| Blog and Media Roundup - Friday, April 22, 2011; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 22 2011, 04:30 AM (399 Views) | |
| abb | Apr 22 2011, 04:30 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/12884252/article-Justice-doesn-t-pay?instance=hs_editorials Justice doesn't pay 04.21.11 - 06:32 pm "Barring [hurricanes] Hugo and Fran, it's probably the most devastating thing to ever happen to us in the court system," Orlando Hudson said. Durham's senior resident Superior Court judge wasn't talking about Saturday's tornadoes; he was talking about the budget proposal that whirled out of the General Assembly's appropriations subcommittee for Justice and Public Safety on April 12. The justice system's budget in 2010-2011 was $467 million. That sounds like a lot, but caseloads have increased, and the court system has gotten a smaller and smaller piece of the state budget every year, down to 2.3 percent last year. This year, the House proposes cutting court system funds to $437.7 million. And, despite the fact that the court system collects fees -- and the House budget proposes to increase those fees next year to capture another $58 million -- that money doesn't go directly to courthouse operations. Of the $674 million that flowed through courthouses last year, $312 million was distributed to citizens, $237 million went to the state's general fund, $85 million went to local governments, $35 million went to "other government entities," and just $5 million supported special court operations. So, what will the state cuts mean to Durham? There will be no state money for drug treatment courts. Drug courts reduce the rate of reoffense by diverting nonviolent drug addicts and alcoholics from the corrections system and putting them into an intensive treatment program that's backed up by the threat of jail time. The state would also eliminate funding for family courts and dispute resolution, reduce staffing in the district attorney's offices, and -- perhaps worst, to hear Hudson tell it -- lay off Durham's trial court administrator and others around the state, saving a whopping $983,572 In Durham, Kathy Shuart fills that job and helps clear the path the criminal and civil court dockets. "When that stops, people aren't going to have redress to our courts, Hudson said. "... That's a major problem. ... That could mean a shutdown in some areas of criminal prosecution. That's not a minor result, that's a major impact on a metropolitan district." It would be tempting to say North Carolina's plan to fund its court system is a complete joke, except that there's nothing funny about watching a disaster. |
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| abb | Apr 22 2011, 04:37 AM Post #2 |
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/qa-richard-brodhead Q&A with Richard Brodhead Melissa Yeo/The Chronicle : President Richard Brodhead sat down with The Chronicle to discuss the nearly finished school year, campus culture and dealing with press coverage. Melissa Yeo/The Chronicle President Richard Brodhead sat down with The Chronicle to discuss the nearly finished school year, campus culture and dealing with press coverage. By Julian Spector [3] April 22, 2011 The rapidly approaching end to classes presents an opportunity for the Duke community to reflect on a year that at different times attracted desirable and unwanted national attention. In the same year that a PowerPoint raised questions of what values define student culture, the University received the largest donation in its history— an $80 million gift that will allow Duke to overhaul central gathering areas for students. The Chronicle’s Julian Spector sat down with President Richard Brodhead Thursday, focusing in particular on his role in helping students shape campus culture. The Chronicle: There’s been a lot of talk this year about campus culture and redefining campus culture. How would you define campus culture as it is currently? Richard Brodhead: Let me take a step back. Duke is peculiarly a school that loves itself. People at Duke love Duke to a degree that’s quite remarkable among universities. At the same time, people at Duke also sometimes love to criticize Duke, and especially the culture of Duke. The things that are criticized here are really not that peculiar to Duke. If we talk about alcohol issues, if we talk about gender issues and even issues of sexual harassment and sexual abuse, many of these questions came up this past year, but you know these are not questions peculiar to Duke in any way. But Duke takes them as if they were. I thought what was so useful about this past year was the extent to which students understood that rather than just grumbling about campus culture and wondering why administrators don’t change it, students understood that campus culture is student culture and the ones who will make it will be students in significant part, with our support to be sure. And I thought there was lots of evidence this year of people stepping forward to become the creators of campus culture. TC: What specifically stood out to you? RB: I thought that the Greek Women’s Initiative was a very striking fact. I thought the Duke Student Government took a very proactive role this year on questions of campus culture—the night I went to the forum, the very high level of discussion that was already going on in a pretty intense way. TC: If you were a student at Duke now, what steps would you take to address campus culture? RB: That would depend on what student I was. The best culture for Duke or any school would be the one that gives the fullest outlet for student energies and creativity and friendship. Why are residential universities so supremely valuable is because academic study isn’t broken off from all those other dimensions of engagement and creativity. So I would like this to be a place that people just experience as a place of infinite opportunity to do all kinds of things—anything that would cross your mind, you would find a way to do here. Sometimes when people talk about campus culture, the idea is, well there are only some kinds of things to do here and not other kinds of things to do. Would you say that’s an accurate statement? There are a lot of things to do. And if anybody thinks that some of those things are understated or undervalued, well, get out there and push them forward would be what I would say. The University is actually amazingly eager—very, very willing and eager to help students carry forward the things that give student creativity full outlets. This is a school full of dancing. We know there’s not adequate space for dancing on campus, but we’re trying to figure it out. And I use that just as one of a million examples. Even with this business about the intramural fields. It’s funny, Duke is so well known for athletics, but Duke isn’t overstocked with athletic facilities for ordinary students. It will soon have a lot more of them, as over time, it will soon have a lot more practice space for student artists. It already has ample research space for student scientists and everybody else. TC: In your email in the Fall about campus culture, you addressed the need for students to lead the change. As president, you are charged with providing the vision and guiding the University, but you also have the desire for the students to lead the change. How do you find the line between you providing the vision and letting the students lead it? RB: Not an easy thing. I’ve been very articulate on this campus about the dominant value I see for students in their education, and the word I have found above all for it is “engagement.” I don’t want people to just take courses. I want students to be intellectually engaged. I want their curiosity and creativity to be the driver of their education. I don’t want students to just enroll in extracurricular activities. That does not impress me at all. I want students to feel driven to do all the wonderful things that bring students together and open possibilities on this campus. Just for that reason, we also need to understand students are the age where they are now the responsible agents of their life. It would be neither practicable nor desirable for the adults at the University to set the social life of the University. What you want to say is, let’s try to remember what the sort of dominant values are here, and then you go figure out the best way to live out those values. That’s what I would say. TC: So is your role in that process as a facilitator of discussion? RB: I think so. I think it is partly to challenge people and partly to provide support for people in their many efforts. You see things as facts that actually represent collaborations between students and the University. I’ll give you one small example. An event I always very much enjoy is the library party.... Well, the library party was dreamed up by students..... Look at the party this year. The party this year was not an administration creation. It was created by the [Duke Marketing Club], and all the cool stuff that was there from the history of advertising collections, that was all brought out by students. The whole thing was staged by students with the cooperation of the university. Why? Because it represented the bringing the whole university together kind of event, the demonstration that socializing can be both totally fun and not debauched. Those seemed the values to support. TC: Looking back over this year, it’s hard to do that without certain names coming to mind—Karen Owen, Anil Potti and others. They brought scrutiny from the outside world but also a chance for us to look in at ourselves. How do you think we as a university learned from the scandals of the past year? RB: Every university has its scandals, and every university thinks its own are the worst scandals in the world. But other people don’t always care about them to the same extent. In the case of the PowerPoint thing, I was sorry for all the national attention that got. It seemed to me a relatively freaky thing and just the kind of thing the American public loves to drool over. As a reflection of Duke, let me just ask you: Do you regard that as a reflection of daily life at Duke? So why were people here so quick to accept that as if it were an index of Duke? Because they recognized grains of things in it that not everyone is comfortable with. And that led to the whole culture discussion, which I think will have many positive outcomes. As for Dr. Potti, there it seems to me that the main takeaway is the problems of Dr. Potti’s work derive form a new phase in the history of medicine. The attempt to take genomic work into practice in new therapies introduces complexities people haven’t typically dealt with before. The computational complexities aren’t within the skills of many well-trained scientists. I think that the lesson of the Potti thing is just we and every university need to take a big step back and figure out what kind of oversight and regulation needs to be done A for the science and B for the clinical implementation of the science of this new work with this far higher degree of computational complexity. TC: And with Tailgate? RB: Well, Tailgate was a custom loved by many and abused by some. I never heard anyone tell me otherwise. Some of the facts that came together this Fall just made it inevitable that we couldn’t continue to have Tailgate in that form. You could minimize it, but the danger to life that we saw staring us in the face just meant you couldn’t have this continue in this form. I have to believe that students as ingenious and sociable as Duke students can dream up forms of fun that will be highly communal and highly delightful and avoid the excesses of Tailgate. It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? But every year is quite a year! |
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| abb | Apr 22 2011, 04:38 AM Post #3 |
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/node/155403/talk 3:14 AM April 22, 2011 Fact Checker ✔✔ This continues a Chronicle tradition of puffery instead of a serious, probing interview with the President at year's end. Let's just look at Anil Potti, a subject that FC and deputies have devoted more than a few hours too. Brodhead tries to deflect all attention away from the man and his mentors and Duke -- saying this is an emerging field of science that is very complicated, and a lot has to be understood about the interface between medicine and the computer analysis of genome data. Mr President, this is begging the issue. Duke had plenty of notice that Potti was a quack. It did nothing. What steps are being taken to identify the people responsible, not to hold them out to dry but to make sure they understand where they must adjust? To assure this university community something like this does not recur? We even had distinguished scientists from the world renown M D Anderson Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Texas -- it does not get any better than this -- tell us specifically where Potti had gone astray. This happened while Duke had a formal internal investigation of Potti underway. And you know what Administrators did with the warning from Texas: they concealed it. Concealed. Willfully concealed by the Brodhead Administration. Who is responsible for that? We do not know. Mr Brodhead, does that meet your standard for governance? How did Potti get away with his deceit year after year. Where were the people who co-signed 14 medical journal articles with him (only four have thus far been withdrawn)? Mr. Brodhead's contribution to the Potti debate has never been reported by the Chronicle. Perhaps because he has said so little, perhaps because what he did say was so embarrassing. As the school year started, at a meeting of the editorial board of one of the local newspapers, he said Duke's process to vet professors before hiring was just fine. Nothing need be changed, we would dtake their resumes at face value. Our president knew at the time that Potti had invented his own Rhodes Scholarship. And at another editorial board meeting -- knowing of the faked Rhodes -- Mr Brodhead cautioned against reaching judgments on Dr Potti. He said there may be lies, there may be truths, and there may be "intermediate explanations." Mr Brodhead has identified Kunshan as the most important initiative at Duke since James B Duke turned over the loot in 1924. This interview with him is silent. ✔✔✔✔ At least this year the Chronicle got an updated picture, sans mustache, albeit still with a red tie. |
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| abb | Apr 22 2011, 04:39 AM Post #4 |
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/one-more-time Duke to face UVa again in ACC tourney Melissa Yeo/The Chronicle : Duke and Virginia’s last game ended in a 13-11 Blue Devil win. They play each other yet again Friday at Koskinen. Melissa Yeo/The Chronicle Duke and Virginia’s last game ended in a 13-11 Blue Devil win. They play each other yet again Friday at Koskinen. By Dawei Liu [4] April 22, 2011 Duke to face UVa again in ACC tourney The Blue Devils’ quest for an ACC tournament title begins tonight at 7:30 at Konskinen Stadium, as they will face Virginia for the second time in one week, after defeating the Cavaliers last Saturday, 13-11. The contest seems like déjà vu—the teams will play in the same stadium they did last time, only with strangely reversed roles. While the Blue Devils (10-4, 3-0 in the ACC) were considered the underdogs one week ago, they have regained their confidence and acquired a newfound poise. The Cavaliers, on the other hand, have found themselves in a slump, looking for answers and players to step up. Key to this entire matchup is the fact that Virginia may again be missing their best player, Steele Stanwick. “We recognize they were not playing with their best player,” head coach John Danowski said. “In order for us to be successful we’re going to have to play much, much better on the defensive end and we’re going to be much more attentive on the wings and on the faceoffs.” Stanwick, a finalist for the Tewaaraton Trophy and a member of the All-ACC team, has been one of the most electric attackers in the country, anchoring an offense that ranks No. 1 nationally with 13 goals per game. Duke clearly benefited last weekend as the Cavaliers’ scoring efforts lacked the incisiveness and touch of Stanwick. His presence in this upcoming game may a deciding factor. At the moment, Stanwick is listed as day-to-day and it will be a game-time decision if he plays. Regardless of whether Stanwick plays, Virginia (8-4, 1-2) will rely on its depth to defeat the Blue Devils. Duke is in a similar position, looking for more players to contribute. “Anybody can step up at any time,” Danowski said. “We rely on no one [player]... but we rely on everyone to make the play that is available to them.” Last week it was midfielder Robert Rotanz who had one of the best performances of his career, with five points off four goals and an assist. Other players who will be expected to contribute include junior CJ Costabile and freshman Jordan Wolf, both of whom were named to the All-ACC team yesterday. Senior Zach Howell, the only starting attacker from last year’s national championship squad, and the other upperclassmen will be looked on to provide leadership and game-winning experience. “[Senior leadership], it’s huge this time of the year,” Danowski said. “The hope is that we learn from last year’s experience and those guys can show the way.... It’s about your seniors and their sense of urgency.” This time around, Duke hopes to avenge a loss suffered to Virginia in the ACC tournament last year. Odds are good that, under the leadership of Danowski, the Blue Devils will be able to accomplish this. Duke has a strong record against the Cavaliers, losing only one of its previous 11 meetings against Virginia. Tonight the Blue Devils will look to continue that hot streak. |
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| abb | Apr 22 2011, 04:42 AM Post #5 |
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/rights-accused The rights of the accused By Donald Beskind April 22, 2011 As a law school faculty member who occasionally serves as a faculty advisor to students before the Undergraduate Conduct Board, I share the concerns expressed by Mike Lefevre, Duke Student Government President. Students before the UCB face career-altering charges that, if prosecuted in criminal court, would be felonies. The current “clear and convincing” evidence standard, while probably too low given the nature and consequences of some UCB charges, ought not be lowered to the greater weight of the evidence used in civil courts. If the goal is the accurate adjudication of rights and begins with a presumption of innocence, surely a higher standard than greater weight is required. If Duke should have learned anything from the lacrosse fiasco, it is the importance of the presumption of innocence. Lefevre is also correct about the UCB’s confusion in role between adjudication and education. Each time I appear with a student before the UCB, I learn that some right that previously existed has been abolished by administrative fiat, further weakening the accuracy of adjudications. For more than 25 years, students who wished to appeal were entitled to a copy of the tape made of the proceedings, so that they could have it transcribed (at their own expense) and be able to quote from it for their appeal. Literally, today, I learned that students no longer have that right. They may only listen to the tape in an administrator’s office. While I could understand that a rule limiting what a student could do with a tape and requiring its return could be necessary, the current rule throws an unnecessary hurdle before a student exercising his or her right to appeal an erroneous determination. In a world where what appears on a transcript stays with a student forever, for serious charges adjudication must be kept separate from education. The time for education comes before the alleged offense or after final adjudication. In between, we must safeguard the rights of the accused. Donald H. Beskind Professor of the Practice of Law |
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| abb | Apr 22 2011, 04:50 AM Post #6 |
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http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/maguire/110422 April 22, 2011 Rape v. rapacity? By Frank Maguire "In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, but being seasoned with gracious voice obscures the show of evil." Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice The following is from Michael Gaynor's renewamerica.com April 21 2001 article: Duke case update: Mangum got a pass, Reginald Daye died after she stabbed him.... Associated Press, April 18, 2011: "The woman who falsely accused Duke lacrosse players of raping her is now charged with murder in her boyfriend's death. "Crystal Mangum was charged Monday in Durham with first-degree murder and two larceny charges. "Mangum has been jailed since April 3. She was initially charged with assault with a deadly weapon in the stabbing of 46-year-old Reginald Daye. He died after nearly two weeks at a hospital." I now take the opportunity to add my commentary to Gaynor's, that I wrote, in Liberty Clarion at the time of Mangum's accusations against the Duke lacrosse players. Let's look at some of those engaged in an assault upon the Duke University lacrosse players accused of an alleged rape. Jesse Jackson! Attorney Willie E. Gary! The New Black Panthers! The Durham People's Alliance! Though all of the above have implicitly agreed that the three indicted Duke players are guilty, the real fact of the matter is proven guilty or not, that is not what matters: primarily, I risk saying, to Jackson and Gary. All involved know that in 1996 the accuser — the Black female employee of an "escort" agency — claimed that she had been raped by three men. The charges were dropped, and we are told now that it is irrelevant and immaterial in determining the veracity of the current accusations. In today's environment of fevered, feminist fabrication crying "rape" is not equivalent to crying "wolf." A reasonable, unprejudiced person would conclude that if the Duke players are found not guilty, or if the case never sees the inside of a courtroom, that the accuser has brought false charges. They would also, reasonably, conclude that the person who should be charged for numerous offenses would be the accuser. Also, if the accuser is criminally charged, should this not make her susceptible to civil charges? This is what a reasonable person would conclude. In a wonderful movie, starring Robert Donat, (based on a true story), entitled The Winslow Boy, a thirteen year old boy was expelled from a government military school for allegedly stealing five shillings. The boy's father, determined that his son was truthful and innocent, set out to prove it. Unfortunately, the government would not allow a hearing so that the boy's case could be heard. Fortunately, a notable attorney (played by Donat) accepted the "brief" and argued before Parliament that the Winslow boy, though he was only thirteen, had the same right to defend his reputation as did any other subject of the King. "Why," he asked, "is this so?" After a pregnant pause he answered the rhetorical question, because "Right must be done." But what do Jesse Jackson and Willie "Giant Killer" Gary know that reasonable people do not know? Let's regress, for a moment, and go back to the Kobe Bryant case. The Bryant case should have gone to court, for the sake of justice. But Bryant's accuser, personally dropped the charges against him. Neither was the defense of her virtue nor a pursuit of justice at all the issue. Bryant is a very wealthy public figure. So his accuser brought a civil suit, and the case was settled out of court. In the matter of Veracity v. Voracity, Veracity lost. So, what did we have? We had a woman whose virtue was still generally doubtful. Even more so since she was seen as a sexual mercenary. Not sadder or wiser, only wealthier! Bryant's character is still in doubt, but he also cared less for his character and for justice than he did for just selling short. So much for truth, justice, and the American way! Now we have the Duke case. Three young persons (I won't afford them the maturity of "men," yet, because I will not presume their innocence) from affluent families are accused — by a stripper with a sketchy background, who has a history of crying rape — are likely to be Bryant-ized, if Jackson and Gary pull off the civil-suit stunt. Guilty or not, we can expect a civil suit against the families of the Duke players. In a revealing article by Wendy McElroy entitled "Is 'Duke' Case Headed to Civil Court?" (Fox News, May 16, 2006), the writer tells us that in April, the parents of the accuser met with lawyer Willie E. Gary. The meeting, she says, was "facilitated by...Rev. Jesse Jackson." Gary plays the tort game very well, especially when he can wax righteous about so-called civil rights and implications of implacable White racism. He obscures, as Shakespeare wrote, his true purpose with "a gracious voice." In a magazine called Essence, which targets a Black female readership, Gary is quoted as saying "It appears that a grave injustice has been done. And if I can help in any way to level the playing field, then I'm willing to do it." Why sure he is. This gritty defender of real justice can already smell the greens. Gary knows that this case is being constantly decided by factions that use race as the trump card. In fact, in Essense there were three articles in the issue in which Gary was quoted. All three articles imply that the accuser is the clear victim and that the Duke players are members of the affluent White establishment. McElroy, author of a book entitled Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the 21st Century, describes how the civil action is criminal cases works. "Whether the Duke case becomes a civil suit is separate from what happens in criminal court. Criminal and civil courts express different paradigms of law. Criminal law prohibits and punishes specific acts, such as rape; its general purposes are punishment, deterrence, and rehabilitation. "A 'guilty' verdict in criminal court can be used to establish liability in a civil one, but if the verdict is 'not guilty,' or the charges are dropped, a civil case can proceed independently." McElroy goes on to tell us how and why this works. "The practice of using both criminal and civil courts to address the same offense has increased substantially. There are at least three reasons. "First, due to decades of litiginous feminists, it is now common to address criminal offenses such as sexual abuse or domestic violence in civil court. "Second, civil suits can be lucrative. "Third, it is easier to win a civil case; standards of evidence and other legal protections enjoyed by a defendant (in a criminal case) are significantly lowered in civil court." In addressing the political game being played by the prosecutor District Attorney Michael Nifong, Thomas Sowell, in a May 16 article in Townhall.com, entitled "Justice Delayed?" points out that while the defendants are pushing for a rapid trial in order to prove their innocence, Nifong has allegedly decided to postpone a trial until the spring of 2007. This political deceit allows Nifong to benefit, he believes, in the upcoming elections. He can posture for the Black vote yet escape the possibility that his cynical actions might result in his losing the case, and perhaps the election. "Suppose," Sowell writes, "for the sake of argument that the players are guilty. What is the point of letting a bunch of rapists remain at large for another year? What about the danger that they would pose to women on or off the Duke campus? "Now, suppose that the players are innocent. Isn't it unconscionable to have this damning charge hanging over their heads for another year?" Thus, Nifong takes us back to Shakespeare. The ambitious, self-promoting D.A.'s "tainted and corrupt" scheme "obscures the show of evil." With Nifong, Jesse Jackson, and Willie Gary on the side of "right," we can all expect a heinous "wrong," ostensibly in the cause of truth and justice. And a further scornful degradation of the American way! |
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| Quasimodo | Apr 22 2011, 08:36 AM Post #7 |
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| abb | Apr 22 2011, 01:14 PM Post #8 |
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http://fragmentsfromawritingdesk.blogspot.com/2011/04/michael-gaynors-7-june-2007-article-in.html Friday, April 22, 2011 Michael Gaynor's 7 June 2007 Article in which I Ended my Silent Suffering from Richard H. Brodhead's Lies I owe my good health these last four years to deciding to speak out about the 2002 campaign to destroy my reputation as a scholar. This article by Michael Gaynor was the one in which I broke my silence. Gaynor constructed it mainly from emails that I sent him over the period of a few days, initially in his response to a query from a parent of one of the Duke lacrosse players about Brodhead's reputation as a scholar. I want to have it up here because over the next weeks I want to reflect publicly on my use of a religious term, mortal sin, in regard to Brodhead's simply erasing the lives and works of all the great scholars on whom I built my work on Herman Melville. And in anticipation of 7 June 2011 I want to thank Michael Gaynor for showing that his article can stay up alive on the Internet as long as the lies by Brenda Wineapple, Richard H. Brodhead, Andrew Delbanco, and Elizabeth Schultz. I did not mention Brenda Wineapple to Gaynor because she was not involved in the particular set of lies the others were and I did not mention her because her "review" was still too painful to deal with. As you see from my blog, I have begun to come to terms with her behavior. Michael Gaynor, bless you. Edited by abb, Apr 22 2011, 01:14 PM.
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| sceptical | Apr 22 2011, 09:16 PM Post #9 |
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Duke defeats Virginia 19-10 in the ACC lacrosse tournament. http://www.theacc.com/gametracker/launch/gt_mlacros.html?SPSID=25937&SPID=2027&DB_OEM_ID=4200&event=992136&school=acc&sport=mlacros&camefrom=&startschool=& |
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3:27 AM Jul 11