Sunday, March 18, 2007
so I am going to tell you a funny story that is a long time coming. remember the duke lacrosse scandal? Of course you do. remember how engaged in it I was? Well, I was. And it turns out they didn't do it. unfortunately, I owe them an apology. Because the thing I knew but never told you all was that I had a sense throughout the whole thing about how easy it is for things to get blown out of proportion. and I didn't say anything. I was a member of the Yale heavyweight rowing team which got suspended for alcohol-related hazing in 2001. The problem was: we didn't do it. the team was cleared of all charges. No one hazed anyone. unfortunately, the administrative response was shoot-first and ask questions later. the team was suspended indefinitely on a hearsay report which of course made its way into the NYT (because NYT loves ivy league gossip), and every socially conscious person I knew looked down their nose at me for being the privileged, boorish jerk they had always suspected of rowers.
the problem with the duke case was that I didn't want to circle the country club wagons. Yale rowers coming to the defence of duke lacrossemen was not a role I wanted any part of. I wanted to think of myself as different. I wanted to beleive that they were worse and should hang separate from me. but I, and my teammates, uniquely understood that situation.
some things were different, like we never had any strippers. but we had teammates with prep school backgrounds and drunken assault charges, just like duke. that doesn't mean I ever got one, but it does mean that I can't think of myself as part of an organization that was unilaterally better.
ultimately, we were both caught behaving in a less-than-upstanding manner, but not illegally, and were made to pay an enormous reputational penalty for that. and perhaps we deserved it. unfair things happen to people caught in bad situations all the time.
the problem with the duke case was that I didn't want to circle the country club wagons. Yale rowers coming to the defence of duke lacrossemen was not a role I wanted any part of. I wanted to think of myself as different. I wanted to beleive that they were worse and should hang separate from me. but I, and my teammates, uniquely understood that situation.
some things were different, like we never had any strippers. but we had teammates with prep school backgrounds and drunken assault charges, just like duke. that doesn't mean I ever got one, but it does mean that I can't think of myself as part of an organization that was unilaterally better.
ultimately, we were both caught behaving in a less-than-upstanding manner, but not illegally, and were made to pay an enormous reputational penalty for that. and perhaps we deserved it. unfair things happen to people caught in bad situations all the time.
# posted by 8yearoldsdude @ 8:32 PM 
