Everyone loves a good sex scandal, so when a woman at Duke University accused several members of the elite Blue Devils men's lacrosse team of sexual assault, television wasted no time on cashing in.

Two sophomore members of the Duke lacrosse team were arrested Tuesday for the alleged sexual assault and kidnapping of an exotic dancer at an off-campus lacrosse party in March, and investigators are trying to confirm the identity of a third attacker.

The accusations of rape have resulted in the suspension of two players from the university, the canceling of the lacrosse season, the resignation of the head coach and the transfer of a majority of lacrosse recruits to other schools.

The rape scandal has left a muddled pile of facts. Lawyers for the defense have suggested that the plaintiff was drunk and injured before the party, and, in fact, one of the first police officers to see the woman after the party described her as "just passed-out drunk," according to the Associated Press.

Yet the woman's medical exam record does not indicate that she was drunk; it only says that her injuries and behavior were consistent with having been sexually assaulted. Adding to the confusion, a DNA test cleared all the suspects.

New York Times columnist David Brooks recently compared Duke's lacrosse scandal to the debauchery and questionable moral standards described in Tom Wolfe's notorious I Am Charlotte Simmons (which takes place on a campus unsubtly reminiscent of Duke).

I read Mr. Wolfe's novel, and while I admit that his fast-paced tales of sweaty sex, beer pong, basketball and drunken fraternity formals kept my attention, I also found the book rife with stereotypes.

All the book's athletes were jerks with no real passion outside sports and hooking up with women (except one basketball star who, thanks to the book's heroine, Charlotte, took an interest in Socrates). All sorority girls were gorgeous, vapid, sexually experienced and filthy rich. Campus life in general revolved around getting drunk and getting laid. As Charlotte weaved her way through college and discovered moral ambiguity, all the other students were one-dimensional paper dolls that dazzled and shocked her.

One issue Mr. Wolfe harps on in much of his work is how obsessed people are with social status, and there's real sting to some of his descriptions of social cliques.

Similarly, most of the coverage of the lacrosse scandal has painted the issue as one of social class and race. The New York Times was careful to note that one lacrosse player's father is a "prominent Wall Street executive" on the board of Newcastle Investment Corporation and that both accused players "grew up in million-dollar homes in affluent communities and attended all-boys Roman Catholic schools."

Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle, stated that one of the accused and his father "pulled away in a tan Ford Explorer with New Jersey license plates."

The woman who has accused the men of rape, meanwhile, is a 27-year-old, African-American mother of two working her way through a different college by stripping. She claimed that three white men attacked her and that she was 100 percent positive she had identified two of them.

While their friends have been quick to defend the characters of the lacrosse players, several incidents are enough to give us pause. One of the men was previously arrested and charged with assault when he punched a man who begged him to stop calling him gay and derogatory names. Another team member (now banished from campus) reportedly sent a group e-mail promising another party at which all the women invited would be killed and skinned.

Going by these incidents, it's hard to think of these men as "nice guys."

That student athletes at many schools are privileged and that some have a false sense of entitlement is not news. But can we really attribute the chauvinistic behavior of a few lacrosse players to their prep-school backgrounds? Are student athletes especially vulnerable to rape accusations? If this scandal didn't happen to involve lacrosse players, would it make the news?

Unfortunately, sexual assault is a reality on most college campuses, and not always in a locker-room context. There's no question that sexual assault should be taken seriously, and victims should feel safe in reporting rape. But maybe the Duke lacrosse scandal is more representative of the dangers of drunken group mentality, or of how the behaviors of a few unpleasant individuals can slap a whole group with a negative stereotype, than of elitism or racism.

Cynthia Martens ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in Italian and European Studies.