The Butler Column and Its Response

A few weeks ago, the Chronicle’s Kristin Butler penned a column that opened with the arresting line, “It seems anyone can get a college degree these days—especially if they go to North Carolina Central University.”

Given Crystal Mangum’s personal history of accusing people of crimes that never occurred, drug and alcohol abuse, hospitalization for mental difficulties, and participation in the sex trade, Butler wondered how the false accuser did not seem to have violated NCCU’s honor code. Butler also recalled the remarkable case of Solomon Burnette—NCCU Class of 2007—a convicted felon who had robbed two Duke students at gunpoint, and who penned a spring 2007 column seeming to advocate vigilante justice against (white) Duke students.

If Butler had more space, she might also have mentioned Chan Hall, the former NCCU student government leader who informed Newsweek that he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted “whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past.” Or she might have wondered about the intellectual environment at an institution where hundreds of students offered such an extremist attitude at an April 2006 forum that—for the first and only time in the entire lacrosse case—Mike Nifong actually looked moderate by comparison. Indeed, Nifong required a police escort to get out of the hall.

Despite (or perhaps because of?) these facts, Butler’s column has attracted a storm of criticism, which has taken four basic lines of argument: (1) Butler had no standing to comment on matters at NCCU, and harmed Duke-NCCU relations by doing so; (2) Critics can invent their own version of the facts to chastise Butler; (3) Butler was unfair in her attack on NCCU; and (4) Critics of what Mangum’s graduation says about NCCU’s academic environment are racists.

(1) The lack of standing argument.

In a recent edition of the Herald-Sun, NCCU student Candra Broadie—after engaging in a few ad hominem attacks against Butler—dismissed the ability of “outsiders who have never attended the university to speak about NCCU in such a degrading manner.” How dare a student “from a high-status university,” she mused, criticize NCCU, whose “list of illustrious alumnus [sic] include Gov. Easley, Ernie Barnes, a famous artist and former professional football player, Maynard Jackson, the first black mayor [of?] Atlanta[,] and Willie Gary, a prominent black attorney, and CEO of MBC.”

If Herald-Sun editor Bob Ashley had elected to utilize some basic fact-checking (not to mention a copy editor) before printing Broadie’s column, he would have discovered that Easley received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill); Jackson’s undergraduate degree came from Morehouse College; and Gary graduated from Shaw University. All three men are alumni not of NCCU but of NCCU’s law school. (Barnes, like Crystal Mangum, actually was an undergraduate student at NCCU.)

In theory, an argument could be made that a Duke student (or any outsider) should avoid criticizing NCCU’s approach to the case. That line of reasoning, however, presupposes that the institution itself had engaged in some soul-searching about Mangum or the university’s response to her false allegations.

No evidence exists that such soul-searching has occurred. Indeed, no evidence exists that any soul-searching has occurred. In January, I e-mailed NCCU spokesperson Miji Bell to ask for any initiatives or comments (from either the administration or student body) that gave a sense of how NCCU has achieved its own sense of closure to the issues raised by the lacrosse case, and whether NCCU had used the Mangum affair to look at enforcement of its student judicial code. Bell never replied.

Broadie doesn’t seem interested in such soul-searching, either. “Is it up to us,” she asked, “to hold one back from success in life because of a mistake that was made years ago? Whatever [sic] happened to forgiveness?” (Of course, Mangum’s “mistake”—at least her most recent one—occurred while she was a student at NCCU, the whole point of Butler’s column.) “According to Butler,” Broadie continued, “no one deserves a chance to live a successful life after having done wrong.” This is, to put it mildly, an unusual interpretation of the argument in Butler’s column.

(2) The damn-the-facts argument.

Broadie was not the only Butler critic who offered a factually challenged line of attack. In a recent posting at Diverse—with the none-too-subtle title of “Prejudice Rears Its Ugly Head and Aims Itself at North Carolina Central University”—Dr. Marybeth Gasman, a professor at Penn’s School of Education, accused Butler of factual inaccuracy. Wrote she, “Ms. Butler mistakenly [emphasis added] labeled Ms. Mangum a prostitute.”

Curious about Gasman’s evidence for leveling such a critique, I e-mailed the Education professor. Butler’s assertion struck me as unremarkable. After all, the case featured such items as Mangum’s former manager noting that she used her “exotic dancing” trade to scout customers for prostitution, authorities taking statements from two of Mangum’s drivers (some called them “pimps”), defense attorneys tracking down at least one of Mangum’s pre-party “customers,” and the DNA of multiple male sexual partners in Mangum’s rape kit—male sexual partners whose identity was unknown to Mangum.

Perhaps the above set of facts yields a logical explanation other than the one Butler offered, but such an explanation doesn’t immediately come to mind.

Gasman’s response? She noted her belief in freedom of opinion, and explained that her accusation of Butler’s factual inaccuracy resulted from “merely my read of the evidence—and my perspective on the case.”

We’re all, of course, entitled to our own opinions, and our own perspectives. But we’re not entitled to our own facts. It seems awfully convenient to accuse someone of factual inaccuracy—a very serious charge, after all—based on evidence that the critic then refuses to identify.

I e-mailed Gasman to note my puzzlement with her reply; she reiterated only that she had a “different perspective on this case.” But, again, whether or not Gasman has a “different perspective on this case” is irrelevant to the question of whether she had any evidence to substantiate her in-print assertion that “Ms. Butler mistakenly [emphasis added] labeled Ms. Mangum a prostitute.”

(3) The unfairness argument.

Beyond her damn-the-facts line of attack, Gasman asserted that “Butler commits a ‘sin’ in her op-ed that surfaces over and over when people are assessing Black colleges. She condemns an entire institution for one incident.”

I’m sympathetic to Gasman’s argument (though this “sin” occurs in public criticisms of many non-elite colleges, not just HBCU’s). That said, the Mangum/NCCU affair would seem to be an exception to the general rule. After what we learned of Mangum during the lacrosse case, it’s hard to imagine how she could receive a B.A. degree—and in criminal justice, no less—from any institution of higher learning.

After all, this is a person who had serious mental problems (a psychological file that appeared to be around 1000 pages long when Judge Osmond Smith held it up in the courtroom). Even before the lacrosse case, she had leveled serious allegations (rape, attempted murder, child abuse) against three different sets of individuals. She had a record of alcohol and drug abuse. Based on her statement to police, she appeared to write at around an 8^th or 9^th grade level.

The case file also provided an insight on Mangum’s “study habits” while at NCCU, especially in the form of Jarriel Johnson’s statement. (Most in the media delicately referred to Johnson as Mangum’s “driver.” But, if we adopt the Gasman “perspective on the case,” Johnson was apparently Durham’s version of the Good Samaritan, a man who provided a free car service to an unemployed woman who had lost her license, and who was on call at all hours of the day and night, willing to drive to all sorts of locations in the Triangle. How he supported himself financially must remain a mystery; perhaps he was independently wealthy.)

According to Johnson’s police statement, Mangum (when she allegedly was an NCCU student) spent a lot of time at exotic dancing establishments, or in hotel rooms for various “appointments,” often till the wee hours of the morning. His statement, however, contained no mention of driving her to or from class; or of her taking time to study; or indeed, of her doing anything remotely resembling academic activity.

Given what we know of Mangum, then, it’s hard not to ask the question Butler’s column raised: what does such a figure earning a college degree say about the institution’s overall academic environment?

(4) The racist argument.

Events in Durham since 2006 have shown a depressing pattern: when all else fails, play the race card. The response to Butler’s column was no exception. For instance, beyond accusing Butler of factual inaccuracy by citing evidence that she then refused to reveal, Gasman also labeled Butler’s column as “racist.”

The most inflammatory playing of the race card, however, came from an experienced practitioner in the trade, Durham minister Carl Kenney. Close followers of the lacrosse case will recognize Kenney’s name: in October 2006, he offered a bizarre interpretation of the U.S. justice system, demanding that Mangum receive “her day in court,” regardless of whether any evidence existed for her myriad tales. After the DHC had found Mike Nifong guilty of 27 of 32 counts of unethical conduct, Kenney fantastically asserted that “Nifong has been stripped of his right to practices [sic] law and serve as DA because he believes an exotic dancer.”

In critiquing Butler, Kenney didn’t even bother with Gasman’s strategy of offering an unsubstantiated allegation of factual inaccuracy. Instead, he simply leveled a claim of racism. “Butler’s column,” he fumed, “was racist at its core. Why? Because Butler made assumptions about an institution that is loving and forgiving enough to give a person like Crystal Mangum a second chance.”

Making unidentified “assumptions” about North Carolina Central, it seems, produces a “racist” column. Is there any criticism that Butler could have that would not have been “racist”? Kenney doesn’t say. Does Kenney think that NCCU appropriately enforced its honor code in dealing with Mangum and Burnette? He doesn’t say. Does Kenney have any concern about how someone with Mangum’s record of behavior could possibly have had the time (much less the ability) to complete the necessary classwork to receive a degree? He doesn’t say. Does Kenney have any concern about the attitudes expressed by the NCCU student body in spring 2006? He doesn’t say.

Kenney does suggest, however, that he saw nothing problematic with Burnette’s column, which seemed to demand vigilante justice against (white) Duke students.

Of course.

By the way, the target of all this ire received yet another award--being named by UWIRE as among the 100 best student journalists in the country.

[Update: Shortly after this post appeared, all traces of the Gasman column vanished from the Diverse website. A reader has posted the original version of the Gasman item in the comments section.]