See Appended Correction

To the editors:

In her column about Duke rape case (“Rushing to Rape,” Apr. 18) Lucy M. Caldwell ’09 describes the injustice that the now-exonerated indictees have faced. Unfortunately, she also chooses to offer unwarranted inferences about their moral character. She says they are “probably not the most respectable college students on the planet” and are “not likely” her kind of dating material.

Of course, statistically, they probably are not the most respectable college students on the planet. And Caldwell is correct to conclude that she cannot, from available data, ascertain their moral character. But that would be true of any people unknown to Caldwell. Why, in the case of Dave Evans, Reade Seligman, and Collin Finnerty, is it appropriate to speculate that they might be “sketchy”?

Such innuendo is not limited to columns in The Crimson. In the days since the charges have been dropped, the Boston Globe opened an editorial on the matter by noting that the once-charged players “may have been louts,” and the Washington Post wrote that they “were not paragons of virtue.” Why? Because they drank before they were 21 and attended a party with a stripper? Tens of millions of American people meet this description and do not have their moral worth called into question by newspaper editorial boards.

Even if we could make valid inferences about these men’s character, it would be none of our business. They are public figures only because of the actions of a corrupt District Attorney and his police, media and faculty enablers. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has declared them to be “innocent,” and they deserve to return to normal, private life as much as possible. That includes having their private morality free from public scrutiny.

CORRECTION
In this Friday's Crimson, the names of two letter writers were accidentally switched due to a production error. The letter "No Grounds to Question Duke Lacrosse Players' Character" attributed to Leah M. Littman and Tracy E. Nowski was actually written by Joshua A. Barro and the letter "Portrayal of Rape Ignores Statistics and Misses Nuance" attributed to Joshua A. Barro was actually written by Leah M. Litman and Tracy E. Nowski. The Crimson apologizes to the letter writers and its readers for this serious mistake.