The debate continues at Stanford about how much of a split should be allowed between the college athlete pool and the student body at large. Duke University is just wrapping up a live-fire study of such an issue with the now-infamous Duke lacrosse rape case, and the results show there is a small but significant portion of the student body and faculty whose hatred of “athletic privilege” is impervious to fact, truth and justice.

As the travesty that was the Duke lacrosse rape case winds down, the average person can barely be expected to understand the myriad details of the year-long ordeal that inflamed the tensions in Durham, N.C. and almost sent three innocent men to prison.

It’s a complex case and a difficult timeline to follow, if only because it boggles the mind to think that one person with a handful of conspirators could be so nefarious in so many different ways. Having followed it from the start, let me try to shed some light on the case.

Following a March 2006 Duke lacrosse team party at which she was hired to perform, a black stripper falsely claimed she was raped. Embroiled in an election for his job, the county district attorney brazenly violated his profession’s ethics, law enforcement procedures and the law itself to indict three white men for sexual assault, rape and kidnapping.

Within a month the sham of the case was exposed, but the DA kept at it. And with increasing desperation, he and a small gang of accomplices tried to railroad three innocent people into 30-year prison terms, all the while playing up the racial angle of the case to his own political benefit.

On the side, a rainbow of critics and commentators declared the accused guilty on the basis of their race, gender and social status, disregarding the growing hill of exculpatory evidence. This posse included a portion of the Duke faculty and went as high as a journalist for The New York Times.

In April 2007, the state attorney general declared the case a hoax and dropped the charges, stating that “these three individuals are innocent.” The DA was disbarred in June, lifted from his post, and still faces contempt charges that could put him in jail. The players’ families reached a sizable settlement with Duke University.

That’s the short version. Make no mistake: every step of the way, there was even less reason to believe that the stripper, Crystal Mangum, had been violated, let alone that the indicted men had committed the crime. After what she described as a brutal gang rape, Mangum showed up at the hospital with only minor trauma to the legs. Her statements on the incident varied wildly, varying in number of assailants (from two to five) and the manner in which she had been violated. Her statements contradicted that of her co-worker and everyone interviewed at the party.

Meanwhile, behind in an electoral race for his job, District Attorney Mike Nifong pulled out all the stops to energize Duke’s black community, giving dozens of interviews and claiming he was sure a rape had occurred. Showing the disrespect for due process that was to mark the entire case, Nifong sneered that hiring counsel was proof of guilt, and railed against a code of silence from the players. This was a flat-out lie — in fact, team members had volunteered to give statements, DNA and polygraphs.

The first person Mangum identified with “100 percent certainty” as being at the party was a player who was miles away in Raleigh the entire time. Her identification (in a procedurally flawed, pick-anyone lineup) of three other men produced the indictments.

But one of them, Reade Seligmann, left the party before the alleged attack occurred — an alibi proved by a cab driver, an ATM camera, cell phone records and a dorm key-card manifest. Prior to the indictments, Seligmann’s attorney requested a meeting with Nifong to present this evidence. The DA refused to meet, however, and the family instead released the evidence to the world. Nifong, nonetheless, won his primary shortly after and was later re-elected.

After stating that DNA testing would rule out innocent players, Nifong changed his tune in April when no match was found between forensics and the players, save for one player who, along with two percent of all males, couldn’t be ruled out (a far cry from a match).

At this point, most reasoned observers concluded that the case was of null merit.

This didn’t stop the pattern of harassment that had emerged since the case began, especially from Duke itself. A gang of potbanging students (apparently with better things to do than get educated) and other protestors surrounded the house where the party had been held, with signs saying “castrate” and “Sunday morning, time to confess.” A group of 88 professors took out an ad condemning a campus “social disaster,” a thinly-disguised attack on a group of their own students.

Duke English Prof. Houston Baker issued a hysterical, racist and unsubstantiated letter demanding the dismissal of every player on the team and the abolishment of the lacrosse program. The campus priest told a parent he wouldn’t minister to the team until they “confessed their sins.”

This lynch mob was not quelled by Duke president Richard Brodhead, who stated “whatever they did was bad enough” and suggested the case go to trial so the players would have the opportunity to “prove their innocence.”

Openly stating “it’s not about the truth,” the Duke athletic director demanded the lacrosse coach’s resignation before indictments were even obtained. Duke was sued and later settled. The harassment continued at the classroom level, where a professor with an open anti-athlete bias failed two lacrosse players. (One whose graduation was almost blocked by the failing grade received a settlement.)

Few at Duke were willing to stand up against the tide, and the voices of reason didn’t come from the media. Indeed, some members of the media seemed content to slough off their guilt by rejoicing in the players’ suffering. These normally liberal commentators became reborn Puritans, screaming that these men deserved their Kafka-esque experience for having a tasteless spring break party.

Last I checked, it’s not against the law to pay someone to take her clothes off. And not to minimize the problem of criminal underage drinking, but it hardly stands to reason that having a few beers should get someone falsely accused of rape.

Among critics, much was made of the players’ middle-upper class roots, variously implying that they lived a life without consequences, could buy off the justice system or shouldn’t receive sympathy due to the comfort of their everyday lives. Too many media figures simply wanted them to be guilty, if only to satisfy their stereotypes of wealthy white jocks as over-privileged hooligans or to make the case into a racial allegory.

One of these figures was New York Times reporter Duff Wilson, whose laughably pro-Nifong coverage lapsed into all-out mendacity at times and earned him the nickname “witness for the prosecution” from Slate columnist Stuart Taylor.

No less a man than media satirist Jon Stewart took these fools to task, saying “those three Duke kids who spent the last year presumed guilty of assaulting a black woman because the issue had huge symbolic resonance with the media? Turns out they didn’t do anything.”

In December, another bomb dropped and the case collapsed. The defense discovered that in addition to not having lacrosse player DNA on her, the accuser carried the DNA of four other men — and Nifong and the DNA lab director had conspired to suppress DNA details helpful to the defense. Nifong was removed from the case at that point, and the attorney general put the case on a path toward proper resolution.

The case would not have seen the light of truth without its own gang of heroes. Among them were local reporters and bloggers dedicated to the simple principles of fact, logic and measured analysis. To name just one, Ed Bradley, the CBS reporter who died before the charges were dismissed, had the courage to openly question the case on national television after long-form interviews with the accused highlighted the holes for all to see.

Nifong’s absurdity is, paradoxically, the silver lining. Without his preposterous pursuit of the case as it collapsed around him, the world might see these charges as a he said-she said, not-enough-evidence incident that was squelched by slick lawyers.

In criminal justice, the tie goes to the accused. Instead, by continuing to go forward, Nifong disgraced himself and opened the door to the players’ exoneration.

Thanks to a minister of injustice, justice prevailed.

Voices at Duke and elsewhere pounced on the case to stump for a repeal of scholarship athletics. However, the destructive firestorm that ensued showed that it was a vocal minority of faculty members and administrative enablers, rather than an athletic team, that was out of control. The case certainly puts some of the more shrill voices opposing big-time sports in a different light.

Christopher P. Anderson is a graduate student in Electrical Engineering. Contact him at cpanders@stanford.edu.