| Reprise: Duke Justice; Breck Archer, Matthew Wilson | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 30 2009, 12:24 PM (108 Views) | |
| Quasimodo | Oct 30 2009, 12:24 PM Post #1 |
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http://ekstrandlawsuit.blogspot.com/2008/01/dukes-treatment-of-breck-archer.html TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2008 Duke's Treatment of Breck Archer In the Summer of 2005, Breck Archer was called into Defendant Stephen Bryan’s office to answer to a charge that damage was done to his room during a party. The room was only technically Breck’s at the time of the party; he had not moved in, he did not have a key to it, and he was not present at the party. Nevertheless, Bryan punished Breck with community service hours at the Duke Gardens. Breck completed the hours, notified Defendant Bryan of his completion, but did not submit a form Bryan expected to receive. Based upon Beck’s failure to submit the form after completing all of his community service requirements, Defendant Bryan convened a Judicial Affairs panel of students and faculty hand-picked by Bryan. At the close of evidence, Defendant Bryan remained in the room with the panel for the deliberations. Upon information and belief, Bryan influenced the panel to vote to suspend Breck, in violation of the Student Code of Conduct and the Faculty Handbook. The panel suspended Breck for the 2005 fall semester for “failure to comply.” Upon information and belief, until Breck, no one in the history of Duke University has been suspended or otherwise separated from the University for a semester for failing to submit a form documenting work that was completed as required. Defendant Bryan did not have a basis in the Student Code of Conduct to punish Breck for damage done at a party he did not attend, nor did Defendant Bryan have a basis in the Student Code of Conduct to suspend Breck for failing to turn in a form. |
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| Quasimodo | Oct 30 2009, 12:26 PM Post #2 |
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http://ekstrandlawsuit.blogspot.com/2008/01/dukes-treatment-of-matthew-wilson.html Duke's Treatment of Matthew Wilson Matthew Wilson was cited for Driving While Impaired in Chapel Hill in May of 2006, six days after David Evans was indicted. He accepted responsibility for his mistake and entered a guilty plea at his first court appearance. He sought counseling from Duke's Counseling And Psychological Services (CAPS), but was told that because he was not enrolled in the summer session, he was not eligible. Matthew's DWI was discovered by Duke University when it became front page news and even national news after a reporter cross-referenced new court files against the CrimeStoppers Wanted poster. Ekstrand then notes that "Duke University unilaterally suspended Matthew from the lacrosse team indefinitely and made multiple public statements to representatives of the press to ensure the University's disciplinary action against Matthew was widely known" (p. 219). Next, "Defendant Bryan told Matthew and his father that he was referring Matthew to a Judicial Board hearing, in which he expressly stated that Matthew would be suspended for two semesters. Defendant Bryan falsely stated - repeatedly - that it was "the policy" to suspend for two semesters all students who are charged with Matthew's offense" (p. 219). Ekstrand also notes that it is also false that Bryan's office suspended for two semesters every student cited with that charge. Fearing for the publicity generated by Matthew's citation and Duke's public announcements, Matthew's parents "asked Defendants Moneta and Bryan to allow Matthew to transfer in lieu of a judicial affairs hearing. Moneta and Bryan both claimed that there was a 'policy' forbidding that; he could transfer but not as a student in good standing" (p. 220). Ekstrand asserts that there neither was such a policy nor a precedent, as many students in the same position had been allowed to transfer in good standing. >From Ekstrand's account, both Moneta and Bryan had already determined the sentence and delivered it repeatedly to Wilson's family before there was ever a hearing. Moneta told Matthew's father that "he and Bryan had no choice 'because he's a lacrosse player,' rhetorically asking, "What would we say to people if we didn't suspend him?" (p. 220). Especially extraordinary is that Bryan "claimed that he had picked a sympathetic group who would look favorably on Matthew's extraordinary efforts in the summer" (p. 220), an odd offering of comfort considering Bryan had already determined the sentence. It becomes even more peculiar consolation noting that the panel hearing "was filled with questions - not about the driving incident - but about the events of March 13th-14th at the 610 Buchanan house" (p. 220). Eventually, by the Appeals Board, the two semester suspension was modified to suspension for the summer session. However, "neither body addressed the fact that the Student Code of Conduct clearly does not authorize the Undergraduate Judicial Board to subject students to disciplinary proceedings for conduct that occurs off-campus, out of county, while not enrolled, and not even eligible for a 30 minute CAPS appointment" (p. 221). Thus, if Ekstrand is correct, violating precedent and citing policy that did not exist, Bryan and Moneta prevented Matthew from transferring in good standing in order that, with no disciplinary authority, they could subject Matthew to a hearing to determine punishment after punishment had already been determined according to policies that do not exist, and then used this hearing to interrogate Matthew about the party at 610 Buchanan in spite of Duke University's public assertions that it cannot conduct its own investigations for fear of "witness tampering." All of this at a time long after DNA had already cleared every member of the team and long after it had become extremely obvious to anyone paying the slightest attention that three honorable and demonstrably innocent Duke students were being subjected to extraordinary violations of their constitutional rights. |
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| Quasimodo | Oct 30 2009, 12:31 PM Post #3 |
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Apparently Duke also wanted to subject Finnerty and Seligmann to disciplinary actions and would have done so, had the charges against them only been dismissed (but without a firm declaration of innocence). One wonders if any school hearing they were given would have been remotely unbiased; or if the sole intent would be to convict them of something for PR purposes ("what would we say to people?") And, one wonders then how their transfers to other schools would have been affected. (But who at Duke would have cared remotely about that?) |
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| Quasimodo | Oct 30 2009, 12:34 PM Post #4 |
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One wonders also if any of the lax team had any faculty advisors during their time at Duke, and where these advisors were, and what they were doing for the course of a year? |
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| Quasimodo | Oct 30 2009, 12:38 PM Post #5 |
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http://ekstrandlawsuit.blogspot.com/2008/01/lawsuit-breakdown-universitys-effort-to.html (from Duke Students for an Ethical Duke "Cliff notes" on the McFadyen, Archer, Wilson suit) TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2008 University's Effort to Force Waivers of 5th and 6th Ammendment Rights Ekstrand alleges that after the failure of the plan to orchestrate the mass interrogations without council in which Duke Officials endeavored to deliver the lacrosse team into the trap set by Durham Police, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask then "immediately demanded meetings with team members for the purpose of forcing them to effectively waiver their First, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights" (p. 155). In the meeting, attended by Trask and other Duke Administrators as well, Trask demanded, "'tell us what happened'" (p. 156). After the team members declined as they had been advised to do by their legal counsel, Trask falsely told them that the conversation was protected from disclosure by a student-educator privilege that does not exist. Ekstrand then explains that, "fearing their status as students was in jeopardy" (p. 156), the students were compelled to tell Trask what happened and emphatically denied the allegations. By demanding the full story, Trask and other administrators were leveraging the University's disciplinary power over the lacrosse players "to coerce what was effectively the waiver of their asserted First, Fifth, and Fourteenth amendment rights" (p. 156). Moreover, Trask and the other CMT members also intentionally "subverted their right to counsel by insisting the team members speak in the absence of counsel" (p. 156). As we already know, soon after falsely telling the students the discussion was protected, Trask, Brodhead and several other administrators were brought in (to avoid subpoena) to testify to Durham Police about their discussions with the players, as the lawsuit mentions. To our knowledge, they all brought lawyers with them. [So much for the 'student-educator privilege'...] |
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| Quasimodo | Oct 30 2009, 12:42 PM Post #6 |
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http://ekstrandlawsuit.blogspot.com/2008/01/lawsuit-breakdown-dukes-treatment-of.html Duke's treatment of Ryan McFadyen (snip) When the news broke, "Defendants Moneta, Bryan and Wasiolek unilaterally suspended Ryan, without notice, hearing, or inquiry" (p. 213). Ekstrand alleges that Dean Wasiolek "searched frantically for Ryan demanding that Ryan come to her office to sign a waiver of his FERPA [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act] rights" (p. 214). Ekstrand does not specifically say whether or not McFadyen ever actually signed this waiver, but he seems to imply that Ryan did not: "That evening, believing that Ryan had waived his rights to privacy under FERPA, Defendant Brodhead [...] provided on the record comments in which he condemned Ryan, revealed that the University had suspended him under the 'safety of the community' provisions of the student code of conduct, [...] that he would be held to answer for his 'conduct' in the University's disciplinary proceedings, and claimed that he was free to say all of these things because Ryan had signed a waiver of his FERPA rights." If it is correct that Ryan never actually signed a waiver, and yet his "punishment" was advertised to the world in this fashion, then this is clearly abhorrent behavior from the Duke administration, and Brodhead in particular, and yet another violation of federal law. Even if Ryan signed a waiver, it is nevertheless appalling that administrators would have gone to such effort to get him to sign a waiver for the sole purpose of being able to publicly assail him on clearly absurd grounds. On top of that, it is astounding that in spite of those efforts, no effort was made to ask Ryan about the nature of the email before publicly sliming him. In case the despicable motives of the administration were not already apparent from their handling of the McFadyen email, Ekstrand contrasts this response to a clearly harmless email with the administration's response to "an actual email threat" in Chauncey Nartey's infamous email to Coach Pressler. Sue Pressler filed a police report with the Duke Police, who did nothing, and Mike Pressler met with Moneta, who "refused to take any action on Nartey's email, or submit the matter to the Undergraduate Judicial Board" (p. 216). Nartey was also the president of a fraternity that had recently lost its charter for hazing violations. Nevertheless, Nartey was "one of five students appointed to Defendant Brodhead's Campus Culture Initiative. On top of that, "Nartey was a recipient of the 2007 William J. Griffith University Service Award" (p. 216), an award "given to graduating students 'whose contributions to the Duke and larger community have significantly impacted University life. Students who demonstrate an understanding of the responsibilities of effective university, communal and global citizenship...'" (p. 216-217). Ryan McFadyen was pilloried by Brodhead and the Duke administration for a clearly harmless, private email while Chauncey Nartey was not only given immunity from discipline but showered with honors by the Duke administration in spite of sending and email that would obviously be perceived as a threat to Coach Pressler's daughter. Nartey even went to the trouble to look up his daughter's full name. |
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| Quasimodo | Oct 30 2009, 12:49 PM Post #7 |
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http://ekstrandlawsuit.blogspot.com/2008/03/lawsuit-breakdown-coleman-report-and.html TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2008 The Coleman Report and Dean Bryan's False Statistics In what is one of the more surprising revelations in this lawsuit, Ekstrand's lawsuit introduces allegations that the Lacrosse Ad Hoc Review Committee's report (Coleman report), long recognized as a "stunning vindication" (link) of the lacrosse team from every accusation of significance about the lacrosse team's culture, was based on deliberately fraudulent statistics. It should be noted that the lawsuit does not fault James Coleman or others on the committee for the conclusions of the report as the suit seems to believe the committee was mislead by Director of Judicial Affairs Stephen Bryan. The significance of this allegation cannot be underestimated. Of all the assertions of horrific misbehavior - racism, violence, misogyny and of course rape - hurled at the lacrosse players publicly and privately by both faculty and administrators, the only accusations that have held any water amounted to minor, alcohol related irresponsibility and inconsiderateness. These kinds of infractions were so insignificant that the University did not even keep statistics of them until October 2004. Now it seems even those allegations were exaggerated by Duke nearly to the point of fabrication. (snip) The report was slanted by absurd statistics to begin with, but even more relevant is the overtly slanted way in which the report has been used by administrators. Though Ekstrand does not mention it in the lawsuit, Brodhead, speaking of the report on June 5, asserted, “though it did not confirm the worst allegations against this team, [it] documents a history of irresponsible conduct that this university cannot allow to continue” (Until Proven Innocent p. 237). Perhaps most telling of all is that the report, which was scheduled ("forced," claims Ekstrand) to present one day before the primary election for Nifong, was given to Nifong in advance but not to the players or their counsel: "Defendant Burness delivered an advance copy of the Ad Hoc Committee Report to the City of Durham Defendants so they could prepare statements for the press conferences. Burness did not send a copy of the Ad Hoc Report - in advance or after its release - to the Plaintiffs, their teammates or their counsel" (p. 260). An oversight? Perhaps. The problem for Burness and the rest of the Duke Administration is that it fits into a rather telling pattern of efforts by Duke not only to aid Nifong in his attempts to railroad Duke Students, but to assist in his reelection. These efforts by the Duke Administration are continued in shocking fashion before the general election in the fall of 2006, explained in the next segment of Lawsuit Breakdown. "The myth of the Plaintiffs and their teammates as out-of-control, aberrant, abusers of alcohol, with a history of 'deplorable' behavior persists up to the present day" (p. 260), incited and continuously perpetuated by Brodhead and other Duke administrators and faculty. |
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| Baldo | Oct 30 2009, 12:52 PM Post #8 |
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Great points Quasi. The treatment described in the Ekstrand Lawsuit did happen. The McFadyen. Wilson, and Archer Families suffered from Duke's callous behaviour. It was egregious and mean spirited. I hope Duke's Administration has to face these families in court under oath. They have lots of explaining to do and they won't be controlling the PR cycle this time. |
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