DURHAM - A former Duke lacrosse player has filed a civil suit against Duke University and a professor, charging that the teacher unfairly gave him a failing grade after an escort service dancer said she was raped at a lacrosse team party.

An attorney for Kyle Dowd, who graduated from Duke last year, filed suit in Durham Superior Court on Thursday. Dowd and his parents, Patricia and Benjamin Dowd, are suing Duke and Kim Curtis, who is listed on Duke's Web site as a visiting associate professor in political science.

Curtis, who specializes in political and feminist theory, would not comment Thursday. Duke officials also declined to comment.

The lawsuit said Dowd and another lacrosse player -- neither of whom was charged in the sexual assault -- were in Curtis' "Politics and Literature" class last spring. Before the scandal broke, the lawsuit said, both players were passing the course. But after the rape case made news, both players failed the final assignment, and Dowd's final grade was an F. The players were the only ones to receive F's, the lawsuit said.

Duke initially refused to entertain arguments by Dowd that the grade was unfair, the lawsuit said, but eventually agreed to accept credits that Dowd had earned earlier at Johns Hopkins University. That allowed him to graduate, the lawsuit said, but then Duke changed the F to a D, citing a "calculation error."

Dowd, who lives in New York City, could not be reached for comment. His mother, reached by telephone, said their younger son, Craig, was supposed to enroll at Duke last fall on a lacrosse scholarship. He turned down the scholarship.

"We didn't feel like we could send him to Duke with everything that was going on," said Tricia Dowd, of East Northport, N.Y. "Believe me, we loved Duke ... but we didn't know what the professors would do."

Craig Dowd instead attended a community college and will enroll at Georgetown University this month, his mother said.

The Dowds' attorney, Joseph Zeszotarski Jr., would not discuss the case but issued a statement: "Kyle Dowd and his family feel very strongly that he was given a grade not based upon his performance, but rather upon the political agenda of the professor. Kyle and his family have filed this lawsuit so that this does not happen to another student at Duke University, and he is asking that this professor be held accountable for her actions."

Shortly after the rape charges were made, the lawsuit said, Curtis was part of what has become known as the "Group of 88" -- 88 people who signed an ad that appeared in The Chronicle student newspaper. The ad -- entitled "What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?" -- sympathized with the accuser and included anonymous quotes from students reacting to the scandal and issues of race on campus. The ad said, "These students are shouting and whispering about what happened to this young woman and to themselves."

The lawsuit said Kyle Dowd had a 3.4 grade-point average on a 4.0 scale going into his last semester at Duke. He got a C-plus and a C-minus on the first two papers in Curtis' class, according to the suit. Curtis had told students they would be graded on three papers and class participation, with each counting 25 percent toward the final grade.

When Dowd contested the grade, Curtis sent him an e-mail message saying she had failed him in class participation because he had missed the last month of the class, according to the lawsuit. Dowd had to miss five class sessions to meet with lawyers in the investigation that focused on the team, the lawsuit said.

When Dowd received the F, he feared that he would not be able to graduate and would lose his job in New York City, the suit said. The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and a change in Dowd's final grade of D to a P or passing grade.

John Burness, Duke's senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, said he hadn't seen the lawsuit and wouldn't comment on it.

Michael Gillespie, acting chairman of the political science department, also declined to talk about the accusations.

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