Keeping the Duke Scandal in Context

Both Anne Applebaum ["At Duke, a Scandal in Search of Meaning," op-ed, April 26] and Eugene Robinson ["Tough Questions in Durham," op-ed, April 25] made excellent points in their opinion pieces about the Duke lacrosse team fiasco.

On one count, however, both were off the mark: This situation has nothing to do with Southern culture. While Duke University is in North Carolina, only the accuser is local. The alleged attackers come from the Northeast.

With so much emphasis placed upon the South's admittedly horrific history of racism, it is too easy to forget that the last and arguably bloodiest school desegregation case took place in Boston, not Birmingham. Problems of race, class and misogyny plague the country, not just the South.

TARA MOORE SKELTON

Silver Spring

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Eugene Robinson said he is "not blaming the victim" when he wrote that the woman who reported being assaulted at the Duke University lacrosse team's party should have made "better choices" about earning money than to be an exotic dancer. I disagree. He was blaming her. Her work choices should not be an issue, just whether a crime occurred.

Mr. Robinson said he's trying to put the incident in context. But why does he stress Duke's outreach effort and not the economic realities of some women? I know women who chose stripping as a job in college because it had all the advantages that most work available to young women does not have: flexible hours, high wages and some opportunity for self-expression.

Risky, yes. But so is working at bars with drunks, managing picky customers in retail and dodging lecherous bosses in low-wage office jobs.

For a single mother who needs to support her family and try to finish college, stripping might have been the right choice.

LUCY BARBER

Washington

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Eugene Robinson's column was full of unsubstantiated and insulting generalizations about Duke presented under the guise of a "rich historical context."

The allegations facing members of the lacrosse team are serious. If true, several are guilty of a despicable crime, but let us not condemn anyone until the legal process has run its course. And, certainly, let us not condemn a student body guilty of nothing more than working hard at one of the most challenging educational institutions in the nation.

As an alumnus and former teacher at Duke, I found Mr. Robinson's caricature of the university laughable. While a graduate student there, I taught some of the brightest, most motivated and idealistic undergraduates I have ever met, hardly students who were "downright arrogant in their sense of superiority."

To get a real sense of the character of this "elite university in the once-segregated South," perhaps Mr. Robinson should take a class there. No doubt, he would benefit from the $21,592 a year in grant money that the average student receives.

MICHAEL E.S. HOFFMAN

Washington