Former lacrosse player sues Duke

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 assistant professor in political science.

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

The suit 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 suit said, both players were passing the course. But after the rape case made news, both players failed the final assignment, the suit said, and Dowd’s final grade was an F. The players were the only ones to receive F’s, the suit said.

Duke initially refused to entertain arguments by Dowd that the grade was unfair, the suit said, but eventually agreed to accept credits that Dowd had earned earlier at Johns Hopkins University. That allowed him to graduate, the suit 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. But 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.