COMMENTARY

By Tim Dahlberg

updated 10:39 a.m. ET April 3, 2006

The usual inclination when college athletes are involved in scandals is to rally around the school, promise an investigation and go on with business as usual.

That’s what happened at the University of Colorado, where football recruits were lured with sex, alcohol and drugs and at least three women claimed they were raped during team parties in 2001.

When those allegations surfaced in early 2004, the Buffaloes not only played on, but coach Gary Barnett stayed on. It wasn’t until his team was pummeled 70-3 by Texas in December that he was fired, a dismissal that came complete with a $3 million payout.

So give Duke officials some credit for finally taking action while police investigate allegations that an escort service worker hired for what she thought was a small bachelor party was raped by members of the school’s nationally ranked lacrosse team at an off-campus house.

OK, so they waited until protests erupted both in town and on campus before suspending the team’s season indefinitely. And maybe it took some banging on pots and pans outside the house of the university provost to help it all sink in.

In the end, though, they did the right thing. They barred the team from playing again until the whole mess is cleared up.

The problem is, they didn’t do enough.

Not for the alleged victim, not for the town of Durham. Not even for team members who had nothing to do with the whole thing and yet are already paying penalties for it.

You’ll have to find an old media guide, by the way, to find out who those players are. The university has taken the roster off its Web site, which is probably a good thing considering the mood of many local folks.

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They have good reason to be upset, and not only because what allegedly happened at the March 13 party was so ugly that we won’t even bother to discuss the details here. The fact it may have also been a hate crime involving a black victim who said her attackers were all white.

Witnesses quoted by the News & Observer of Raleigh said they heard racial comments directed toward the woman before she was allegedly raped, including one neighbor who said he heard someone at the party say “Thank your grandpa for my cotton shirt.”

Not the kind of thing you want to yell out in a town that is half black if you’re a white student at a school where tuition is $43,000 — more than most families earn in a year.

“The circumstances of the rape indicated a deep racial motivation for some of the things that were done,” Durham district attorney Mike Nifong said. “It makes a crime that is by its nature one of the most offensive and invasive even more so.”

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It’s hard to make this any more offensive. The alleged victim wasn’t drunk and partying with the team. She identified herself to the News and Observer as a mother of two and a student at a nearby college who was trying to support herself by going on dates with men.

It doesn’t matter what you do for a living, no should be violated by three men in a bathroom.

Police shouldn’t have much trouble solving this case. They have videotapes and pictures taken during the party, and four red fingernails from the bathroom where the alleged attack occurred. They even have DNA swabs from 46 players.

What they don’t have is any real cooperation from the players themselves. They’ve banded together and refused to talk other than issuing a statement from two captains calling the allegations “totally and transparently false.”

Nifong has warned that players who don’t cooperate may be charged with aiding and abetting. But maybe it’s time for the university to turn the heat up itself.

College administrators are by nature cautious folks. They move slowly, tend to appoint committees to study things, and try to seek consensus because they are afraid of offending anyone.

Duke president Richard Brodhead doesn’t seem to be any different. He suspended the season only after protests were held on and off campus. Cynics might even suggest that had this involved the basketball team, the Blue Devils would still be playing.

University officials say there is little more they can do, but there is. A good start might be to suspend the entire team from school if players don’t start talking to police.

That should get some tongues wagging.

If it doesn’t, start revoking scholarships and kicking players out of school. If nothing else, their parents will be so angry that they’ll make them talk.