Duke Scandal Raises Issues

The turmoil over recent rape allegations aimed at Duke men’s lacrosse team has brought an immense amount of negative attention to that institution’s athletic department.

For a school that has long been held up as striking an excellent balance between athletics and academics while avoiding the transgressions that have often marred programs at other big-time schools, this attention is new and exceptionally disappointing. Duke teams have often been held up as a model of how college athletics should be; an academically great institution fielding teams from which most players graduate and few, if any, get into legal trouble.

So it came as a tremendous shock to most people in the athletic community when three Duke lacrosse players were accused of raping one of two strippers hired for a party at the house of some team members.

Part of what makes these allegations so surprising is that the incident occurred at Duke as opposed to, for example, Florida State or Miami. These are two of the many Division I schools with notorious histories of indiscretions by athletes and questionable admissions decisions (most recently, Miami linebacker Willie Williams was admitted in 2004 despite 11 arrests by the age of 19).

But Duke and schools like it (i.e. Harvard) are not supposed to have problems like this, and this scenario forces everyone to evaluate the chance that such an event could occur on our own campus.

There are many similarities between the two schools that make this question even more salient. Both are elite private schools, both enroll students primarily from outside of the state, and both have significant town-gown issues.

But even more important than these more superficial similarities is the shared thread of privilege at both schools. Duke and Harvard students share a rare level of academic and financial privilege, and the added stratification of athletics could further embolden some athletes at Harvard, like at Duke, to believe that they are above the community, the school, and even the law.

But despite the similarities between the situations, there is hope that Harvard will continue to avoid such troubling issues.

Harvard’s athletics atmosphere, while very competitive on the field, is less intense and isolated than that of other colleges. While athletes at other institutions live in special housing or in tight-knit groups off campus, Harvard athletes are spread throughout the college, whether they block together or not. The rape in question at Duke occurred at an off-campus party in a house rented by some lacrosse players, but high rents and police presence in Cambridge help make such situations, which are obviously subjected to less supervision than on-campus parties, less likely.

Athletes at Harvard don’t receive scholarships or special admission, and the lower-pressure environment of Harvard athletics creates a situation where success does not mean idolatry for the stars of our teams. Many students probably couldn’t name a member of our men’s lacrosse team, despite its national ranking.

All these factors conspire to keep Harvard athletes on roughly the same plane as the rest of us. They help to reduce the potential for athletes to develop a sense of entitlement that comes with celebrity status. In an odd way, Harvard students’ general apathy toward our sports teams helps to avoid situations like the one currently plaguing Duke.

The Duke situation is further exacerbated by all manner of race, class, and geographical issues. Durham has a very hostile relationship toward the university. Durham, the North Carolina home to Duke, is a diverse town with significant levels of poverty, further reinforcing the divide between privileged students and regular townspeople. Wealthier Cambridge, diverse though it may be, is much more difficult for students to look down upon from a status perspective.

The accuser reports having racial slurs yelled at her, and the rape of a black woman by three white players has drawn even more attention to this case. The profile of the alleged victim, a black single mother of two and a student at nearby North Carolina Central University, combines all these issues in a way we are unlikely to see here.

This is not to say that rape cannot or will not happen on the Harvard campus, by athletes or others. But the way in which Harvard athletics are administered helps to avoid the entitlement issues seen at other schools. Hopefully, it will help us avoid the infamy and scandal that too often accompanies college athletics.

—Staff writer Brad A. Hinshelwood can be reached at bhinshel@fas.harvard.edu.