It's probably a safe bet that administrators at Duke University wish the fervor stemming from the rape accusations levied against three members of their school's lacrosse team would just die down.
The lessons the school is learning, however, could give pause to administrators at Ball State University, where rules regarding academic suspension of students when accusations are levied are unclear at best.
Duke administrators will soon have to deal with the fact that they expelled sophomore Reade Seligmann and freshman Collin Finnerty after a woman accused members of the lacrosse team of raping her at a team party.
It didn't matter to the university that the players hadn't been convicted of a crime. It didn't matter that the photo lineup through which they were identified only had photos of lacrosse players. Even worse, it didn't matter that DNA evidence proved no member of the lacrosse team had sexual contact with the woman. The school still decided to expel the students.
Last week, however, Seligmann, Finnerty and David Evans, who graduated before Duke could boot him from the university, were told the case against them was being dropped. There was no evidence to support the claims of the woman, and North Carolina's Attorney General called former prosecutor Mike Nifong a "rogue prosecutor guilty of overreaching."
Now the team has the choice of suing Nifong, who the state bar is now reviewing on charges of ethics violations. But despite errors in his prosecution of the case, he may still have immunity, and, barring that, he has little money to be won in a protracted civil trial. So that leaves them a suit against Duke, the school summarily kicked them out, further sullying their reputations despite their innocence.
If this suit holds merit, Ball State administrators should be nervous as well.
Four months ago, Ball State spokesperson Layne Cameron told the Daily News two football players accused of stealing laptops in October from Woody and Shales residence halls were no longer students at the university. He refused to say whether they'd withdrawn voluntarily or been expelled, citing confidentiality reasons.
The freshmen had been charged with two counts of burglary and two counts of receiving stolen property, at which time the school considered suspending their housing contracts. Ball State also considered whether the students would be expelled following a review of evidence by the university's review board. All of this took place before a trial, even though the students were, under the law, innocent until proven guilty. One of the students, Eulas Taylor III, plead guilty in February and thus reduced his crime to a class C felony, but the other, Brandon Houston, won't face trial until June.
Guilty or not, the case exposes the fact that Ball State has policies in place that could allow for the future suspension of a student for a crime simply because charges were filed in the courts. There's nothing in the student code to allow for the university to withhold judgment until the case makes it through the system.
Instead, the school has the option to react first and think about it later, an option Duke's administrators may soon wish they hadn't taken.
Write to Jonathan atjonathansanders@justice.com
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