Well, compared to some of their male counterparts they certainly seem like better people, but via Is That Legal? I learned that law prof Jim Lindgren is arguing at the Volohk Conspiracy that the Duke women’s lacrosse team deserves campus service awards for showing solidarity with the male Duke lacrosse players who were accused of rape and other crimes. Lingren wrote:
… Every year Duke gives many graduating students prizes for contributions to the community. Every graduating member of the Duke women’s lacrosse team (as well as perhaps the chief reporters and editors of the Chronicle) should be given the William J. Griffith University Service Award:
The William J. Griffith University Service Award will be presented to a select number of graduating students whose contributions to the Duke and larger communities have significantly impacted University life. Students whose efforts demonstrate an understanding of the responsibilities of effective university, communal and global citizenship are eligible for this award.
To have stood up for justice and the best principles of the Duke community in the face of opposition from some members of the faculty, the administration, and the press was an act of bravery that should be rewarded. When one compares their behavior to the usual activities for which such prizes are given to students, these student-athletes engaged in actions that risked real sacrifices of the kinds that one can’t list as credentials on applications to graduate or professional schools–risking their own grades, reputations, and honor.
Such obviously deserved prizes would show real contrition on the part of the administration.
There appear to be other awards that these students have also earned. The most ironic award that one of these brave students might be eligible for is the”Karla F.C. Holloway Award for Service to Duke.”The fact that it is given out by the African & African American Studies Department may mean that none of the Duke women’s lacrosse team members would qualify (I have no idea what their majors might be), but one of the team members would certainly fit the description of “Service to Duke.” …
Charming the way Lindgren worked race into this too, isn’t it? You should read the whole post for the full, appalling context. You just know that if someone posting at The Volokh Conspiracy is saying nice things about women, particularly female athletes, it is unlikely to be a celebration of Title IX, but this seems like a new low. Law prof Eric Muller responded in comments:
Jim, to my eye, this post from last May seems much closer to right than yours.
I think you are blurring the line between what you know now and what the women really knew then. And I also think you’re omitting things that the women actually knew then, including their male counterparts’ well-earned reputations for drunken excess and one male team member’s much-publicized sexually sadistic and homicidal fantasies.
Friends deserve praise for standing up for friends. Absolutely. But friend-for-friend loyalty isn’t the same thing as omniscience, and it isn’t usually the stuff of campus service awards.
A commenter named Brian Church followed Eric’s comment with this, which was also directed at Lingren:
What is your source for the claim that the women’s lacrosse team knew of the exculpatory DNA evidence back in May? This story claims that defense attorneys were not made aware of the DNA report until October.
It seems like if one is going to praise the women’s lacrosse team, to the point of commending them with awards, one should have some sort of conclusive evidence that their defense of the men’s team was principled and well reasoned rather than reflexive circling the wagons. At least one women’s lacrosse player in May explained her wearing the “innocent” headband by saying, “All the athletes at Duke all kind of stick together,. To be fair, the only other student quoted gives a more reasonable “innocent until proven guilty” defense, but nothing in any story I’ve seen shows that the women’s lacrosse team had any sort of special knowledge that the accused were innocent, or that there had been any sort of prosecutorial misconduct.
Perhaps jumping to a conclusion of innocence based on character assessments is less egregious than jumping to a conclusion of guilty based on victim’s statements; but aren’t the real people deserving of praise here those who withheld all judgement until the facts were in?
And Eric Muller later clarfied his own comment, writing:
… You’ll note that I said that the post to which I linked was “closer to right” than Jim’s. The reason I said “closer to right” was precisely because I didn’t think that the word “simpletons” was a fair characterization of the women. That characterization aside, I do think that the linked piece is essentially correct in characterizing what the women showed as loyalty (which it was) rather than “correct knowledge” (which Jim L. says it was, but it wasn’t).
This reminds me why I usually only read Orin Kerr’s VC posts, and miss his eponymous solo blog.
–Ann Bartow
