Today's items - updated:
Former Duke lacrosse coach is busy collecting awards and accolades.
Mike Pressler will be inducted into the Ohio Wesleyan University Hall of Fame on Saturday, October 27th. During his 5 year tenure at OWU from 1986 through 1990, Mike amassed a 69-16 record, four NCAC conference championships, five visits to the final four NCAA National Championships, three NCAA Division III championship game appearances, 29 - All-America selections and five NCAA players of the year. His contributions to the OWU Lacrosse program made him the winningest coach (.812) in the University's 50 year lacrosse history and represents 20% of OWU's 25 year participation in the NCAA Playoffs.
Hall of Famers to be Inducted During Homecoming:
Ohio Wesleyan University will induct nine former Battling Bishop standouts [...]
Mike Pressler coached men’s lacrosse from 1986-90, compiling 69-16 mark over his five seasons. His winning percentage of .812 is the best of any men's lacrosse coach at Ohio Wesleyan.
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Frank McGuire Foundation:The Frank McGuire Foundation recognizes greatness in high school coaching --
Mike Pressler To Speak at McGuire Foundation Awards Banquet --Mike Pressler, the head men's lacrosse coach at Bryant University, will deliver the keynote address at the Frank McGuire Foundation's 9th Annual Awards Dinner.
In honor of Coach Pressler's steadfast support of his team during his 2006 season at Duke University, the Foundation is proud to initiate the 1st Annual Mike Pressler Award Plaque. When the university, the media and the city succumbed to outside pressures, Coach Pressler's strength of character and his courage prevailed.
Coach Pressler will present the award to honorees chosen by our Selection Committee for their Character and Courage in the Face of Adversity. Coach Pressler is co-author of "It's Not About The Truth" with Don Yaeger. This year's Mike Pressler Awardees are Coach Jack Moran, Lacrosse, Chaminade High School, and Coach Chuck Ruebling, Lacrosse, Delbarton High School. [...]
discussion:
LieStoppers forum: New Pressler Award for high school coaches
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Mike Mazzeo / Drexel Univ. / TheTriangle.org:Ex-Duke lacrosse coach Pressler speaks to students -- Exactly 19 months and 10 days from the scandal that changed his life forever, current Bryant University Head Lacrosse Coach and ex-Duke Head Lacrosse Coach Mike Pressler came to speak to students in Professor Mike Kelly's Leadership in Sports and Society classes Oct. 23.
Pressler's former Duke lacrosse team made headlines in March 2006 when a stripper named Crystal Mangum accused three white members on Pressler's team of raping her at a party held in the house where three of the team's captains lived. [...]
"The only crime the students committed was stupid college behavior," Pressler said.
Pressler felt like people could take a lot from his experience.
"There's a lot of positive things [that came out from my experience]," Pressler said. "When you say you believe in someone you stand by them."
Pressler also touched on issues of leadership, credibility and ultimately vindication. [...]
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Good ReviewsSean Collins / Book Review - Until Proven Innocent / Spiked-online.com [UK]:
PC in the dock -- Why did so many leap to the conclusion that white lacrosse players at Duke University must have been guilty of gang-raping a black woman? This disturbing book reveals how political correctness led to a disastrous rush to judgement.
most of the national media bathed the Duke affair in the light of a modern-day PC morality tale. On one side were white, privileged, racist, drunken, arrogant jocks at the ‘Harvard of the South’ [...]
On the other side was a poor African-American single mother working hard to advance through a local community college. The case was presented as personifying broader social problems of sex and race in the United States. [...]
This is not ‘PC gone mad’ – rather, all cultural institutions now share basic PC assumptions [...]
If there is a redeeming feature of the Duke story, Taylor and Johnson find it in the response of the Duke students. Although some were against the players early on, many reserved judgment, and, as the facts emerged, campaigned for the accused students.
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henwy / Book Review - Until Proven Innocent / dreams that cannot be blog:Duke Lacrosse Case --
They're fools at best and monsters at worst - and neither fools nor monsters are much troubled by attacks of conscience.That pretty much sums up many of the people involved in persecuting and prosecuting the Duke Lacrosse team during the rape hoax. I finished Until Proven Innocent yesterday and I was wrong about how little new information there would be. It was fasinating to see everything laid out step by step and to have the added behind-the-scenes recounting of meetings and statements that were never released to the media. If anything, I'm left feeling even more outraged at the entire incident and worse, the sure knowledge that many of the most pernicious racists and demagogues have gotten away scott free. The actions of many of the Duke faculty and administration were appalling. These people should have been knocked down off their pedastals, branded as the cowardly hatemongers that they are, and then tossed out into the sewars. That they still hold exalted positions as educators is as offensive as finding out that David Duke or Louis Farrakahn were teaching courses for credit at Harvard. [...]
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More on the Corpulent Weasel, Burness -
John in Carolina:
The Chronicle’s Burness Gush -- The Chronicle has editorialized in response to the announced departure next June of John Burness, Duke’s senior vice president for public affairs and government relations. [...]
The Chronicle’s wrong: Everything isn’t “almost said and done.”
There’s a great deal we need to hear from Burness regarding his role and that of others in the University’s bungled and shameful response to the Hoax. [...]
Burness is a very talented man who’s done some good things for Duke. I’ll be posting soon concerning a few of them with which I’ve had first-hand experience.
But The Chronicle’s gushing doesn’t obscure in thoughtful people’s minds some very important questions.
Those questions concern Burness’ actions during the attempted frame-up and his actions to date as Duke’s leadership has tried desperately to avoid disclosing and explaining just what it did and didn’t do during the time President Brodhead said “whatever they did was bad enough” and “the facts kept changing.” [...]
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KC Johnson:Updates: Burness, Group in the News -- A first-rate editorial from the Chronicle on John Burness’ retirement; as usual, the editorial page hits all the right points. Elliot Wolf offers his personal reflections on the op-ed page. Both columns are worth reading in full.
Several Group of 88 members are back in the news, providing concrete examples what Group defender Prasad Kasibhatla has termed the “mainstream voices of reason” on Duke’s campus. [...]
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