Duke University officials were “much too slow in understanding and addressing the serious and highly sensitive issues” raised by a now notorious party of the men’s lacrosse team and subsequent rape allegations, according to an external investigation of the university administration that was released this afternoon.
“A major failing in communications”—including “extraordinary” information gaps—and a significant underestimation of the seriousness of the allegations led to the sluggish institutional response, says the report, the third released within a week’s time on the lacrosse incident (The Chronicle, May 2). The authors of the report—William G. Bowen, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a prominent critic of the role of athletics in college life, and Julius L. Chambers, former director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and former chancellor of North Carolina Central University—were appointed last month by Duke’s president, Richard H. Brodhead, to investigate the administration’s response to the crisis.
Administrators did not learn important facts of the case—that the rape allegations had been made by a black woman against white men, for example—until more than a week after the March 13 party, the report notes. Because of ineffective communication both between Duke and the campus and city police departments, and within the university administration, Duke officials often learned of developments in the case through newspaper accounts and calls from local reporters.
Duke administrators underestimated the seriousness of the allegations because city and campus police officers told them that the woman making the allegations was not credible, and that the incident would “blow over,” the report states. Because Duke’s first official statement came from the vice president for university relations, it “had the unfortunate effect of reinforcing the view of some that Duke cared mainly about PR matters and less about the core issues of values and behavior—and was trying to cover up the situation,” the report says.
But interviews with three dozen Duke administrators, faculty members, parents, and neighbors convinced Mr. Bowen and Mr. Chambers that the delay in the university’s response to the incident had not amounted to any attempt at whitewash, but rather reflected “errors of judgment.”
“All of us wish we had gotten onto the story earlier,” Mr. Brodhead said in a news conference this afternoon. Information “became known to us very imperfectly and bit by bit over a fairly long period of time,” he said. The university, he continued, will work to improve its communications based on the report’s “candid criticisms and suggestions.”
Mr. Bowen and Mr. Chambers “have helped us learn from this difficult situation, and they have given those outside Duke an independent assessment of our actions,” Mr. Brodhead said in a written response to the report.
