In its coverage of the Duke University men’s lacrosse rape story, the media for months has contrasted the elite, privileged world of Duke with the struggling-to-get-by image of the historically Black North Carolina Central University, where the alleged rape victim is a student.
While physically only a couple of miles apart, the manicured expanse of Duke — which has an endowment of $3.8 billion — is psychologically far removed from the functional brick buildings of NCCU, which has an endowment of just $22 million. That such differences exist between a mostly White institution, built off of plantation money, and a mostly Black institution, created in 1910 when Blacks were denied entry to other schools, has raised questions of lingering inequalities.
Yet in the months following the alleged rape, NCCU Chancellor James Ammons Sr. has stuck by his wealthier neighbor, appearing often with the Duke President Richard H. Brodhead. But last week, Ammons went public with concerns that the highly publicized scandal is tarnishing NCCU’s reputation.
In an op-ed piece he e-mailed to dozens of national publications, Ammons lashed out at the public’s “unfavorable comparisons” between NCCU and Duke, and at being “tagged with stereotypical labels.
“References in news stories to North Carolina Central as ‘scrappy and willful’ or ‘a poor cousin to Duke University’ create a picture of an institution that is financially strapped, lacks sophistication and is devoid of excellence,” wrote Ammons. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
While maintaining that relations with Duke are stronger than ever, Ammons and other administrators said NCCU was being victimized and its image distorted by the public and the media, who have broadened the lacrosse scandal into a case of haves and have-nots between the schools.
That is ironic, administrators point out, because NCCU’s funding and enrollment have recently increased. After decades of under-funding, the state Legislature has allotted more than $121 million in new programs and renovations to the university in recent years. Part of that funding went towards constructing a new state-of-the-art structure for the NCCU School of Law, considered one of the best HBCU law schools in the country.
