That Lacrosse thing

I know it's hard to tell, but I try very hard *not* to get on my soapbox on this blog. But maybe I'm emboldened by this "who do you think you are?" speech Barbara Kingsolver gave. That and I think I've got something distinct to say.
We live three blocks away from the Duke Lacrosse house that has been on the Raleigh News&Observer's front page so many times lately. Too far to know anything directly about the incident itself. But the neighborhoods around Duke's East campus, in which we live, have a smattering of Duke student houses, and our street has its very own.
Last weekend was commencement at Duke, and the weeks preceding and following it have seen nightly parties at our neighboorhood house. The consensus on the street is that these guys aren't as bad as some of the other tenants the house has seen. But for the last two weeks, "not so bad" has meant being awoken, almost like clockwork, at 3:00 am, when the party spills onto the front porch or the street. Loud voices always, accompanied with a new twist every night: perhaps fireworks, a streetside football game, breaking bottles, loud retching into the gutter, something new to break the monotony of nightly drinking.
Since I walk around the neighborhoods a lot, I am guessing every house is within earshot of one party house or another, and I am guessing that the reason why so many people are ready to crucify the Lacrosse guys with or without trial is because everyone here has been witness to foul and clueless behavior, and there is simply no pool of goodwill from which to draw. For our part, blessed with a 6-month old baby who has now been sleeping through the night for 3 months, the nightly interruptions have meant dragging through our days once again. Though the evenings are wonderfully chilly, we keep our windows shut and the A/C running to protect our sleep, and though we live three doors down and across the street, we don't fail to hear them, and we're simply too exhausted to get up and call the police. Instead we mutter homicidal thoughts, roll around for a couple of hours, and eagerly await our trip to France next week where we'll hopefully be out of earshot.