'Paul H. Haagen, a professor of law and head of Duke’s Academic Council… said that he believes Duke is doing all it can to help the police investigations — while not doing things that could result in students being denied due process… But Haagen, whose academic specialty is sports law, said, “one of the realities here is that there is substantial public distrust of the ability of higher education to regulate its affairs related to athletes.”


…Some observers have suggested that this incident shows that colleges that have long played close attention to the athletes on their “showcase teams” — most often high visibility sports like basketball and football — need to extend that scrutiny more broadly. Haagen, who played lacrosse as an undergraduate at Haverford College, has mixed feelings about such an approach.

Basketball players, he said, “are on a shorter leash” than other students. But if closer monitoring is needed, he said, what does that say about the students?

“I get really uneasy when we have special rules for athletes,” he said. “We’re not monitoring the orchestra. If these kinds of things are part of the culture, if watching for this needs to be part of the way we are operating, then we have to think real seriously about why we are doing this.” '