# Whatever happened to that DA who fairly recently railroaded the Duke students? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 15, 2009, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-that-da-who-fairly-recently-railroaded-the-duke-students/485935 "2009-02-15T11:22:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-that-da-who-fairly-recently-railroaded-the-duke-students/485935/41 "2009-02-15T22:45:15Z")
> [@runner pat](#): > > I didn’t mean this specific case, just the extremeness of that viewpoint. Just look at some of the stuff that **kanicbird** and **Der Thris** have posted. > > Look at Free Republic. > > I took the post seriously only because so many extreme views are being expressed on any number of issues that the sarcasm was lost. > > And i would not be surprised if there are people who believe that viewpoint. Okay, I can understand if you just meant to say you’ve seen serious claims that seemed to you to be just as nonsensically extreme. I would say the claim you attributed to Mr Slant was more ludicrous than things I might read from extremists at Free Republic or from Leftist extremists, but I wouldn’t think it insane for somone to think they were equally nonsensical. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-that-da-who-fairly-recently-railroaded-the-duke-students/485935/42 "2009-02-15T22:46:19Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I’m not sure. I took **Pat Runner** to be referring to a view that being white is _itself_ so bad and oppressive it should be punished. I guess back in the day some people honestly believed all white people were devils. (Didn’t they?) -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-that-da-who-fairly-recently-railroaded-the-duke-students/485935/43 "2009-02-15T22:54:39Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > We do that all the time here at SDMB. We still haven’t seen the Blago evidence, for example. Well, Blago kinda did admit it, on a tape which was publicly released. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-that-da-who-fairly-recently-railroaded-the-duke-students/485935/44 "2009-02-15T22:57:40Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Do you want the professors fired? Denied tenure? Placed in a pillory? Forced to play lacrosse against the Duke team? A statement along the following lines from the Duke administration would have been appropriate: In response to allegations against some of our students, 88 of our faculty members rushed to judgment in an advertisement placed in the student paper. After a comprehensive investigation by the North Carolina Attorney General, the accused students have been declared innocent and indeed it has been determined that no crime took place. It is now appropriate for those who prematurely condemned the students to admit they were wrong and to apologize to the Duke community for statements and actions which were in violation of university guidelines and which made a difficult situation substantially worse. We have once again seen the corrosive effects of prejudice. Let us all resolve to learn from these errors, so that this sort of thing is never repeated. But of course the administration in its way behaved every bit as badly as the Group of 88. Among other outrages, there is substantial evidence that they released information to Nifong in violation of FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), and then connived in a scheme whereby Nifong would supoena this info in order to have a valid way of explaining how he’d obtained it. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-that-da-who-fairly-recently-railroaded-the-duke-students/485935/45 "2009-02-15T23:04:10Z")
One thing that got Durham black people all fired up was the statement by one of the players along the lines of “Thank your granddad for my shirt” implying that her granddad was a cotton picker or a slave. That one statement was in the local media a lot. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-that-da-who-fairly-recently-railroaded-the-duke-students/485935/46 "2009-02-15T23:11:01Z")
The OP was succinctly answered some many posts ago. Everything else is just discussing things better done in Great Debates/The Pit or somewhere else. Closed. **samclem** Moderator, General Questions [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-that-da-who-fairly-recently-railroaded-the-duke-students/485935.md?page=2)