She would be able to use that fact to obtain a restraining order, or it might be in violation of laws related to stalking. If he threatened in a way that created an apprehension of immediate danger, it might constitute assault.

    McFayden’s statement isn’t a big deal, not because it’s about women instead of men, or about strippers instead of students, but because it’s obviously not evidence of a plan to actually commit the acts describe. It’s merely a vulger, drunken expression of anger regarding the incident with the strippers.

    It is my experience that angry people often make aspirational references to violent acts they don’t actually intend to commit, from the pedestrian “I’d like to kick his ass” to the more imaginative. I don’t think it’s a big deal.

  48. I don’t think it’s Duke’s business to be snooping in people’s e-mails anyway. I think it’s Nazi-esque, in fact, for a university or a police agency to take disciplinary action against a person based on someone reporting private comments to authority figures. If those statements were made in the furtherance of a criminal plan, and if it was not, it’s private speech and nobody’s business.

    IIRC, the email was obtained via warrant.

    And Duke certainly has an interest, if these hateful messages are going out with a duke.edu address or out over their server. If he’s going to be using their resources for this, he’s going to be accountable.

    And where do you get the idea that private statements can’t be used as a basis for criminal prosecution?

  49. Never been to Duke, but both the universities where I have studied had extensive privacy policies regarding student e-mail and internet usage.

    It’s not consistent with the academic mission for the schools to go around acting like the thought police.

    So why don’t you go dig up those policies and let us know if they’re completely hands-off or if they have certain exceptions to the privacy rules?

  50. We’re not talking about a student’s yahoo account here. We’re talking about a university provided email account. If I were to send the very same email from my work account, I would be fired. No matter my intent.

    From Duke’s OIT webpage:

    Computing and electronic communications at Duke University:
    Security & privacy

    The purpose of this document is to establish and promote the ethical, legal, and secure use of computing and electronic communications for all members of the University community.

    The University cherishes freedom of expression, the diversity of values and perspectives inherent in an academic institution, the right to acknowledgment, and the value of privacy for all members of the Duke community. At the same time, the University may find it necessary to access and disclose information from computer and network users’ accounts to the extent required by law, to uphold contractual obligations or other applicable University policies, or to diagnose and correct technical problems. For this reason, the ultimate privacy of messages and files cannot be ensured. In addition, system failures may lead to loss of data, so users should not assume that their messages and files are secure.

    Neither the University nor its agents restrict the content of material transported across its networks. While the University does not position itself as a censor, it reserves the right to limit access to its networks or to remove material stored or posted on University computers when applicable University policies, contractual obligations, or state or federal laws are violated. Alleged violations will receive the same academic due process as any other alleged violation of University policy, contractual obligations, or state or federal laws.

    Endorsed by Information Technology Advisory Committee
    Effective May 1997

  51. That means they comply with warrants or subpoenas and retain the right to cancel service or remove web content from their servers to protect themselves from legal liability. That’s the same thing you get from a private ISP.

    I have always treated my student e-mail addresses as my primary personal addresses, and when I lived in student housing, my university connection was my primary internet service, and I and have used them for personal and confidential communication, and I have engaged in confidential communication over university internet connections while living in student housing, and I fully expected privacy and confidentiality in those communications. The school should not be snooping in e-mail and that policy doesn’t authorize them to snoop in e-mail.

    Also, while e-mail harassment, as in the example above, may be covered by discipinary policies, there are absolutely not disciplinary policies relating to offensive content in student e-mail.

  52. Daniel, it’s not “obvious” to me he’s not serious. He just had a party with black strippers and now he is proposing to invite more over and hurt them. If he had already called the escort service and bought a filet knife, would that be enough for you? Probably not.

    Regardless of how racially neutral a school thinks it is in applying policies like that, if this guy were black and his e-mail had been about ‘some sorority bitches’ and he and his buddies had just been accused of raping a white woman who belonged to a sorority, plus he and his teamates’ behavior had already come to the attention of the dean’s office in the past year, I contend Duke would not need to expel him because he would have to go into hiding. Muffy and Veronica’s alumni parents would be jamming the dean’s phone lines and screaming for protection for their darlings from the dangerous thug, while the white fraterity boys would be getting lickkered up and wandering the campus with baseball bats looking for him. And the black community would hardly dare to defend him at that point. The univer$$ity $taunchly $upport$ i$ $tronges$ con$tituenceie$. Don’t you think? Or are you that naive?

  53. The school should not be snooping in e-mail and that policy doesn’t authorize them to snoop in e-mail.

    Where was the school snooping? A person who received that email reported it to university officials — as part of an ongoing investigation. Where’s the big snoop?

  54. Right. And once baby boy hit “send,” the recipients could do what they will with the email.

  55. Right. And once baby boy hit “send,” the recipients could do what they will with the email.

    Yeah, like edit it to make it say anything they want it to (happened to me once – luckily I had saved a copy of the original e-mail so it was obvious that it had been edited by the recipient).

    Has McFayden admitted that he sent this e-mail, or is it just assumed to be sent by him as it has his e-mail addres on it?

  56. We’re not talking about a student’s yahoo account here. We’re talking about a university provided email account. If I were to send the very same email from my work account, I would be fired. No matter my intent.

    If you were caught watching TV at work, you’d probably be fired. If you were caught having sex with your significant other at work, you’d probably be fired. If you were caught consuming alcohol at work, you’d probably be fired, too. Students do all of these things at Duke without risk of expulsion, because we live here. The situations aren’t analogous, Q Grrl, especially because students are contractually required to use Duke as their residence for at least three years of their undergraduate tenure.

  57. I’m disturbed by some of the comments that seem to suggest that Dukies are making a “hero” of McFayden. We’re not. Even the people in his inner circle were shocked.

    Whether or not it was a joke, it was in extremely poor taste.

    What you guys may not know is that most kids at Duke get suspended over stuff like this. It has happened before. Someone will write a nasty mass e-mail, send it to a bunch of people, people will get disturbed, show the e-mail to an administrator, and the person is suspended.

    It happened to someone I knew very well. He wrote an e-mail about a residential coordinator that had a number of disturbing sexual references and suggested raping her as a “joke” to a lot of his friends in a fraternity that I used to party with while on campus. He was treated in the exact same manner as McFayden. He’s back now, but he’s lost his housing privileges, and is on probation.

    There is a standard policy at work here.

  58. Yeah, Natalia, do you have any proof for this, or are you just pulling this crap out of your ass? Because the signs posted on the frat house suggest otherwise.

  59. I second Natalia. Also, RachelPhilPa,

    I will also bet that if McFayden was of color, he would not receive such kid-glove treatment.

    That would be why, when Shelden Williams was accused of rape the summer before he matriculated, he was hung out to dry, right? Or when Casey Sanders hit his girlfriend, he was kicked out of school, right? Or when people accused Chris Duhon’s and Carlos Boozer’s families of using their Duke connections to get jobs, Duke and Coach K immediately cut all ties to the Duhons and Boozers, to save their asses, right? Except that’s the opposite of what actually happened in all those cases.

    Duke protects ALL Dukies. The question is to what extent the administration should do so, not whether the protection is universal.

  61. ginmar, can you provide some examples where the protections in question were not extended to a female member of the Duke undergraduate community in order to prove that you must have a penis to enjoy administrative defense?

    I’m thinking, and I can’t come up with any examples.

  62. Alison, if you go there you know, but none of the examples you site seem to involve something that happened on campus, or even while these people were Duke students. I still think my hypothetical would be different, because it would stack the protection of a white Duke woman against a black Duke man. Whom would the university choose to protect if the e-mail where sent and there was already an alleged on/near campus rape of a white woman on the table?

  63. bmc90, I’m pretty sure that, with the exception of Shelden’s case, all of those above-linked items happened while the people in question were Duke students.
    Your hypothetical is different, though, you’re right. All I was trying to say is that in cases where it’s a Duke student against anyone else, Duke will always protect its student. I wasn’t trying to make assumptions about what would happen during an internal Duke student on Duke student investigation. However, given your example (and bear in mind I don’t have any particular evidence to back this up – it’s just my gut feeling, and as such probably doesn’t mean much), I think Duke would protect the guy. I mean, they’d obviously give up any evidence they had to if it were subpoenaed, but the patriarchy’s pretty strong around here.

  64. Alison, if that’s true then I see the Duke women who have been vocally defending the accused from day one as merely seeking the protection of the patriarchy by trying to show they support it. Because whether anyone is guilty of rape or not, the rest of the conduct involved, including the e-mail, is fairly indefensible.

  65. Students do all of these things at Duke without risk of expulsion, because we live here. The situations aren’t analogous, Q Grrl, especially because students are contractually required to use Duke as their residence for at least three years of their undergraduate tenure.

    So I see that you’ve been following the news about the football team this week, eh? Students have long been held accountable by the university for their “extracurricular” activities.

  66. Allison, I did want to say that in your mind the parallel between my employee status and a student’s status as student doesn’t seem all that apparent, but the fact is, McFayden chose to use his Duke account for that email. Therefore he is liable. Yahoo offers free email accounts; so do many others. If you want to spew racist, misogynistic crap, do it on your own time; if you choose not to, then don’t whine about being sanctioned for it. If McFayden was placing flyers on campus urging the mutilation of women, he’d be suspended for that too.

  67. If you were caught watching TV at work, you’d probably be fired. If you were caught having sex with your significant other at work, you’d probably be fired. If you were caught consuming alcohol at work, you’d probably be fired, too. Students do all of these things at Duke without risk of expulsion, because we live here. The situations aren’t analogous, Q Grrl, especially because students are contractually required to use Duke as their residence for at least three years of their undergraduate tenure.

    It’s nice that Duke does not expel you for even such crimes as public or underage drinking, but that is not to say that they couldn’t. I think you are contractually required to live at Liberty University, too, but you’d fer sure be expelled for any of the above, even TV watching, unless is was Faux News.

  69. Therefore he is liable. Yahoo offers free email accounts; so do many others. If you want to spew racist, misogynistic crap, do it on your own time; if you choose not to, then don’t whine about being sanctioned for it.

    Office e-mail and office internet connections are obviously meant for office purposes, and the expectation of privacy is accordingly quite low, since you haven’t been given an office e-mail account for any kind of private communication. A student e-mail address is simply not comparable; a university is more analogous to a commercial ISP than a corporate IT department when describing the relationship between the school and the student for that purpose.

    I fully expect that if McFayden had sent that message to a friend from his yahoo or gmail, the school would have responded in exactly the same way; suspended McFayden as a result of the criminal suspicion that the e-mail surrounded him with, and reinstated him when it became clear that he had not committed any crime.

    I also expect that the school would apply its policy in the same way toward a white student as toward a black student. There is no evidence of any concern on the part of universities about black men having sex with white sorority girls, and in several instances, such as the case of the University of Colorado, sex with white sorority girls was unabashedly and officially used as an inducement to get black athletes to come to the school.

    I expect that black duke athletes, particularly basketball players, find the supply of willing white sorority girls to be almost inexhaustible, and it’s not unreasonable to postulate that they have, on occasion, transmitted statements, comments or jokes on the subject over the e-mail system.

    Now, a violent threat regarding a specfic person sent to that person would probably violate the harassment policies and trigger action by the school, and any threat to persons which the school was informed of. I think that the school is right to take seriously any violent speech, to the extent that it might connote an intent to commit actual violence, and I think they did that.

    However, when it becomes clear that such speech isn’t connected to actual violence, it becomes something that the school has no business regulating under its disciplinary code, whether its status as a private institution allows it to or not.

  70. Daniel, commercial ISPs respond to subpoenas and warrants as well.

    Moreover, the Duke policy on email has been produced, and it allows just what happened, so what exactly are you arguing for?

  71. Q Grrl, You mean underage consumption of alcohol is ILLEGAL? No way! Wow. Thanks for the update.

    Underage drinking is illegal. Drinking on East is prohibited by RLHS. Plagiarism (as per the football team example) is explicitly condemned under Duke’s code of conduct. All of these things are enumerated somewhere as being “against the rules”. The difference between your argument and mine, as I see it, is this – Duke is in North Carolina, a right to work state. As such, if a particular action of yours is not specifically condoned by your contract, Duke has the right to terminate your employment. However, I think that Duke’s attitude towards student behavior in the past has shown that if a student action is not specifically prohibited by University or state laws, Duke will not intervene (or any intervention will be relatively low-key). I don’t really know whether this is the right approach, necessarily, but there it is. I would expect the major point of debate (if there is any) among Duke officials would be whether the email constitutes harrassment, which is provided for in the code of conduct. I’m sorry if I’ve sounded snippy in trying to make that point; I didn’t mean to be rude.

    bmc90, I think you’re right. Honestly, I don’t understand the groundswell of undergrad female support for the lacrosse team, but it does seem in some ways to play into the overarching “sports players as alpha males” sentiment around parts of campus. And it is icky.

  72. PS. Full disclosure – while I’ll be living on campus for the next two weeks or so, I don’t go to Duke anymore. I graduated with Natalia.

  73. Allison, I think it’s almost like the wife with the black eye hitting the police officer as he drags her abusive husband off to jail. She can’t admit that she’d just be better off without the guy because after living with him so long, her head is messed up. She has to defend him, because if not, then she’s admitting that she has been living with a monster for years and hasen’t done much about it. It doesn’t seem like the Duke women have much a voice in how men treat them (no real dating, participation in frat parties clad in lingere), but no matter what the men do or how much it deteriorates (I would definitely eschew people who were bringing strippers/possible prostitutes on campus – ugh – can you say disease), they don’t seem to turn around and say, hey, your days of hooking up with us are over. Bleh.

    Daniel, you are still missing my hypothetical. I wasn’t talking about good old jungle fever, but about the whole scenario being the same (alleged rape), with the race and class status of the alleged victims and perps different. Rape is not consistent with anyone’s academic mission, and when you have been accused of it, even wrongly, if you then go around sending out e-mails about hurting people in a sado-sexual manner, a univiersity may well consider that you are not exactly going to be their poster child.

  74. bmc90, I just want to make sure I make this clear – when you say “Duke women”, it’s true that that dynamic does exist, but it applies to less than half (probably closer than 25%) of the women on campus. The rest of us manage to get along just fine without making out with other women while drunk to prove ourselves sexy. The Rolling Stone article made it sound like that’s a pervasive mood on campus, where in fact the author was only talking about approx. 500 of 6000 undergraduates. It’s not as bad as it might sound.

  75. I expect that black duke athletes, particularly basketball players, find the supply of willing white sorority girls to be almost inexhaustible, and it’s not unreasonable to postulate that they have, on occasion, transmitted statements, comments or jokes on the subject over the e-mail system.

    Not to play on nasty stereotypes or anything like that…

  76. What!!! Every word of that article is not true of every single Duke undergraduate? I’m demanding my money back from Rolling Stone. Because I can assure you that true to our reputation, everyone in my undergraduate really was a castrating bitch.

  77. Ginmar, in college, men get away with a lot. Duke is no different, we are not superior in any way. But to suggest that the overwhelming majority of Dukies condone MacFayden’s actions is ridiculous. Most of us were too busy studying for finals to even get a real grip on the situation. However, many of girls who personally knew MacFayden were initially shocked. I was at a party right after the e-mail came to light, and some women who knew him personally were there. They couldn’t believe that this was the same person.

    As for the lacrosse house, I drove by a couple of nights ago, and there are no signs on it. There used to be signs that said “innocent until proven guilty,” but those were not signs that commented on MacFayden’s specific situation. I am not aware of any specific actions in support of MacFayden, but then again, when I discovered that my friend sent a similar e-mail last year, I was couldn’t believe it for a long time too. I was tempted to defend him because I thought I knew him.

    Most women are raped by men they know, because many assholes know how to pass themselves off as cool guys. MacFayden succeeded in this, as did my former buddy. The lacrosse system nurtured this deception, and the warning signs were ignored. Furthermore, some unfortunate Duke women will do anything to be in the “lacrosse inner-circle,” even when it comes to defending the indefensible. When the initial shock wears off, they rememeber that they still want to be invited to their parties in the future. They remember that MacFayden was supposed to be a “nice guy.” It’s a sad situation and I’m not sure what to do about it.

    There is also a university precedent at work when it comes to MacFayden and I hope everyone remembers that.

    Now, please stop using disrespectful language.

  81. Because I can assure you that true to our reputation, everyone in my undergraduate really was a castrating bitch.

    I have that tee-shirt, and so does my daddy. He wears it running.

    More topically, it seems like the Duke code of conduct does allow it to respond to warrants/subpoenae (which, um, it has to), so I don’t see this as being a First Amendment problem.

  84. My, my, my, aren’t you quite the wonderful little rep for Duke?

    Can’t imagine why blue collar women like myself have problems with coeds like you.

  85. Ah, you’re that Natalia, the one that so admired my writing elsewhere. The mother that you speak of? Was killed by medication errors just before I went to Iraq. I, too, will no longer be contributing to progressive Islam.

  86. Ginmar, I’m sorry for your loss. Furthermore, I dare you to find anything in my comments to you that suggests a contempt for blue-collar women, or anyone else, for that matter. You’re projecting.

    I admire your writing very much, but what you have produced here is incoherent, rude, and, above all else, alienating. Not to mention the fact that you have hijacked a discussion on someone else’s blog with petty insults.

    I’m not interested in continuing this conversation. Best of luck to you.

  87. Sweetie, you’re the one who said if you were my mother you’d kill yourself. You’re the one defending Duke. FAct is, McFayden hasn’t been run out of town, suspended, or discussed disparagingly by anybody but feminists. Women who do dare criticize the asshole find themselves the object of foul language and threats. But, hey, because nobody expresses support for him any longer, he doesn’t represent Duke. Whatever.

    Also, don’t tell me you’re sorry for my loss.

  88. Oh dear, I told myself I wouldn’t…

    Ginmar, you’re the one who brought up the “mother” comment. If you’re going to dish it out, be prepared to be answered in turn. Damn right I’m going to defend Duke, I went there; more specifically, I am going to defend the Duke I experienced for four years, not the minority of lacrosse players and their hangers-on. If you can’t tell the difference, it’s not my problem.

    And MacFayden WAS suspended, you silly goose.

    Furthermore, nobody on Duke’s campus was publicly threatened for speaking up on what happened. I ought to know, I was one of the many who spoke up.

    Also, don’t calll me sweetie. And don’t bring up your mother’s death if you don’t people to respond to it.

  89. Gee, that’s funny, Natalia, because you’re the one who incited the remark in the first case with your demadn for respect.

    So you went to Duke and you’re defending it and how not all the people that went there are sexist and racist. Somehow, with all the complaints racked up by that frat house, I kind of doubt that. A gang rape doesn’t come out of nowhere, and the guys that might consider a black woman the sort of woman that won’t be avenged also know enough to pick their targets wisely. This one surprised them.

    It’s a rich white boy’s school, and you’re defending it. How nifty. You’ll get my respect when you’ve earned it. Not before.

  90. Heh, Ginmar, you fly off the handle, but somehow it’s someone else’s fault? I don’t buy it.

    FYI I don’t need your “respect” and I didn’t ask for it. Respectful language is a hallmark of real debate, but it’s plain to me now that debate is not what you wish to engage in. I’ve been labouring under a misconception. Cheerio.

  91. Gee, when my language works for your cause, you believe in it, when it does’t, you repudiate it? What a shock.

    I don’t care who someone is—-Muslim, Xtian, Jew, supposed feminist—-I’ll call them on their shit. You have a probelm with that? Well, then, you should have noticed before now.

    My attitude toward Islam has not changed. My attitude toward may things—has not changed. The only thing has changed is your awareness.

    Knock yourself out, college girl.

  92. I kind of doubt that. A gang rape doesn’t come out of nowhere, and the guys that might consider a black woman the sort of woman that won’t be avenged also know enough to pick their targets wisely. This one surprised them.

    It does when it’s a total fabrication.

  93. Daniel, something bad happened that night. If you take the e-mail and all the accused’s statements as true, at least there was a big dispute between black female strippers and white guys who hired them. Hence the e-mail about the fileting the next day. If nothing else, this was a pissing contest that the white guys never believed could turn on them, but it did. And part of that belief indubitably had to do with the race, class and gender of the stippers. If they had been in a dispute over payment for and performance of services with Martha Stewart’s catering company which was supposed to provide food for the party, I don’t think there would have been e-mails about fileting the next day. There might have been some unpleasant words, but the men would not have felt this obviously intense sense of entitlement to the services they paid to receive, to the point that not receiving what they wanted made them that angry. Nor would they have handled a dispute with Martha in such an apparently disrespectful manner (assuming that’s all it was). Finally, if Martha had shown up in an emegency room a few hours later with a black eye, would anyone have really questioned her story when she said one of the guys at the party was drunk and decked her? I think not. Gender, class and race are making a muddle out of these facts. When looking at them and everyone’s story, always remember that.

  94. Pssst, I graduated. So the correct term would be former college girl.

    Ginmar, your essays are amazing. But you can’t debate. You haven’t addressed anything I’ve said about Duke from a personal perspective of an alum and a feminist. All you can do is slag on me for not falling in with the “it’s a racist and sexist institution” party line. You’re not playing by the rules, and I wouldn’t be too proud of that. It makes you come off as angry and sad; a grown woman, a soldier, whipped up in a frothy rage over the mere idea of some “college girl” challenging her prejudice against an institution she knows virtually nothing about (as evidenced by your ludicrous suggestion that Macfayden was not suspened, I’ll say it again, He was!).

    I opened up my mind when I read your work on Iraq, because I don’t know what it’s like to be a soldier.You don’t know what it’s like to be a Duke student either, but you refuse to listen.

  95. Daniel, something bad happened that night.

    I agree. Something bad did happen that night, and the warning signs were there for a while. A friend of mine, a black girl, was a neighbour to some lacrosse players in Edens. On more than one separate occasion, her neighbours, although genial when sober, would knock on her door while inebriated and yell,

    “Please, I just want to try it with a black chick!”

    The team was out of control. They had established themselves as larger than life and untouchable. Their record for alcohol infractions was horrendous. Several of them, the same ones who lived in Edens, were embroiled in a racial incident last year. Their coach basked in the glory of sporting success, refusing to address this train-wreck in slow-motion. While all of this was going down, Duke switched presidents. PSM went down. There was upheaval everywhere, and not enough people were paying attention.

    Even if she wasn’t raped, the larger issues are still pertinent. Something tells me that people are paying attention now. Or so I hope. I have faith in Brodhead, as an administrator and as a politician.

  96. Natalia, indeed I often don’t get what I want from service people but I have never discussed fileting them afterward. Of course, I also was never part of a group with a long disciplinary record and history of brushes with the law, which would lead me to believe that I could get away with handling disagreements however I wanted without getting in serious trouble. And with all this history, they expect, without question to be believed no matter what. Incredible. I can tell you now that if either of my kids had half of the disciplinary problems of the average guy on this team, they’d be home living with their parents and going to community college so their behavior could be monitored. But when you enable people to just keep goofing up, this is what you get, rape or no rape an absoulte disgrace.

  97. I agree comepletely, bmc. I would love to know what their parents were thinking. Many of them had to be aware of what was going on. The Arabs, however, have a saying: “A monkey in his mother’s eye is a gazelle.”

    I’ve seen people get pulled out of Duke for messing up, but for some reason, the lacrosse players were treated like precious china by everyone in their immediate circle, including the folks back home.

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