April 27th 2006

Last week I heard news in American media about two women claimed that they were kidnapped & raped by Duke University Lacross team, maybe this news doesn’t mean much for most of people outside United States but it means to me something for two reasons; first of them I visited Duke one year and a half ago and the second is that the place where this story took place is one block away for my friend's house where I spent one week in Dhuram city in North Carolina during my visit to US.
When I heard this news I wrote to my friends Ron & his wife Bebe to take more details about what's happening.
Before I put here what Bebe wrote to me I have to say that this couple became one of my best friends, I stayed in their home, after visiting Duke had dinners together, they made me a big home party with their colleagues in work and Ron drove me in his Honda to the Atlantic Ocean.

Bebe sent me many details…. She wrote the following "This is, indeed, a national scandal. Right now, nothing has been
Proved.
Two African American women were hired to dance at a party (which really means to strip and perform in a sexually arousing way) by members of the Duke Lacross team - all white males. One of the women claims she was gang raped and strangled and beaten by three of the team members.
The team members deny that it happened. Our District Attorney has charged two of the boys with the crimes of rape and kidnapping. At this point, it is a "he said" vs. "she said" situation - but the grand jury has indicted two of the boys and it will go to trial.

For now, everyone in the community seems to have very strong feelings
About this.
It brings up issues of gender violence, racism, classism, student culture versus town culture, etc . . . . Many reasons for this story to become a national (and now it seems international!).

What we do know, however, is that the members of the Lacross team were and have been for years - out of control: drunk, disorderly, urinating and vomiting on neighbor's yards, hurling beer bottles into the streets, shouting racist slurs and being a general nuisance to the community.
Our neighborhood has been begging Duke and the Durham community to shutdown the drunken, disorderly parties that go on all night long and to penalize students who continue to behave that way.
Many in the community believe that Duke Students are generally rich, can do whatever they please, and come from families that can afford to get them out of any trouble they get into. Until now, Duke and Durham have not done much to control or penalize this type of student.

The unfortunate thing is: the media attention has tended to make Durham look like a racist town full of bigoted stupid people (definitely not true) and has tended to make Duke University and Duke students look like drunken animal house types – also not true!"
The quotation is finish.