Kristin Butler is a recently graduated Duke student who wrote a regular column for The Chronicle, the student newspaper. She was, from the start in the spring of 2006, skeptical of the allegations made by accuser Crystal Mangum that three lacrosse players raped her. Butler’s hard-hitting columns won her the $1,000 first-place prize in the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ annual student-scholarship contest two weeks ago.
Now she’s turned her pen toward North Carolina Central University, which awarded Mangum a degree last week, and in 2007 bestowed a diploma on Solomon Burnette, who had been convicted of robbing two Duke students at gunpoint:
NCCU also touts itself as a “drug-free academic community,” a claim that’s hard to take seriously when one of the college’s own students admits to turning tricks and getting high four or five nights per week. In fact, Mangum had overdosed on flexeril and booze when she was first picked up by police the night of March 14.
And that’s what makes Mangum’s latest milestone so infuriating: It demeans the accomplishments of thousands of hard-working, law-abiding Eagles who also graduated this May.
And this:
Because of the university’s blatant refusal to enforce its own rules, I will never again take an NCCU degree seriously, and neither should any other self-respecting Dukie. NCCU’s “seal of approval” no longer guarantees good character, and it’s just too hard to tell the thugs and liars (like Burnette and Mangum) apart from the high-performing majority.
Still no word whether Jesse Jackson actually paid her tuition.
(h/t to Donna)
