The lacrosse story.

If you watch the news at all, you know that three as-yet-unnamed lacrosse players at Duke have been accused of choking, beating, sodomizing, and raping a NC Central student they had hired as a stripper. If charges are brought, they'll be facing 16-20 years in prison, which sounds about right, given the details alleged. Don't have much to say about this that hasn't been said widely and forcefully already. It's horrific and makes me feel sick to my stomach. Having lived most of my life in Durham (we moved here when my father entered medical school at Duke; I went to UNC, eight miles down the road), I'll confirm what many others have said: relations between the university and the city have always been strained in a way that they really aren't with other schools in the area. Issues of region, class, and race are always simmering just below the surface, and the fact that the victim was a student at the local historically Black university brings all of those into sharp detail.

This is a seriously ugly situation that will linger well after anybody is sentenced. While it is completely unfair for the racist and predatory actions of those involved to reflect upon the campus as a whole (and understandably, most of the students are as angry and repulsed as everybody else), there is just no way this won't further damage an already shaky town-campus relationship. The school administration's initial slow and uncertain response certainly didn't help, and neither will rumors like these, which you can be sure will continue. Duke, NCCU, and Durham have a lot of very difficult work in front of them.

As an aside, in the course of looking through the NC felony classifications for the post below, I noticed something. Durham DA Mike Nifong has been all over the news, as you might expect now that this has turned into a national story. One quote I've heard from him several times is that only one crime in North Carolina is more serious than 1st degree sexual offense, one of the charges he intends to pursue, and that's 1st degree murder (Class B1 felony versus Class A). Indeed, 2nd degree murder is only a Class B2 felony. Actually, though, one other Class A felony is on the books in North Carolina: Unlawful use of a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon of mass destruction, injuring another. Passed in 2001, of course.