Report: Duke missed chances

Lacrosse team piled up incidents

DURHAM -- Duke administrators missed repeated opportunities to rein in a lacrosse team that racked up an alarming record of misconduct in recent years, according to Monday's faculty report on the lacrosse program.

By the 2003-04 academic year, the report said, 22 players were involved in 16 such incidents, most of them related to alcohol.

The record of drunken antics so worried Stephen Bryan, Duke's associate dean of judicial affairs, that in 2004 he put together a report detailing the violations. The report, which cited incidents of underage drinking, noise violations, fake IDs and public urination, was sent up the chain of command at Duke.

But top administrators in athletics and student affairs did little to respond to the signs that the team was headed for disaster, the faculty report says.

Although it details administrative failures, the report is more forgiving of former Coach Mike Pressler, who resigned last month when the Duke lacrosse rape scandal exploded. The professors who conducted interviews and examined internal records found that Pressler took action to punish his players -- when he was informed about their misconduct. Sometimes he made them run laps; in 2005, when the team made it to the national championship game, he suspended two players from post-season play.

But most of the time, Pressler was unaware of his players' troubles with the law or with the internal disciplinary system at Duke. Except Bryan and Pressler, the faculty report said, "no other administrator appears to have treated the lacrosse team's disciplinary record as a matter of serious concern."

The 2004 report was circulated among student affairs administrators and sent to Executive Vice President Tallman Trask, who met with Athletics Director Joe Alleva that fall. But Trask did not think it was necessary for him to intervene beyond a discussion with Alleva. He did not give Alleva a copy of the document, and Alleva didn't ask for one. It was not shared with Pressler until June 2005, the report said.

"To us that was an alarming record that apparently failed to get noticed by administrators, and then when they noticed it, they failed to do anything about it," said Kerry Haynie, a political science professor who was a member of the lacrosse study committee.

"They saw red flags, and they saw indications of trouble, and they didn't follow up," Haynie said.

Trask and Alleva did not respond to requests for interviews Tuesday.

Larry Moneta, vice president of student affairs, acknowledged that the communication should have been better but added that it is always easy to reflect on missed opportunities in hindsight.

"It appears more could have been done, and I won't dispute that," he said.

Pressler has declined to comment, but the faculty report says he denied Alleva's assertions that he warned the coach the team was "under a microscope."

Although Pressler acknowledged that Alleva had told him about the meeting with Trask, the report said, "Pressler denies that Alleva or anyone else told him his team was out of control."

Once Pressler learned of the disciplinary record, he asked Bryan to notify him of future infractions. But Pressler apparently was made aware of misconduct only sporadically; the last communication was in November 2005.

The report was welcomed by Pressler's defenders.

"The perception that he let his players run amok was ironic, because he's tough," said Kerstin Kimel, the Duke women's lacrosse coach. "His reputation among the other [Duke] coaches is he's a disciplinarian with his players, maybe to a fault sometimes."