Julian,
I found your article on the “Duke scandal” in last Friday’s paper very problematic. To start off with one of the smaller problems I had, you kept switching back and forth between using the term “African American” and “black.”
I think you were referring to the same racial category each time, but why you used “African American” when you were referring to the race of a lacrosse player and then again when talking about the university’s racial make-up but “black” when you talked about the dancer who was hired and what she states wasn’t the race of her assailant is beyond me.
Secondly, your assumption that Duke’s aim to recruit people of color inherently means the school does not give off an elitist or arrogant vibe to its surrounding community is entirely misguided. After acknowledging that 11 percent of Duke’s student body is Black you state, “If nothing else, these numbers suggest that Duke is not worthy of being singled out as an intolerant institution.” The problems between Duke and Durham, NC are less about whether Duke’s admission policies are intolerant or discriminatory, and more so about the way Duke interacts (or doesn’t interact) with its surrounding community, similar to the problems with Wes and Middletown. Duke’s admission statistics say nothing about how much and what kind of interaction the school has with Durham, which is really what the “division” you refer to in your article stems from. While your statistics were interesting, they were completely irrelevant.
Lastly, I was quite dismayed after reading your quotes from a couple of Wesleyan athletes. To try to put up a front of “we know the rules and respect them because we are here as students first, and athletes second” is, for a lack of a better word, lame. Let’s be real. Guys, there’s no need to lie as you make a statement just because you’re being quoted in the Argus. We all know what goes on here.
I guess what I find most bothersome in this section of your article is your insinuation that due to the fact that Wesleyan athletes do not participate in sports that bring in high revenues, they lack this jock sense of “invincibility and entitlement,” because they are under the close scrutiny of administration, and are driven to be true scholars before anything else. Again I’ll state, let’s be real. I don’t intend to imply that athletes aren’t smart or committed to their academics, and I’m not just referring to male athletes, but the idea that this supposed “monitoring” and prestige keeps athletes “in line” is false. Because athletes are allegedly monitored by the administration and know what’s expected of them does not mean they live up to those expectations. But who ever said athletes were monitored anyway? Surely we can all think of incidents that were quickly covered up by sports teams to look like irresponsible drinking instead of any sort of team initiation. Wesleyan athletes (and students in general) break rules just as those students at other academic institutions do, Division I or not. To pretend otherwise is counterproductive and silly.
Julian if I misinterpreted any of your information please feel free to contact me—in person, through email, as a pen pal, either way I’ll be happy to talk about this with you.
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