"the Duke ideal: rich, white, athletic, good-looking, prep-school-educated guys "

reminds me of those that are born on third base and think they've hit a home run.

The issues uncorked by this incident boil down to universities' apathy and inability to control the behavior of their students. The alcohol-fueled frat and jock party has become society's standard conception of the "quintessential" college experience. Universities make weak attempts to curtail them (wristbands! chaperones! ID's!) but until the binge-drinking, out-of-control, blacked-out weekend is condemned it will only promulgate.

The Duke situation adds the issue of race, which in turn makes the story so attractive to the national media. Would it be receiving as much attention if it was a sorority girl who decided to strip after drinking too much? Perhaps, but only in the laudatory sense on the pages of Maxim or FHM.

The fact is, the majority of students at elite institutions (I was one) come from wealthy white suburbs (like mine) where the parents bestow $40K cars on their children for their 16th birthday, give them limitless credit cards, take lavish vacations and look the other way as youthful and teenage misbehavior becomes increasingly criminal. No one holds these children accountable, least of all their universities, which look the other way for fear of garnering negative national attention - that might hurt alumni giving. And what of the US News ranking?!

Regardless of the outcome of the DNA tests, this situation needs to open up reckless college behavior for national debate. For instance, no one is arguing that the Duke Lacrosse team hired strippers for their party -- that seems like a good place to start questioning such behavior.

The accuser danced or whatever and then returned to the building even though she now claims she felt her life was in danger.

No one, NO-ONE made the claim this was a racial incident until days later and that claim is founded on heretofore unidentified women who made a 911 call, still not located, about some students, unidentified, near the team house who shouted racial epithets at them.

The DNA tests were fastpathed through the state labs in order to get the results back in days instead of the typical weeks or even months. So right now there are other crimes that have been pushed down in the queue to address this.

Factions at Duke are now calling to premptively expel or at least suspend the entire team before any charges are made if they are made.

It is now three weeks and counting and there has been no determination that a crime was committed let alone anyone charged.

Yes yes Duke is very expensive. Also like most expensive schools a very large number of students receives some level of financial aid. So instead of venting your rage at the preppie system you imagine it is, it would help to stick to reality.

I learn more about an event especially one that involves racial discord from the events which flow after the incident. Often there via letterss to the editor, soundbites, interviews and articles like this one the reality of what took place is more telling than the very provactive incident which ignited the reactions.

The notion that Duke and its students have contempt for others outside the wall is not a newflash in America that reality exists right here and now in every area which borders black urban cities. In truth it was disheartening to read how young white students have such contempt for poor people especially the black poor. it was also tragic to read black folks still lamenting over thier status in this place called America.

Duke is no different than Salon( where inclusion is lacking and very troubling in the newsroom and it's usual suspects of subject matter whenever black issues are written in Salon). I expect like Salon those who run Duke will offer up some vague pc answers and the beat will go on yet that paradigm no longer has any currency becuase even white folks who hide behind campus walls and internet web sites have to come out for water, air and reality and folks like me....

Thankfully for the writer of this article, it was a group of white students who did the assaulting, and a black mother who was assaulted (I know, I know, allegedly).

I mean, if the situation had been reversed, we'd be hearing calls of "trailer park trash" and "young black men taking out their frustrations of an overprivileged white society."

Or if it had been white on white, about misogyny.

Or if black on black, how devasting poverty and racism have been in shaping African-American race relations.

The real bottom line is, athletics and academics don't mix. You grant a group of neanderthals access to a university they couldn't get into, allow them to get by because they give the school donations from rich alumni who like athletics, and given them a system (like Duke's especially, given their basketball team's history) that will protect them and give them fame, and they will act like idiots.

But that wouldn't help the writer's article. She wants it to be about class and race, not about atheltics and academics.

One of the more disturbing aspects of the article is the vapid, simple, banal responses to the events by some of these students. They give these guys the power they have because they're hot, because they throw the best parties (which is subjective), because they're cool (again, subjective) --because to glom on to that kind of arrogance allows a person a certain false sense of self-worth that should haunt a thinking person with shame, but if you're vacant enough, fits like a new leather flip-flop and a polo shirt with the collar flipped up. What these students have agreed to is a social contract wherein these individuals have license to commit felony acts out of willful ignorance and a desire to one day be one of those untouchables, like so many administrators at such schools. I'm at one right now, in the south, and we seem to deal with similar issues each year while the administration who nees to rule on these people belong to the same secret societies and attend the same catillions. (Just a week ago a massive football player --white guy, lineman --grabbed me at an ATM on campus and started demanding money; I pretended I was deaf and only spoke sign language; he cursed and walked away baffled.)

And I can't understand why the president of Duke would not make any statement because such incidents occur at other instutions. What the hell kind of logic is that --just because a girl gets raped the Air Force Academy or the University of Michigan or Central High School in whereverland, name-your-state, they have to accept putzes raping women at Duke? How does an institution that demonstrates such a lack of critical thought, from the administration to the students, come to be a tier-one instution? Is it the money, the tradition, what? I'm sure if the students involved weren't such a visible part of the campus, justice would be a bit more swift and severe.