Dear sales rep for a textbook distributor,
Sorry for lying to you on the phone.
It was just a white split-level a stone's throw from dorms on Duke University's East Campus, indistinct from the other worn-down frat pads littered throughout Durham. It had an iron-wrought railing that curved into leafy shapes, and behind that was a door with a metal knocker. The shutters were black and the roof was grey. But what set it apart was its address-a street number that conjured up a remembrance of the salacious accusations, the media frenzy and the turbulent bouts of protest. Today 610 N. Buchanan Road-the center of the Duke Lacrosse scandal that erupted in March 2006-was destroyed.
This is fascinating: a professor goes back to meet a student he failed for plagiarizing. (Her plagiarism was direct and outright, copying a paper directly.) Because he thought the consequences were too extreme, and the college system too regimented ("over and over I saw how the nature of the institution and its agents reduced the complexity of student experience to neat bureaucratic decision tree") she was the only student he ever punished for plagiarism.
NCAA basketball "March Madness" is on-beginning today, a host of institutions of higher education compete for bragging rights and an incremental boost in income from licensed-merchandise sales. But Awl readers know that the real champion school is the one that can charge the most tuition a year and still attract a robust student body to rock the all-important school rankings. Using the figures provided by college information resource Peterson's, I ran the NCAA tournament bracket by tuition. (In the case of state university system schools, the lower, in-state tuition is used.) It was a barnburner.
Dear riders of the Powell-Mason cable car line in San Francisco, late summer 1991,
Sorry for flashing you.
Dear person who lived next to Kris Friendly in Harkness at Connecticut College during the fall semester of 1989,
I'm sorry for calling you at 2:30 in the morning on a Tuesday and asking you to knock on Kris's door and tell him he had an important call.
Dear Nick,
I'm sorry I ate your carrot cake.
We were at college, and living off campus in the house on Bragaw Street. You had bought the cake earlier that day, when we'd all gone to Super Stop n' Shop for groceries. You'd paid for it separately and left it in the fridge while you went to an afternoon class. But our roommate Scott and I didn't have afternoon classes that day. Or if we did, we decided to skip them and stay home and smoke pot instead. Whatever the case, we stayed home while you were out and smoked pot. I got hungry, on account of the pot [...]
