it's not about "investment returns"

it's about piggish, thuggish behavior by people who do not wish to be held responsible for their behavior

it's about honor and reputation and respect

it's about time you wised up

This sort of loutish behavior occurs in more-highly-ranked academic institutions than Duke, and is perpetrated by athletes who lack the prestige of Duke programs. My Ivy League institution was woefully inadequate when it came to winning games, but the team members were still pretty good at generating sexual assaults.

This issue would have been swept under the rug as well if not for the victim's status as a non-student. She went to the POLICE. Most college rapes are willfully covered up by the administration and campus police, because why jeopardize your institution's reputation because 1 female was abused? To a University president, how can one student's trauma possibly be worth the loss of millions?

Higher education, particularly at private universities, is a business, and administrators admit as much. The higher-ups never like a whistle-blower, whether s/he reports accounting fraud or sexual assault.

Speaking of business, let us all be very clear that most top-tier athletes use their alumni connections to secure careers in the financial sector upon graduation. Coaches literally call older alumni and ask them to give new grads a job. These former athletes therefore take a track towards high-paying salaries which are then donated back to their beloved alma mater, which in turn makes every effort to improve the sports program. It is absolutely a cycle of positive feedback, and unless private universities find a way to subsist without megabucks alumni donors it will continue.

SLB,

Its ridiculous to compare living in the upper-class neighborhoods around Duke to the siutation in some public housing projects in inner-city areas.

Read the last paragraph of my letter.

It may be hard for outsiders to grasp this: Trinity Park is one of the only neighborhoods in Durham that offers large, historic houses. It is also a *very small* neighborhood, stretching only about four blocks from East Campus, where the freshmen live. The neighborhoods surrounding Trinity Park (Old North Durham/Walltown) are predominantly occupied by the working class/working poor. In Durham you go from 6-bedroom Colonials to clapboard houses in an instant.

The majority of Trinity Park homeowners are middle-class liberals - Subaru station wagon types. These people choose to live in the city, not the suburbs, but they are very concerned with the way their houses and yards look, they have small children, etc. Interspersed among these people's houses are a small number of very big, very party-hearty student rental houses, like the lacrosse house. The homeowners are the majority; it is not at all a "student neighborhood." Very few Duke students live off campus.

Duke Undergrad:

If you'd bothered to get around to looking at page 21 in the PDF (p20 in the doc, "Schedule 2") you'd see the financials for the University, separate from the Health System. You'll notice the first column is "Unrestricted Net Assets"; a.k.a., "money that comes from anywhere and can be spent on anything."

You also seem to not understand how grant funding works. When a professor applies for and receives a grant, the University takes a percentage off the top for their general coffers. For Duke, I think it's somewhere around 35%, but values of 50% aren't unheard-of in academia. That's the "government grants" portion of the income ($456M) which dwarfs the net income from students ($259M).

If you look at tuition and fee money from students as a portion of the unrestricted net assets -- which totals ($1,484M) -- you'll see that it's a small portion.

In other words, your tuition covers significantly less than one-fifth of all of Duke's operating costs. Duke spends over $400M on "other operating expenses".

So think of it this way: your tuition, and the tuition of all your friends and peers, doesn't even cover the "Other" portion of Duke's operating costs.

-A Duke Grad Student

P.S. The financials link is here for those coming to the discussion late:

http://www.yearinreview.duke.edu/statement/index.html

Here's an edit for you:

"Like all children of the wealthy, we feel a sense of entitlement that you others cannot possibly understand, your all jealous and wish that you were us but your not and you never will be. Get over it."

Like all children of the wealthy, we feel a sense of entitlement tht you others cannot possibly understand. You're all jealoous and with sht you were us, but you're not and you never will be. Get over it."

You obviously will never be literate, so you will need your sense of entitlement as you make your way through life eating shit and pretending you like it. Some of us have found better ways to live.

Here's an edit for you:

"Like all children of the wealthy, we feel a sense of entitlement that you others cannot possibly understand, your all jealous and wish that you were us but your not and you never will be. Get over it."

Like all children of the wealthy, we feel a sense of entitlement that you others cannot possibly understand. You're all jealoos and wish that you were us, but you're not and you never will be. Get over it."

You obviously will never be literate, so you will need your sense of entitlement as you make your way through life eating shit and pretending you like it. Some of us have found better ways to live.

Of course it has to do with race. And class. And gender. And power. Many of you so-called feminists and other assorted luminaries claim that because rape is the crime the formulas of power in this particular act of violence have to do with penises and vaginas. But therein lies your foolishness. Power unleashed by violence comes in many forms. Power in race relations. In class relations. And gender relations. And all you luminaries who holler "penises and vaginas" should know better.

This rape incident is remarkable because it is consistent with each of the above listed power-administrations. Sex is violence, all the time. Without consent, sex is a crime precisely because it is violent. Race and class and gender are the fields on which power enacts violence. In the absence of consent, in the presence of a poor black exotic dancer as a victim and rich white lacrosse jocks as perpetrators, then power in the fields of race, class, and gender give vociferous charge to this voiceless, powerless, poor, black mother.

Intellectual dishonesty and the blind affliction of those with the prejudices and cruelties inherent in the dominant classes, races, and genders - this dishonesty and this affliction are the only factors which explain the apologetics and vast cruelties of the dominant class, race, and gender. To deny the victim her voice - to deny that the administration of power which widened her orifices in the name of rich white male indulgent extra-territoriality - this is the crime of history that singles out race class and gender as ideal media to inflict cruelty on the less powerful, all while serving as prime exculpatory addenda to the contingency and mediocrity of the weak and dishonest cases of the human spirit, the likes of which have spoken loudly and clearly in this forum in support of the accused or in diminuition of their crimes.

Rape is not the only crime under investigation. Those rich white lacrosse players stole between eight and twelve twenty dollar bills from the poor black exotic dancer, mother of two, after she was raped and triple penetrated to leave nothing but five broken painted fingernails behind.

Thank you, luminaries, you have convinced me to abandon any notion of humanism, Christianism, or rationalism. Instead, I will stand tall with the proud administrators of pain cruelty and dominance in my race class and gender over the voiceless and their needless cries in the name of capitalism nominalism and dishonesty.