Duke University's highly-ranked lacrosse team was recently suspended from play while many of the team's members face an ongoing rape investigation.
The police inquiry stems from allegations made by an exotic dancer who says that she was raped, choked and beaten by three members of the lacrosse team during a private party held by team members. The woman said that the incident occurred on March 13 in a university-owned home that is occupied by three of the team's four captains.
Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, one of the officials investigating the incident, said that the dancer, a single mother attending North Carolina Central University, was paid $400 to perform at what she believed would be a small bachelor party. When she arrived at the house, however, the party was significantly larger than she had anticipated and had as many as 40 men in attendance, Nifong said.
According to a police statement made by the three team captains who lived in the house, all of the party's attendees were Duke lacrosse team members.
The Duke administration has been mired in controversy regarding its handling of the incident. Much of the criticism the university has faced involves its decision, as of March 31, not to conduct its own investigation into the matter. Instead, the Durham Police Department has handled the incident.
April Thompson, director of Dartmouth's undergraduate judicial affairs office, said that at Dartmouth members of Safety and Security are trained to conduct investigations into criminal matters. She added that it is difficult to say how Dartmouth would respond to a similar situation without knowing all of the specifics surrounding the Duke case.
"We have a protocol that we follow as far as safety is concerned but it does depend on the circumstances of the allegation," Thompson said. "It depends on the situation but if there is a safety concern we would respond with an immediate temporary suspension."
Forty-six of the 47 lacrosse team members were subjected to DNA tests by court orders. The 47th member of the team was excluded from the DNA test because he is black and the woman -- who is also black -- said that her three attackers were white. She has also said that during her time at the party several of the men shouted racial slurs at her.
In an unrelated incident, which also occurred on March 13, a different black woman called 911 after a white man allegedly shouted racial slurs at hear near the Duke campus.
According to several news reports from the area, the racial implications of the attack have illuminated the tensions between Duke and the city of Durham, N.C., where the university is located.
Slightly more than 11 percent of the undergraduates at Duke University in the 2004-05 academic year were black. Based on the 2000 census 44 to 45 percent of the residents of Durham are black.
Additionally, tuition for Duke can run above $40,000 a year, while roughly 15 percent of Durham residents live below the poverty line. Even before the alleged incidents on March 13, the Princeton Review listed Duke as the fifth worst university in the nation with respect to town-gown relations.
According to crime statistics published by Duke in accordance with the Clery Act, there were eight incidents of forcible sexual assault there in 2004. Statistics for the 2005-06 year have not yet been compiled. Dartmouth College's Clery Act statistics also reported eight forcible sexual assaults in 2004, and Duke has 6200 undergraduate students compared with Dartmouth's 4100 undergraduates.
