A few explanations can be eliminated. The lacrosse captains met with four senior administrators, including Brodhead, and not only denied the allegations but laid out the scope of their cooperation with police.
The president, the executive vice president, the AD, and the dean of student affairs all expressed confidence the captains were telling the truth. Brodhead has subsequently denied saying this. Sexual assault charges were still on the books. It was as if he had spent a lifetime on college campuses and only realized in March that college students drank and had wild parties during spring break.
Second, and more important, Brodhead appears to have been cowed by extremists within his faculty. A turning point event came in an emergency meeting of the Academic Council on March 30, The president urged caution and asked faculty to wait for the facts to come in. One speaker claimed that Duke, as an institution, tolerated drinking and rape, and the lacrosse incident reflected a University problem from the top down.
Another suggested punishing the team by suspending lacrosse for three years and then making it a club sport. Wahneema Lubiano alleged favoritism by Duke toward the team and demanded a counter-statement from Duke denouncing the players.
And Peter Wood asserted that two years previously, the team was out of control, and demanded a hard line against the athletic director, coach, and team. These remarks, according to several people who attended the meeting, received robust applause. Two other subcommittees race and gender were chaired by Group of 88 members Karla Holloway and Anne Allison. The Presslers filed a police report and told the administration what Nartey had done; the appointment went ahead anyway. The book documents several of these events.
