This article is being written in the interest of fairness. After the Duke scandal began to break, I wrote an article stating that if the allegations were true, it was a preventable incident. It was never my intention to blame the victim, only to add a word of caution that would be good for women in the future to think about. If you want to avoid being a victim, don't put yourself in a place to become one.

While the accused lacrosse players have not been found to be innocent of wrongdoing in this case, it does appear that at least one of them may not be guilty. If they are innocent, my advice to them is the same as it would have been for the stripper, had they been found guilty.

The simple truth is, it is very easy to find yourself in a compromising position. When there is a lack of credible witnesses, anything can be said against you and you have little defense. While the Duke players certainly had a right to party (no Beastie Boys jokes here, please), they also had a responsibility to protect themselves. Hiring a stripper (to my understanding, it's illegal for strippers to perform outside of highly regulated establishments in NC) was a bad idea if the team wasn't prepared to provide some measure of safety for their players as well as for the entertainment. It probably would have been wiser to take their party to such a club, where there is greater oversight that could help their defense.

It just may be that we may never know what happened at that party. But one thing is for sure: it was an entirely preventable incident. While some may tend to "feel sorry" for the lacrosse players because they believed they were falsely accused, I do not. Even if they WERE falsely accused, they need to understand there are people out there who will make such accusations, and to protect themselves accordingly. They certainly don't deserve to be stigmatized as sexual predators if, in fact, they aren't, but they also need a hard lesson in what it means to be an adult. A lesson I have little doubt they will have learned once all is said and done.