If you've never seen the movie "A.I.," I don't recommend it. The plot and premise aren't too bad, and the acting is quite good, but I've got a problem with the ending: there isn't one. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say there are many endings. The movie just refuses to stop at any of them, and so by the time the credits roll the audience is ready to blow Haley Joel Osment's adorable little head off.
So too with lacrosse. The whole business has dragged on and on for a year and a half now, and even though it has moved in a decidedly positive direction it still refuses to go away. We've heard time after time that "this is the end,"-when the charges were dropped, when Nifong was disbarred, when he was held in contempt, when the settlement was reached-and now we've got one more.
Just a few days ago the president of our university, Richard Brodhead, said the words many had been waiting for him to say for a long time-namely, "I take responsibility, and I apologize."
Now, some have questioned this apology. They wonder about the timing with respect to Brodhead's upcoming evaluation. They ask if he is actually sincere. But the truth is it doesn't matter either way. It was his actions that were a problem in the first place, not his internal thoughts and feelings, and an apology is the action needed to resolve them. He has taken his wormwood like a good boy, and let us hope he has learned his lesson.
And that should be it, right? Nifong's gone, the Campus Culture Initiative is in retreat and the administration has apologized, so have all the wrongs been righted? Unfortunately, one biggie remains.
The 88 faculty who signed the "Social Disaster" ad in the first few weeks of the hoax have caught a lot of flak for their statements. Some of it has been undeserved and wholly inappropriate, with some professors reporting harassing e-mails and phone calls and even death threats. All right-minded people will join with me, I'm sure, in condemning this kind of unjustifiable nonsense.
But all the same, it is time for an apology from the Group of 88.
I believe the ad erred in two respects, one factual and the other my opinion. First, the ad implied the guilt of the accused, without any evidence, in a crime that was later proved to be fabricated.
Now, the Group of 88 and their defenders (such as they are) have staunchly held to the line that their comments were not about the case, that the ad was about Duke as a whole and that their words are being misconstrued retroactively.
And I might buy that logic, if it had come from a crowd of uneducated schmucks off the street or the far-left crazies that some of my less-informed conservative colleagues have labeled them. But these are Duke professors, well respected in their fields. Students like me are proud to study with them. And if I were to hand in a paper with an argument like theirs, completely ignoring the social and historical context, I would get a big fat 'F'-and rightly so.
You know and I know and they know that the ad contributed to the avalanche that resulted in the arrest of three innocent men for a crime that never happened, and it is time to stop pretending it didn't.
The other problem is the same one I've been complaining about for weeks in this column: the determination to charge all of us, and our "culture," for the wrongdoings, or alleged wrongdoings, or imagined wrongdoings, of any of us. I don't demand an apology here as much as hope for a change of hearts and minds.
But I do have this to say directly to the Group of 88: It's time to put the whole nasty business behind us. We, your students, need to know that you are with us, and not just waiting to go after us. We need to know that you see more in us than drunks and racists and rapists and potential rapists. We need to know that you value the truth. We need you to apologize. Please.
And if they do, that will be the end-the real end, and the last. Fingers crossed.
Oliver Sherouse is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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