Learning at Duke

Several reports surrounding the rape case involving lacrosse players could benefit campus life at Duke and beyond

There's nothing like a crisis to force people to confront issues they'd just as soon forget -- and let fester. The unseemly party thrown by the men's lacrosse team at Duke University, and allegations by a hired dancer that she was raped and beaten by three of the players one night last month, have led to a flood of discussion on campus about how the behavior of students, and athletes in particular, ought to be regulated.

The incident has prompted Duke President Richard Brodhead to order formal investigations into the university's initial response to the allegations. Also being studied is the extent to which student conduct should be prescribed and how discipline is applied when necessary. It's a healthy process, so far.

Americans increasingly have worried about counterproductive, antisocial or harmful campus behavior such as binge drinking. Duke, meanwhile, moved slowly in addressing its reputation for raucousness. To its credit it finally cracked down on booze-drenched parties on campus, but the revelry just moved to nearby residential neighborhoods.

It was in a house rented by lacrosse players, adjacent to the university's East Campus, that the woman, who is black, says she was raped by three white players. Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, both sophomores, were charged with rape and kidnapping this week. They insist they are innocent and must be presumed so. A third arrest is possible.

Young people, of course, have typically pushed the limits once free of the ties of home. Duke certainly isn't the only college that needs to face these kinds of behavior problems -- and that includes public ones such as UNC-Chapel Hill.

Yet even Duke faculty members, many of them from the '60s and '70s generations that pushed college administrators to ease their controlling ways, now are urging the university to require greater social as well as scholastic discipline from students. Duke professors, in fact, are offering to help draft new behavior codes for the school. With years of experience and academic success to their credit, faculty members ought to be listened to.

That's long-term work. For the moment, five study committees appointed by Brodhead seem to mean business, which is encouraging.

He has enlisted the help of legal and academic heavyweights to guide the panels; they include Julius Chambers, the noted civil rights lawyer and former N.C. Central University chancellor, former Princeton University President William Bowen, and James Coleman Jr., former chief counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Among other topics, the groups are studying Duke's response to the rape allegations; the lacrosse team culture; the student judicial process and disciplinary procedures; and how Duke teaches students the values of personal responsibility.

Smart parents tell their kids that a failure is wasted if no lesson is learned from it. The reports from the Duke panels hopefully will be instructive, and not just for Duke. If they do shine a light, Brodhead must ensure that they aren't assigned to some out-of-the-way shelf in the Allen Building.