Innocent Duke Lacrosse Players and CVESD teachers

The case of the three innocent Lacrosse players at Duke University reminds me that schools, law enforcement and the justice system all-too-frequently target the innocent and allow the guilty to continue to do harm.

Duke University is not much different from CVESD. Teachers in both places seem to allow reason and the law to be placed on the back burner when they smell blood.

At Castle Park Elementary and other schools in CVESD, teachers have been quick to condemn the innocent--and elect the guilty (as presidents of Chula Vista Educators (Gina Boyd and Jim Groth) and delegates to NEA (Peggie Myers)).

Something similar happened at Duke University in North Carolina. The Worcester, Massachusetts Telegram and Gazette noted on April 15, 2007, “…88 members of Duke’s faculty …condemned the lacrosse players in a letter published as an ad in the Duke campus newspaper.”

This “Group of 88” so outraged K C Johnson, a professor at Brooklyn College, that he began a blog about the faculty’s response, then about the lack of evidence in the case. He is now being called a hero by the vindicated Lacrosse players.

“[Blogger K C Johnson] didn’t know then that the players were innocent, but he did know that the professors at the university had crossed an ethical line before any of the facts in the case were even known,” writes the Telegram.

That ethical line continues to be crossed in CVESD.