Given that I have some pretty strong allegiances to a number of Duke administrators, I may need to self-censor down the line if this story turns a LAX-brand-of-sour, but until then...

During the height of the protests or riots (depending on what side of that shibboleth you fall) in Tibet, a group of about a dozen "Free TB" protesters were demonstrating on the Duke campus in Durham North Carolina. During the protest, the group was surrounded by a much larger, better-organized, and significantly more hostile group of "Pro-China" demonstrators, composed primarily of overseas Chinese students.

The event was notable in and of itself for demonstrating how deeply divided the campus was on the issue.

The plot thickened, however, when it came to light that one of the twelve Tibet Protesters was a Chinese freshman from Qingdao. Someone (the court of public opinion is convinced it is an angry Chinese student) put the freshman's identifying information (including her Chinese ID number) on the Duke Chinese Students website. The student claims that she has since been sent death threats including one that called for her to be burned alive with oil.

"(Having my information put on the website) just means I can never go back to China if I care about my security. If I go back I might end up in jail forever," the student claimed.

Zhizhong Li, a third-year graduate student and president of the Duke Chinese Scholars and Students Association dismissed the student's concerns about not being allowed back into China.

"People talk about that all the time and no matter," he said.

Still, Li has done a poor job of convincing other students at Duke. Instead, the alleged threats have made the girl a hero to various Republican right wing groups. These have banded together to demand that the Chinese student group be banned from campus for harassment and intimidation.

With the fiasco of the Duke Lacrosse case still fresh in Durham's collective memory, one would hope that people would allow for a little more reflection. At present, introspection does not seem like a likely course for anyone involved.