Is fairness–basic fair play–simply no longer a part of human life? If we are all spiritual beings, why are we not acting in a spiritually enlightened way? What would it take for us to do so?
Last Thursday and Friday on this blog I asked some questions about basic fairness regarding Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), who, as everyone in the world knows, is running for president of the United States as the presumptive GOP candidate.
(You may wish to go back and read those blogs to bring yourself up-to-date on my comments around all of this.)
It was on the day that I wrote that first of those two blog entries that I read a CNN report filed by television station WTVD in Durham, North Carolina that said “More than three dozen members of the 2006 Duke University men’s lacrosse team and members of their families filed suit against Duke University, its President Richard Brodhead and other officials, Duke’s medical center, and the City of Durham and city officials for emotional distress and other injuries in connection with false rape charges and a corrupt police investigation against team members in 2006.”
The suit, CNN reported, “said University officials remained silent even though they possessed convincing evidence of the players’ innocence and also “lent credibility to the rape allegations by capitulating to an angry mob’s demands to condemn and punish the innocent players and their blameless coach.”
This whole Durham lacrosse team thing has bothered me from the very beginning. It always felt to me like there was a rush to judgment, and to this day I have a queasy feeling in my stomach when I think about Durham County prosecutor Mike Nifong and how he seemed very much to have colored way, way outside the lines in pursuing the matter.
If you do not know what I am talking about here, just Google “Duke Lacrosse Players” and you’ll find out in a hurry. I suspect this story will follow those players for the rest of their lives.
As you know, Nifong was later disbarred for his role in this fiasco. But now comes into question the role that Duke University played.
Now the entire lacrosse team is asking for fairness. Their whole season was canceled by the university in the wake of the charges, and all of the players were subject, at least, to ridicule, and in some cases to downright hostility.
If the university did indeed have “convincing evidence” that the players charged in the rape case did not wrong, and if it did, indeed, remain silent, then it deserves to “make it good” for all members of that team.
I, for one, don’t want to believe that this particular suit has merit. I am hoping that officials at Duke did not have convincing evidence of the lacrosse players’ innocence. I still want to believe in a world where basic rightness, basic fairness, and the courage to step forward as such fairness demands still exists.
Tell me that I am right about that.
Yet there is an even larger question here. If basic fairness IS gone from public discourse and our collective behavior these days, what would it take to bring it back?
I’ll have one possible answer to that tomorrow.