Michael Mueller

	Duke graduate student Sara Appel protests the wall of silence staged by the lacrosse team members. Photo by AP

With community problems like this, imagine the difficulty Duke students are going to have parrying questions about this alleged gang rape to potential employers and prospective freshmen. Guilty or not, it will take years -- possibly decades -- for the lacrosse team and the university to get rid of the stigma associated with this case.

The wall that surrounds Duke's East campus is real in more ways than just the physical sense. The feud between Durham residents and off-campus Duke students, for example, has raged for years. And it is somewhat ironic that on a campus where some of us will wait weeks to get into a basketball game with national television exposure, we now want nothing more than for the cameras to go away.

This case couldn't have come at a worse time for Duke. Campus morale was already low from the men's basketball team's loss to LSU. And then came the lacrosse allegations. Despite the fact that men's basketball is overwhelmingly more popular than women's basketball here, I thought our national championship loss in the women's title game was one of the most painful losses we've had in years. This campus is desperate for good news. We needed that win because a cathartic bonfire would have allowed us, if just for a couple hours, to have a celebration unfettered by the clouds of the lacrosse allegations.

So, in sum, we've grown weary of the cameras and media outlets lining the traffic circle in front of the Chapel. We're concerned for our safety and, to a lesser extent, for the value of our degrees. But most of all, we're shocked and disappointed, and we hope and pray the allegations are not true. We can't wait for this entire fiasco to end.