Some good things about Duke Lacrosse for a change

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This week, the Duke lacrosse team is back in the news because Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has finally decided to drop charges of rape against three lacrosse players in the face of increasing evidence of both the players’ innocence and his own prosecutorial misconduct.

He has yet to drop charges of sexual offense and kidnapping, but experts expect him to do so shortly, since the accuser in the case can no longer even remember if she was penetrated on the night of the alleged attack.

When you’ve heard about Duke lacrosse for the past 9 months, you’ve heard all kinds details about possible rape, sexual assault, underaged drinking, strippers, and public urination. But what don’t you know about the Duke lacrosse team? There’s plenty.

1. Guess what the graduation rate is for the Duke lacrosse team.

No really, go for it. Hazard a guess. A team at an elite private university is still full of a bunch of numbskull jocks, right? And, we all know what kind of guys the Duke lacrosse players are. The very even-handed mainstream media has treated us to a picture of them as non-stop, beer-guzzling Neanderthals who spend all their time using Mommy’s and Daddy’s Northeastern, lily-white riches to find new and exciting ways to exploit local minorities.

Well, those meat-headed cavemen have a 100-percent graduation rate. One hundred percent. You read that right. That’s three percent higher than the overall student-athlete graduation rate, at a university with one of the highest student-athlete graduation rates in the nation.

Only one other men’s sport at Duke—cross country—can match that rate.

2. Did you know they didn’t just graduate? Many of them even distinguished themselves academically?

This from the report of the Lacrosse Ad Hoc Review Committee, the group of Duke faculty charged with deciding whether or not to retain the lacrosse program in the wake of the rape case.