There have been angry protests in Durham and on the Duke campus for several days since the alleged incident was made public, indicating that there were existing racial, sexual and athlete-student (not to be confused with the nefarious term "student-athlete'') tensions long before March 13.

Racial -- and by extension, social -- tensions are not surprising. Durham is a city of 118,000 whose population is 43.8 percent African-American (according to the 2000 U.S. census) and has more than 26,000 residents living below the federal poverty line. Duke is an elite university that costs more than $42,000 a year to attend without financial aid or scholarship money. Of Duke's more than 6,200 undergraduates, only 11 percent are black. Like many other campuses in similar situations, there will always be town-gown tension that can take many forms, some of it ugly.

The other issues are more germane to the structure of big-time sports. Duke runs a top-notch Division I-A sports program. Its men's and women's basketball programs are among the best in the country. Football has struggled but attempts to compete in the ACC, and that requires a certain level of commitment. In terms of its competitive athletic philosophy, Duke is somewhere closer to Florida State than to Yale.

And wherever you have a powerful athletic program on a university campus, you have an irresolvable divide. It is patently impossible to build a strong athletic program with recruits who meet the school's ordinary admissions requirements. Schools have to dip lower for talented athletes. Therefore, players on sports teams often have little more in common with students than the name on the front of their jerseys or the side of their helmets. The term "student-athlete" is often -- not always -- an oxymoron.

This arrangement produces many good things: school spirit, alumni support, etc. I doubt there are many students at Duke who want to go to Cameron Indoor Stadium and bob up and down in support of the best team Coach K can put together with kids who scored 800 on their math SAT.

It also produces a culture of entitlement, in which athletes are not held to the same behavioral or academic standards as the rest of the university and, in many cases, are not held accountable for their actions off the field.

Any sports fan with more than a casual interest level is aware of the frequency with which Division I athletes commit crimes, misdemeanors and just plain stupidity. (The party at Duke may yet fall into one of the former categories, but surely it already falls into the last.)

Too often colleges drag their feet, and then act meekly, when addressing "pending'' investigations that delve into behavior that may or may not be criminal but is surely abhorrent. Too often they keep athletes in uniform, on the field (or the court). Too often they say the wrong thing -- like Duke athletic director Joe Alleva did on Tuesday.

"These are really outstanding student-athletes,'' Alleva said. "Over the years we have 100 percent graduation rates. They're wonderful young men. They are young men and sometimes young men make bad decisions, bad judgments.''

Which means that Alleva either thinks the lacrosse players are innocent of the charges (before seeing the final result of the police investigation) or he thinks rape is "bad judgment.'' Either way, he's contributing to the culture of entitlement.

Duke president Brodhead made the right move, even if he made it clumsily and far too late. The only way the culture of the non-student-athlete changes is if somebody breaks down the wall of privilege. Clearly the suspension of every player is a tactic employed to coerce cooperation from the lesser involved, but also it sends a message that sports will not go forward in the face of behavior that leads to criminal investigation and DNA collection. If the lacrosse players are all proven innocent, apologize and bring them back, but explain that even the hint of impropriety must be dealt with harshly. That's where the turnaround begins.

Back to the elephant. Would Brodhead -- or the president at any athletic powerhouse -- have suspended his football or basketball program under the same circumstances? With the money and exposure that would be lost? Not likely. But perhaps someday. And this is a start.