This sounds like elitist classism on the part of these stupid women.

Unlike the author, I am (psychologically)opposed to team sports. In my day at the University of Chicago there was a general concensus that organized athletics was the first step toward Nazism. From what I have read about the Duke Lacross team, I can't readily imagined myself sharing a drink, or a seminar, with any of them.

That said, it may well be that the members of the women's team actually know the male defendants and have actual informed opinions. The notion that is some how offends the judicial process to express an affirmative conviction of innocence it startling. (And I am a lawyer as well as an anti-jock.) Certainly most of us have had the experience of believing in the innocence or guilt of a criminal defendant independant of a jury's judgment, from Socrates to Kenneth Lay, from Martin Luther King to O. J. Simpson.

Does Sweeney object to these women having an opinion, or to the opinion they have?

...'innocent until proven guilty' wouldn't fit on their headbands?

This is totally knee-jerk thinking and pack mentality! Just not by Duke's female laxers, though. But Kevin Sweeney.

By being upset with these girl who know the accused better than he, the author is saying that the men are guilty and that even suggesting otherwise is an insult to women everywhere.

Conjecture is all anyone has until the court decides over all the evidence. So how is Mr. Sweeney's stance on any higher ground than these girls? Well, unless he knows something the rest of us don't -- it isn't!

Each American has his -- or her -- own opinion on the case. Why would Sweeney rob these girls of theirs? Even IF their friends on the men's team are lowlife enough (and therefore certainly suspect!) to drink beer (gasp!) and hire strippers. I'm sure those are things Mr. Sweeney has never done.

I hate these type of stories in Salon. Let's please stick our necks outside the bubble and breathe some fresh air. It might help our brains. Otherwise we're just reversed-out images of the blowhards on the hard right.

Yeesh,

Free Speech Loving Liberal in SF

I also have a daughter at Duke, and I also have been following this situation closely. Although I have not discussed this matter with the women's lacrosse team, which I suspect puts me in the same position as Mr. Sweeney, I think his take on their decision to wear sweatbands is both simplistic and presumptuous. [Note: one of my daughter's close friends plays women's lacrosse, which gives me, indirectly, an interst in this issue, though she and my daugher have not discussed the sweatband decision.] These young women have chosen to believe and support good friends on the men's lacrosse team, and as such, their action displays neither a pack mentality nor disrespect for women but trust and loyalty--qualities we would ordinarily consider virtues in friendship. While the university must rightly remain neutral and wait for the legal process to resolve the case before stating an opinion, friends and relatives of those involved surely have no such obligation. As for "pack mentality," if Mr. Sweeney could demonstrate that some members of the team actually believe that the men's lacrosse players are guilty of rape but plan to wear the sweatbands anyway, he would have a point--but I doubt he knows whether this is the case. And as for disrespecting women, Mr. Sweeney seems to suggest that respecting women requires believing any allegation of rape made by a woman, regardless of the evidence (which in this case, increasingly, raises at least a reasonable doubt) and regardless of your personal knowledge of the men against whom the allegation is lodged--or perhaps he means to suggest that respecting women means assuming that men who hire strippers (and I assure you, there are many men who hire strippers, whether we like it or not--otherwise there would not be strippers--and actually there are some women who hire strippers as well) are inherently "bad" and thus not deserving of friendship and support. As for the distinction between "innocent" and "not guilty," well, these are not law students, after all. If Mr. Sweeney can find anyone over the age of ten who is "innocent" in the sense he uses the word (apparently, pure--and agreeing 100% with Mr. Sweeney's world view), more power to him, but I don't think it's a fair standard to apply to the Duke women's lacrosse team.

"Does Sweeney object to these women having an opinion, or to the opinion they have?"

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Exactly, Sweeney doesn't like the direction the facts are going in this case so he lashes out and starts namecalling.

It should be hard and painful to make false accusations of rape.

It's touching, such solidarity shown by the womens lacross team. I'm wondering why, if these women think the men are "innocent" so to speak, don't they volunteer to take the place of the poor strippers at the next big circle jerk party.

I mean, if these guys are as wonderful as the ladies think they are, then maybe they'd like to get up on a table and shake their naked butts for a bunch of leering, crotch-rubbing clowns. Oh, but I guess the Duke ladies are too refined for that. They'd rather have a couple of ebony sisters from the wrong side of the tracks get their boys all worked up for nothing.

What a waste, girls! You could have put all that testosterone to good use rather than let your champions spend their wad (so to speak) on some nasty tarts.

The author's condemnation of "pack behavior." What the hell is team sports but pack behavior? I know almost nothing about this case, luckily, but I must say that if the Duke women are going to the extent of wearing an armband proclaiming that the accused are innocent...then I tend to think they probably are. (Innocent of the charges...not "innocent" in general. Anyone who uses the term "innocent" with regard to a college student is being very quaint.) One other point: when I was an undergrad, at a school with an overwhelming hypersensitivity to sexual assault issues, there were six rapes that I recall being covered in the school newspaper. One involved a football player raping his ex-girlfriend (he was black, and this school was lily-white, but he wasn't lynched...just kicked off the team, scholarship rescinded, and sent to the pokey); one was another domestic case; and four of them--four out of six--were women who falsely reported being raped. These cases happened with eerie similarity once a year: the girl would claim she'd been raped, there'd be a campus-wide firestorm, her story would break down, she'd admit she was lying, and then the hand-wringing would begin. Same process each time. In most of these cases, the assailant didn't exist, but I can recall in one case there was an actual person accused. He went through hell for a few days, but then the girl confessed that she'd made the whole thing up. (Needless to say, she had some issues.) When these cases occurred, and were exposed as hoaxes, some campus "facilitator" would invariably be quoted in the paper saying something like, "Well, even though this incident was false, I think it does raise awareness to the systemic problem..." I think what those women did--filing false reports about being raped--did more to discourage actual victims from coming forward than anything else, and instead of raising awareness, raised skepticism. As a result of these incidents, I don't automatically assume that the Duke accuser is telling the truth, and that the lacrosse players are guilty...and the Duke women's actions--seeing as how they are probably very familiar with the situation--also point me towards thinking that the players might be innocent. That's for the judge and jury to ultimately decide, but I have a feeling that there will be an acquittal.

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