The worst sound at Duke

You had to have heard it at some point this past week. It was everywhere, all at once-a huge, collective sigh of relief. Heck, you can still hear it now.

I've decided that it is probably the worst sound I'll ever hear at Duke.

Don't get me wrong-there is certainly reason for relief. As students, we should obviously rejoice when facts emerge that make it significantly less likely that our classmates are rapists.

But that is not at all what's happening here. The sigh was not a response to the potential innocence of our classmates, but rather a response to the potential of our own exoneration. I am sincerely troubled by the number of students using the DNA evidence-the increased likelihood that a rape did not occur-to vindicate themselves, to vindicate Duke and to completely and tragically obscure the real issues here.

The fact is that the student body hasn't been absolved of anything. It wouldn't matter if the mayor of Durham came out next week, apologized to the lacrosse team and gave the team a key to the city. The charges of racism, elitism and general detachment would be as valid as ever.

Since the allegations were made public, too much campus dialogue has focused on the media's immediate condemnation of the lacrosse team and the mischaracterization of Duke and its relationship with Durham.

Though these are valid topics of discussion, their dominance and tone are severely undermining any and all attempts to productively discuss privilege, race and responsible citizenship.

Students are defensive in their responses to the larger Durham community. We have supplanted genuine engagement with an inexcusable dialogue that only reinforces Durham's allegations.

A whopping thirty students, or .5 percent of the student body, participated in the event.

Is this madness, or is it just me?

Because it seems to me that we're countering charges of elitism, racism and apathy with blatant snobbery, racially insensitive excuses and wide-spread unresponsiveness.

If anything valuable is going to come of this entire ordeal, then there must be an immediate and dramatic shift in dialogue.

Individually, we must honestly reflect on our own perpetrations. We each have them. The distrust Durham harbors toward Duke is no illusion of the media, it is all too real and consequential. It is a product of experience and has led much of a town to readily and collectively condemn so many for the alleged crimes of so few.

The absence of productive dialogue is in and of itself a statement-a statement that we consider crossing our own threshold too risky and largely unrewarding.

If a relevant dialogue does eventually emerge and in it we decide to accept Durham's residents as our peers, then we must begin making every effort to persuade residents to accept us as their own.

Once we commit ourselves to Durham, at every opportunity community members must be made to feel comfortable within our walls, and not as if at the slightest perceived misstep their welcome will be rescinded.

In turn, it is imperative that we cross that same threshold and go into Durham, not as students or consumers, but simply as citizens.

Only when all of us believe ourselves to be members of the Durham community-no more, no less-and make individual commitments to act like it, will the faces and personalities of real Duke students replace the stereotypes.

Until you make that commitment-until you've taken every opportunity to represent yourself to Durham-whether it be to your housekeeper, your fellow restaurant patrons or at neighborhood meetings-please spare me another impassioned diatribe on the injustice of "mischaracterization."

Daniel Bowes is a Trinity junior. This is his final column.