One good semester didn't end parties

Editorial

Recent news from Duke on off-campus misconduct seemed worthy of celebration.

Duke's administration released figures showing that only 39 students faced disciplinary action for off-campus violations in the fall of 2006. That was a 79 percent improvement over the fall of 2005, when 193 students went through the campus judicial process. It sounds like Duke students, perhaps chastened by the bad publicity from the lacrosse case, have changed their behavior. Right?

Let's look closer. According to an editorial in The Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper, "from a student's perspective, there has been no perceptible change in off-campus social life. Parties still happen .... it's hard to believe that the decline in citations is due to suddenly more-subdued behavior ..."

The Chronicle attributes the change to several factors. One, the sale of a dozen of the party houses in Trinity Park damped down the fun, but only at those places. Second, the state ALE staged a major raid on off-campus parties last year and made more than 100 arrests, accounting for the high numbers in 2006. This year, there was no big bust, and the numbers declined.

Those are legitimate factors, but looked at from one perspective, they indicate that Duke's purchase of the houses and ALE's raids had the desired effect.

As many residents near East Campus will tell you, the streets are indeed quieter this year. City Councilmember Eugene Brown, who lives nearby, praised the change and credited the sale of the houses and Duke's campaign for student responsibility.

But the Chronicle's cautionary note is that the parties "have just moved." While some students, to their credit, are working to tone down the rowdiness and build relationships with neighbors, the party scene at Duke did not suddenly end.

That became clear over the weekend, when a Duke student charged she was raped by a non-student at a party near East Campus at 405 Gattis St. The incident allegedly occurred at 3 a.m., when about 50 people were at the party.

As we saw with the lacrosse case, when student parties get out of control, they can cease being innocent fun and turn into something far more serious and dangerous. The incident over the weekend is a sign that, despite a good semester, this problem won't just go away.

© Copyright by The Durham Herald Company. Original copyright 2004. Copyright renewed 2007. All rights reserved. All material on heraldsun.com is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and may not be reproduced or redistributed in any medium except as provided in the site's Terms of Use.