It also was a victory for the Colorado Justice Review Project, a federally funded collaboration between the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and the Denver District Attorney’s Office. The program — one of only two of its kind nationally to be operated by prosecution offices instead of defense offices — is charged with reviewing thousands of Colorado convictions in search of cases that could benefit from a new look with the support of modern DNA testing capabilities.

A select group of students at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law were instrumental in helping process those cases, including the Dewey case.

Since the project’s inception in 2009, three to five law students a semester have participated in the effort through Denver Law’s Legal Externship Program. Students help hunt for cases that could be corrected with the help of testing unavailable at the time of conviction, explains Michael Dougherty, Colorado deputy attorney general in the Criminal Justice Section.

The participation of DU law students — who earn academic credit for their service — was written into the $1.2 million grant, Dougherty says.

“It’s a tribute to the Legal Externship Program at DU,” he says. “Starting in 2010, DU has been a tremendous partner in our efforts. The students bring energy, commitment and outstanding judgment to this project. The students without exception have been mature and hard-working. We’ve even had students come back when they weren’t getting credit.”

With some 5,000 cases to review, there was a mountain of work for all involved, Dougherty says. Not every case was eligible. If a case didn’t involve DNA evidence, it wouldn’t be reviewed. For example, if a suspect in a sexual assault case conceded there was sexual contact but claimed it was consensual, then the presence of his DNA alone wouldn’t merit review.

From there, students read every record of court proceedings, analyzed appellate files, looked for the location of retained evidence, went to individual district attorney offices across the state to review files, and even helped re-interview witnesses.

Dougherty, who also is an adjunct professor at the Sturm College, says students weren’t relegated to busywork. They made real judgment calls that affected real cases, and they presented their findings and recommendations to state authorities with the power to order full DNA evaluations.

“We treated the externs like attorneys,” he says.

Law student Dorothy Whitehead Weust, who graduates this month, was one of the Denver law students to lend her time to the project.

“I came to law school with the hope of doing postconviction exoneration,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh this is perfect; what a great fit.’”

Over two summers, Weust spent 40 hours a week working at the project, the second time without even earning law school credit. She added several more hours during the school year.It was during that second summer volunteering that she traveled to Grand Junction with an investigator to re-interview witnesses in Dewey’s case.

Dewey was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for the 1994 murder and rape of a 19-year-old Western Slope woman. He had been in prison until his release was ordered May 1 thanks to the Colorado Justice Review Project’s discoveries.

While working on the case, Weust said those involved noticed the evidence wasn’t adding up.

“I think we had a gut feeling that something just wasn’t quite right,” she says. “Nothing suggested that the prosecution had done anything wrong, or that the police had done anything wrong. The evidence just wasn’t quite there.”

In the end, that gut feeling was right. Modern testing not only proved Dewey was not involved, but it also pointed the finger at another man already serving a life term for a murder and rape.

Ann Vessels, director of Denver Law’s Legal Externship Program, says connecting students to meaningful legal work while they are still in school dovetails with the school’s promise to deliver students at graduation who are ready to practice law. Real-world experience under the guidance of experienced advisers — both faculty and in the field — helps ensure law students see how classroom lessons apply in real cases and how legal judgments affect real people.

More than 70 percent of Denver Law students take advantage of the externship opportunities, she says.

“There are many really outstanding supervisory attorneys who work with our students, and Michael Dougherty is one of the best,” she says. “He integrates the students in all of the legal work in the office. Just as importantly, he exhibits the highest degree of professionalism, a key aspect of the practice of law.”

For Weust, being involved in the project — Dewey’s case in particular — was bittersweet.

“Part of you is thinking, ‘Oh, we got it right! We’re freeing a man!’” she says. “But on the other hand, it’s a reality that justice was denied for a long time.”

Sophomore Jeremy Noble set the new DU DI record for most points in a game with 10. Photo: Rich Clarkson and Associates

Following a career-game from sophomore midfielder Jeremy Noble, the University of Denver men’s lacrosse team upset the eighth-seeded North Carolina Tar Heels 16-14 in NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Tournament action Saturday night at Fetzer Field in Chapel Hill (read full game coverage here). The Pioneers will travel to Annapolis, Md., on Saturday, May 19, for their third match-up this season against top-seeded Loyola in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Championships. The game, which begins at 12:30 p.m. MDT, will be broadcast live on ESPN2 and ESPN3.

Fans can watch the game at three locations surrounding the DU campus: Boone’s Tavern, 1135 E. Evans Ave.; The Pioneer, 2401 S. University Blvd.; and the Crimson and Gold Tavern, 2017 S. University Blvd.

Tickets for the 2012 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Quarterfinals between the University of Denver and Loyola are on sale at the Ricketts Hall Box Office, by calling 1-800-US4-NAVY or online at http://bit.ly/waAy23.

The Pioneers will face the Greyhounds in the second game of the day’s doubleheader at 12:30 p.m. MT. Johns Hopkins and Maryland will face off in the first game at 10 a.m. MT. Tickets for the doubleheader are $20 for adults and $15 for students.

“Oftentimes when my colleagues and I think about diversity and inclusion, it’s in these collective terms: What is the culture of the University like; how can we move this sort of thing forward; what kind of resources can we direct at it?” Coombe said. “But the truth of the matter is that it comes down to individuals. We may be 12,000 people on this campus, but it comes down to individuals.”

Coombe delivered his remarks to conclude “Inclusive Action,” a special TEDxDU Salon that took place May 4 in conjunction with the University of Denver’s Diversity Summit.

Speakers at the lunchtime salon included Claudia Hernandez-Ponce, a counselor in the Office of Admission, who spoke about how she integrated her Hispanic heritage with her life in the United States; Gregory Anderson, dean of the Morgridge College of Education, who shared how an innocent question from his son changed his perspective on life; and Phil Trinh, who encouraged the audience to challenge their perceptions and stop making assumptions.

Lynn Gangone, dean of the Women’s College, hosted the event, which was curated specifically to parallel the Diversity Summit’s theme of tackling the great issues of our day through action and inclusion.

“There’s been a lot of conversation during the course of the day about where we are as a community, about the opportunities that are in front of us, how we collect the strength that resides in all of our differences,” Coombe said. “It comes down to each one of us recognizing all of the barriers that we may personally face, the biases that we carry with us, and all of the things that have been compounded in the course of our lives.

“If we can each do that, and be brave enough to do that,” he said, “collectively we’ll find the strength of the institution.”

Hospitality students work with a mentee in the Knoebel School's on-campus coffee shop. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

Many immigrants who come to the United States have a tough time finding employment because of language barriers and a lack of job skills. Cheri Young, associate professor in the University of Denver’s Fritz Knoebel School of Hospitality Management, has incorporated service learning into the classroom by asking her students to mentor new immigrants on ways to bolster their job skills.

Students taking Young’s Managing Human Capital in Hospitality course were asked to train and counsel 10 refugees looking for jobs in the hospitality industry. Young has established a relationship with Denver’s African Community Center (ACC), which helps refugees who have fled to America after suffering persecution in their home countries. The Knoebel students worked directly with refugees through ACC’s Commercial Food Safety and Service Training Program, a 90-hour course that provides hands-on education about food service sanitation, customer service and American work culture.

“The opportunity for our hospitality management students to work with people from very diverse backgrounds is immense,” Young sas. “This innovative program allows our students to get real-world experience by acting as employment mentors to the ACC refugees. The hospitality industry often is a gateway to employment for those with limited English language skills or education. I want my students to learn that caring for your employees is the right thing to do and ultimately can increase the profitability of a business.”

The students are mentoring new arrivals from Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Liberia, Congo and Bhutan/Nepal on job-hunting skills, interviewing techniques and the various skills needed to work in the food-service and hotel industries. The Knoebel students are learning management skills such as developing training programs and employee manuals and conducting job interviews. Two additional students from Knoebel also participated by researching best practices that can be used by potential employers when hiring immigrant employees.

“This is the first time in my life where the work I do isn’t based on my own personal and professional development,” says student Tanisha Cocetti. “It’s all about Rabi [an ACC refugee participating in the service-learning project]. It’s about what I can do to assist him on his path to success. My hope is to provide him with the skills necessary to create a life for himself. He has so much potential, and I’m so blessed to be able to be a part of his life.”

The service-learning project concludes with a formal graduation May 23 in the Joy Burns Center. It is hoped that this mentorship/protégé relationship will continue beyond the end of the current school year. All 10 refugees have been placed in internships with various employers in the Denver area.

The Daniels team was led by graduate students Qionglin Dai, Andy Reger, David Lashen and Peter Knox. Applying skills and knowledge they learned in the classroom, the students successfully executed an award-winning case on how Wal-Mart de Mexico could be fiscally and ethically responsible to all its stakeholders. The students won $20,000 and were also allowed to donate an additional $1,000 to a charity of their choice. The team made its donation to Living City Block (www.livingcityblock.org), a nonprofit that is developing a business model to ensure competitive financing for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

“The Aspen Institute’s stated mission is to foster values-based leadership, encouraging individuals to reflect on the ideals and ideas that define a good society,” says Patrick Orr, senior director of graduate operations at Daniels. “Their mission aligns incredibly well with the Daniels College of Business, and our students were able to apply all the themes and technical skills they learned in the classroom to their case.”

Jon Parker hopes to host 'Traveling the World With Music,' a TV show that will explore the connection between music and native foods in different cultures. Photo courtesy of Jon Parker

By day, pianist, composer and conductor Jon Parker (BA ’08) is a master’s degree student in musicology and a graduate teaching assistant at the Lamont School of Music.

By night, the award-winning musician is a jazz bandleader and piano player at the Hillstone Restaurant in Cherry Creek.

Several weekends a month, Parker puts on his U.S. Army uniform and travels to Dodge City, Kan., where he is commander of the 364th Engineer Company, a unit of 103 combat engineers in the Army Reserve.

And soon, the 31-year-old father of two boys (with a third on the way) will take on another job: host and producer of Traveling the World With Music, a TV show that will explore the connection between music and native foods in different cultures.

“I’m the busiest person you’ll ever meet,’’ Parker says with an easygoing smile. “Musicians tend to have multiple streams of income in order to survive.”

Parker says he came up with the idea for the television show in January while watching one of his favorite travel programs, “Rick Steves’ Europe,” with his wife, Bonnie.

Parker says his wife liked his idea — “She said her mother would even watch it” — and suggested he discuss it with a filmmaker/producer friend, Jeff Reece. Reece found an investor for the show within two weeks. Reece and Parker will work with LCM Productions to shoot the pilot episode in Lima, Peru, in late summer or early fall, he says.

“We wanted someplace exotic, and we wanted to keep our costs down,’’ Parker says. “We want to focus specifically on Lima, and we’ll tie in food so people have several reasons to watch the show.”

The focus will include historic and new music and food traditions, he says.

“We’ll possibly hit up some dance clubs and nightclubs to see what kind of contemporary music they have,’’ he says. “Since I’m a musician as well, I hope to actually sit in and play with the musicians. I can also see two or three of us sitting around the table being filmed eating and discussing the food.”

Parker says he hopes the show will be picked up by the Travel Channel. Although he has “no idea” what to expect about the process of making the show, he knows it will be hard work.

“I’m fully aware that you can spend a week there and work 20-hour days, hoping for an hourlong TV show, which is about 46 minutes [of air time],” he says.

If the pilot episode is successful, Parker hopes to travel to other destinations in South America, as well as western and eastern Europe.

“I’m also fascinated by the Far East,” he says.

Meanwhile, Parker will be busy working on his thesis about black gospel music for his graduation in June. (He studies late at night and into the early morning when his family is sleeping.)

Parker — who began his musical studies at the age of 3 and began playing jazz piano professionally when he was 15 — also has another new interest.

He recently took up studying the pipe organ.

“I just bought one, just for fun,’’ he says. “It’s sitting in my living room.”

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Dancers perform at last year's spring powwow. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

DU’s second annual spring powwow will be held May 19 on the Driscoll Green.

Native nations from throughout the United States will be represented at the powwow, “New Beginnings,” to be hosted by DU’s Native Student Alliance with the support of the University’s chapter of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

“This is a traditional event to bring various native communities together to practice their native dances and wear their traditional regalia,” says Johanna Leyba, assistant provost for inclusive excellence.

Native American vendors will sell handcrafted art, jewelry and food at the powwow, which will start at 3 p.m. and end at dusk.

“This is a great opportunity for the DU community to learn about Native American communities today, as well as their surviving histories and cultures and traditions,” Leyba says.

Powwows originally were held as part of spiritual celebrations, Leyba says.

“They have evolved into annual gatherings for native peoples to celebrate their traditions, connect and engage in friendly competition,” she says.

The event is free and open to the public.

Gregg Stracks, picture with wife Sara Selig, will receive a posthumous Patient of Courage award May 22 at the Cable Center. Photo courtesy of Sara Selig.

Gregg Stracks (PsyD ’04) of Boston died Jan. 10, after a five-year battle with ocular melanoma (OM). He was 40 years old. Stracks was diagnosed with OM in 2006 at age 34. He underwent treatment, but the cancer metastasized to his liver, and he was told he had six months to live. Five years later, after a courageous fight, Stracks succumbed to the disease, but not without first leaving a legacy of helping other OM patients.

After his diagnosis, Stracks and his wife, Sara Selig, researched the disease and treatment options. Stracks participated in clinical trials and consulted with doctors from all over the world. Stracks and Selig also worked diligently to help organize the OM scientific and patient communities, joining forces in October 2011 with the Melanoma Research Foundation (MRF) to co-found the Community United for Research and Education of Ocular Melanoma (CURE OM). CURE OM operates under the umbrella of MRF to provide support and education to the OM community and to accelerate the development of effective treatments.

Selig — who is a physician — says OM is the most common type of eye tumor in adults and the second most common type of melanoma, and about half of all OM patients develop metastatic disease, for which there currently are no FDA-approved treatments.

Stracks was diagnosed shortly after returning to the U.S. from Kenya and Mozambique, where he worked with the Clinton Foundation and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation to help establish psychosocial programming for children and families affected by HIV and AIDS. Stracks’ professional work later focused on management and organizational psychology in Boston. He worked full time and founded the OPUS Leadership Group — an organizational, leadership and management development firm with offices in Denver and Boston — while undergoing treatment.

After Stracks’ death, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston — where Stracks spearheaded groundbreaking work on leadership and teamwork in medical training — established the Gregg Stracks Program for Leadership and Teamwork in Medicine.

MRF, in conjunction with CURE OM, will hold a fundraising gala May 22 at the Cable Center, where Stracks will be honored with a posthumous Patient of Courage award. (Register here.)

“My heart aches for Gregg, and I will never be the same, but I know the fight must go on to find a cure for ocular melanoma so that others will not have to endure the same challenges that Gregg and I have had to face,” says Selig, who will accept the award on Stracks’ behalf.

To learn more about CURE OM, visit www.cureom.org or visit Stracks’ memorial website at www.welovegregg.blogspot.com.

All bikes are sold as is, and all sales are cash only. No checks or credit cards will be accepted.  Proceeds benefit the University of Denver Bicycle Program.

For more information, call Campus Safety at 303-871-3019 or visit du/edu/campussafety.

“Often, they are not going through anything that you and I didn’t go through,” Peter Adler says of cutters. “They are just choosing a different method for coping with it.” Photo: Wayne Armstrong

For 23-year-old Rachel, it all started in high school.

After a painful week in which her group of friends turned against her and began starting rumors about her, the angst-filled teen stayed home from school, retreated to her room, and began to slowly drag the ragged tip of a coat hanger across her tender forearm. The sensation surprised her.

“It felt so much better to sit there and scratch myself than to have my heart broke and crying,” she recalls. “It eased me.”

Rachel’s vivid account of her introduction to self-injury — aka “cutting” — is just one of many brutally honest, illuminating interviews contained in The Tender Cut: Inside the Hidden World of Self-Injury (New York University Press, 2011), by University of Denver sociology Professor Peter Adler and his wife, Patricia Adler, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

The culmination of 11 years of research — including 150 in-person interviews and some 40,000 email and chatroom correspondences — the book offers an unflinching, at times extremely hard-to-read glimpse into the little-understood practice of self-injury. Studies show that as many as 4 percent of the overall population and one in five adolescents have hurt themselves intentionally. Of those, 72 percent cut themselves, 35 percent burn themselves, 10 percent pull their own hair, and 8 percent have broken a bone intentionally.

But while prior research has been able to get at the frequency and methods behind the “cutting” craze, no one has been able to answer the nagging question: Why?

“The lay public knows a lot less about this than other issues, like anorexia or drug use, which have become part of the landscape of middle-America adolescent culture,” Peter Adler says. “People think it is just this bizarre behavior, but no one understood the motivation.”

Unlike previous researchers, who looked to psychiatric patients or emergency room populations for answers, the Adlers took a broader approach, reaching out to everyone from middle-aged housewives to straight-A college students to teenage rape survivors. Their goal was to paint a nonjudgmental picture of self-injury through a sociological lens.

They came away with some controversial conclusions: that self-injury is more coping mechanism than harbinger of serious mental illness or suicidal tendencies; that it is more sociological phenomenon than dangerous addiction; that it is far more widespread than previously believed; and that — while the Adlers stop short of condoning or recommending it — it may even, in certain moments, have its benefits.

“The psycho-medical community had largely defined the behavior as something that white, female adolescents with serious psychological disorders like borderline personality disorder do,” says Patricia Adler, noting that not long ago self-injurers were considered suicidal and often were hospitalized. “We challenge that definition profoundly, with the biggest data set of noninstitutionalized people in existence. Many, many people are out there using this as a mechanism for bridging difficult situations and then moving on. It helps them feel better.”

The husband-and-wife research and writing team met in 1969 at Washington University in St. Louis, where they took a criminology class together and instantly “fell in love” with the subject. They soon made a strange request of their professor: Could they write their final exam together? He obliged, and from that point on they wrote as a team.

“Our early professors used to say, ‘You need to establish an independent voice.’ But we stuck to our guns and tried this very dangerous experiment instead, and it has worked out very well for us,” says Peter, seated in his office beneath a bookshelf crammed with some of the roughly 25 books and hundreds of research papers the two have co-authored over the years.

For one book, Dealing (Columbia University Press, 1985), they spent six years immersed in the lives of high-end drug traffickers in California. For another, Peer Power (Rutgers University Press, 1998), they spent eight years exploring bullying, peer pressure and other harsh realities in the worlds of pre-adolescents. Their central research interest always has been deviance in society, and both teach popular courses with the same name.

In the mid-1990s, the couple began to hear about cutting from their students. “At that time, it was a loner, secretive activity. People rarely talked about it,” Peter says.

One day a 16-year-old family friend came to Peter with a dilemma. She wanted to go to Dartmouth, and she had straight As, but she couldn’t pass gym class. As it turned out, she was ashamed to wear shorts because her legs were riddled with self-inflicted scars.

“A light bulb went on,” Peter says. The Adlers had their next research project.

By the time they launched their study, it was 2000, and the Internet was full of chat rooms where self-injurers shared stories not only on how to quit, but, more often, on how and why they cut.

“It was transformed from a loner, deviant activity into a full-fledged subculture, but unlike in other subcultures we had studied, most of these people would never meet face-to-face,” Peter says.

Posters freely discussed the grisly details of what “tools” to use, how deep to go, and where on the body was least likely to scar or be discovered. Some shared their techniques for fending off infection.

“I’d have my Band-Aids and my paper towels and my Neosporin, and I’d put a new blade on my X-Acto knife. It was like preparing for surgery,” explained one subject quoted in The Tender Cut.

The news was filled with stories about celebrity cutters, including singer Marilyn Manson (who reportedly self-injured on stage), British comedian Russell Brand (who allegedly lacerated his chest and arms with glass), and actors Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, who reportedly had marked pivotal life experiences with the sharp blade of a knife. In a famous BBC television interview, Princess Diana revealed that she, too, self-injured.

“When no one listens to you, or you feel no one is listening to you, all sorts of things start to happen,” Diana said. “You have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you want help.”

While some celebrity cutters also suffered from serious mental health problems, drug addictions or eating disorders, the Adlers discovered less pathological motivations among many of their subjects.

Mike, a “scruffy-looking college student who always wore a stocking cap,” started cutting at age 14 after a girlfriend broke up with him. “I just need something where I could vent and rage without having any outward signs so that nobody could tell,” he told the Adlers.

Amy, 19, started burning herself with a heated-up screw, largely out of rebellion, at age 14. “I was into the honors classes and I was a goody two-shoes, so I determined to be all-out bad.”

Jane, a high school cheerleader, said she did it for the physical release: “I would have this intense emotion of anxiety and panic and pressure and frustration, and when I did it, it was a release. I was reorganized and I could breathe again.”

Other interviewees said they did it for the physical endorphin rush. (Research has shown that repeated self-injury results in a rush of opiate-like substances in the body, which helps deaden the pain and ignites a high.)

Some who had shut down emotionally due to tragic life events said cutting made them at least “feel something.” For others, self-injury was an act of control at a time of life when they felt they had none.

“Often, they are not going through anything that you and I didn’t go through,” Peter says. “They are just choosing a different method for coping with it.”

Wendy Lader, clinical director of the St. Louis-based self-injury treatment program S.A.F.E. Alternatives, agrees that self-injury affects a far broader demographic than once believed, and that it is in fact a coping mechanism. But she says certain subsets are more prone to start cutting than others.

“It’s often about emotional disregulation,” she says. “Kids who self-injure seem to — for whatever reason — feel things more intensely, and they don’t know how to modulate that intense emotion. These are desperate, unhappy kids.”

She stresses that “there is no safe or healthy amount of self-injury” and fears that characterizing it as faddish, or normalizing it, paints the wrong picture.

“Yes it helps them feel better, just like heroin, but it is not solving the underlying problem,” she says. “And, like with an addiction, they often need more and more for the same effect, so it can get dangerous. If I were the parent of a child who was self-injuring, I would intervene immediately and get help from a therapist.”

Daniel Cress, a professor of sociology at Western State University, says he sees the book as neither condoning nor condemning self-injury, but rather offering a much-needed, nonjudgmental perspective.

“It is a courageous book,” Cress says. “Instead of playing it safe, taking the party line and condemning it whole cloth, they have taken something that seems super abnormal and tried to make sense of it. That’s what great sociological research is all about.”

Cress liked the book so much it is now required reading for students in his introduction to sociology class. Some students “completely freaked out” about what they read. Others felt that, at last, they could understand why some of their friends engaged in self-injury. The students with the strongest reactions to the book were those who came up to Cress after class to confess that they, too, had self-injured. “They loved it,” Cress says. “They felt like, ‘finally, somebody gets it.’”

Peter says he and Patricia have been overwhelmed by the thank-yous they have received from current and former self-injurers.

“These people can offer this up to their loved ones and say, ‘This is me. This is how I feel.’ A lot of them just can’t articulate it themselves.”

Their advice to someone who finds a loved one cutting?

“Do not freak out or overreact,” Patricia says. Instead, sit down and have a talk with him or her about what’s going on in his or er life. Check out some Internet chat rooms to get a better sense of why people do it. And offer the support of a counselor who specializes in self-injury.

Above all, says Peter, “keep in mind that this is just the symptom. This is not the problem. For a long time it has been treated as the problem.”