As many of you may know, it was at Duke University that I wrested my PhD from the sullen hands of my committee. My experiences there left me feeling very ambivalent towards Duke - thanks for the line on my resume, thanks for women's studies; no thanks for the years of harassment and daily observation of obscene class privilege blithely exercised by most of the undergraduate student body. So the whole mess with the lacrosse players has been painful to watch unfold. It's painful to see confirmation of a lot of my worst memories of Duke. And please note that in saying that, I am not rendering judgment on the facts of the situation. I mean painful more in the sense that Chad Dickerson writes about.
This is not just about the lacrosse team (though they have been a problem for years), it’s about the institutions and traditions that Duke holds most dear in its public image, like basketball. When I was at Duke, I remember hearing the celebrated “Cameron Crazies” chant smugly “That’s all right, that’s ok, I’m gonna be your boss one day” on the rare occasions when the Duke basketball team would lose. Even worse, taunting chants of “State school! State school!” would fill Cameron when the opposing team was a public school — and everyone thought this was funny. I thought it verged on sickening, and still do. To me, it insulted people like my dad, who took seven years alternating among working in tobacco fields, going to class, and generally doing whatever it took to pay for his engineering degree at NC State — a state school.
Yep, there I was at Duke with my state school undergrad degree. And an undergraduate student body who thought "state school" was an insult, and a funny one, no less. They were not all bad kids. But the culture of Duke encouraged them to develop and deepen their comfort with privilege.
I'm not surprised that a segment of the Duke community that is supporting the alleged assailants is slandering the victim. She's a liar, she's a whore, she was drunk - they've all but said she was asking for it or she really wanted it. After having lived in Durham, NC for 5 years, I cannot possibly imagine that a black woman would decide to just up and accuse some Duke boys of raping her because she thought it would get her some nice positive attention. Because you see all the nice positive attention she's getting. Not.
But here's what is really making me want to barf. It's the Duke girls - and their moms! - who are so anxious to defend the lacrosse team as if they were a bunch of choir boys.
"Anybody would be so proud to have them as their sons," Ann Jandal said, choking back tears.
Excuse me, Ann Jandal, but I would most definitely NOT be proud to have as my son someone who thought it would be good fun to get drunk and rowdy and hire a stripper so he could get off on objectifying a woman, or who urinated in public, and most especially I would not be proud to have as my son someone who could write in an email that he would like to kill and skin a woman, and that doing so would make him "cum in my Duke issued spandex". Said Zuska, choking back barf.
Two good posts on the whole mess at: Blac(k)ademic and Bitch PhD
The Duke girls who are so proudly walking around with the "Innocent" t-shirts - is this another requirement for the "effortless perfection" routine? Or just plain old denial and identification with the oppressor? It makes me so angry, that these arrogant young white boys have young women trotting around selling t-shirts on their behalf and telling everyone what lovely boys they really are. It makes me angry that these girls are letting themselves be co-opted in this way. A modest proposal: Perhaps, since they are so proud of the boys, the girls could sashay over to their house in their "Innocent" wear and hold a wet t-shirt contest to show their support.
In last year's press coverage of the "effortless perfection" study, we read:
But in the grand scheme of things, when there is so much going on in the world that is troubling and destructive, why should anyone care that a bunch of young, privileged women at an elite university like Duke are having their self-confidence stripped away by the expectation of effortless perfection? According to Megan Braley...people should care because places like Duke are where America's future leaders are made.
Indeed. America's future leaders: privileged drunken louts, and the repressed, manicured ladies who love them. Why, I bet they could grow up someday to be President and First Lady.
4:26:11 PM 
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