Duke University has become quieter in the weeks following graduation. The number of on-campus students has dwindled to the small group who have stayed for summer session, reducing foot traffic across the quad just enough to allow the lawn to recover from LDOC. But Duke is never silent and, over the weeks of summer session one, many newsworthy things have happened. Regardless of where you are, the Chronicle has hand-picked some stories to catch readers up on Duke news.
West Union renovations halted by Board
At the Trustees’ May 14 meeting, they chose not to approve the final plans for the renovations of West Union. The remodel—funded by an $80 million donation from the Charlotte-based Duke Endowment—was originally scheduled to begin this summer, and organizations began to move their offices out of the building in early May. But because the Board did not agree on the designs, construction has been postponed.
In addition, there are concerns that the endowment’s donation will not even cover the full renovations, as technical and budgetary concerns have forced Duke to re-evaluate the project.
“I never did think it would make the $80 million [budget],” Trask said. “We knew we were going to have to provide something else somewhere.”
Further, during its June meeting, the executive committee of the Board of Trustees did not have an opportunity to advance the West Union renovations.
Comprised of 12 of the Board’s 36 members, the executive committee—which can exercise all powers of the Board—convenes at points between the Board’s four annual meetings. The impending renovations to West Union were among the topics discussed, although no decisions were made to move forward with the renovations, Michael Schoenfeld, vice president of public affairs and government relations, wrote in an email.
In a previous interview with The Chronicle, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta noted that the executive committee had the ability to sign off on various aspects of the renovations in order to allow work to begin on the building, but the June meeting did not yield such a result.
“The executive committee covered a number of routine administrative and personnel matters, reviewed planning for upcoming board meetings and committees and was updated on major initiatives, like online education, innovation and entrepreneurship and campus construction, including West Union,” Schoenfeld said. “The architects will be reviewing their new plans with the administration soon so no decisions were made.”
The Board will have the opportunity to vote on the new plans when it reconvenes in October.
Mega Moral Monday
On Monday, June 3, over 1,000 people gathered behind the North Carolina State Legislative Building on Halifax Mall to protest a wide array of bills being proposed by the Republican-led General Assembly. Of those thousand people, more than a hundred chose to enter the building and protest from inside, causing police officers to step in and arrest more than 150 participants throughout the course of the day. This brought the total arrest count to 300 since the start of the movement in late April.
“No one is coming up here for fun, no one likes being resisted with handcuffs,” NAACP President Rev. William Barber said. “But we believe we have a constitutional right, Article 1 Section 12, to instruct our legislature. And we are doing that publicly.”
Among those who attended the protest was Reeve Huston, associate professor of history who wore a green band around his wrist to demonstrate that he was willing to go to jail for this cause.
“I’m fighting for equity in taxation and democracy, and that means making it easier for people who vote the least to vote, not harder,” he said.
Although those who entered the building were at highest risk of being arrested, the protestors outside chanting “Forward together, not one step back” were also threatened with arrest. Ultimately, police spent nearly two hours arresting all the protestors inside the building. The count was so high that two 50-passenger buses were needed to transport them all to Wake County Jail.
As expected, no consensus was reached as a result of this protest, and civil disobedience campaigns continued through the month of June.
Chronicle Cuts a Day of Print
Duke University’s student run daily, The Chronicle, will begin printing four issues a week instead of five beginning this upcoming school year to complement its new digital-first reporting model. As of now, Chronicle board members as well as senior masthead have decided to cut Friday’s issue.
The extra day at the end of the week will allow Chronicle staff to allocate more resources and time to content rather than the nuances of daily print production. Most importantly, however, it will allow them to develop and transition into a more active online presence in which staffers will be better positioned to provide close to real-time coverage of Duke news.
“We’re still a daily production,” said junior Danielle Muoio, editor-in-chief of The Chronicle. “Going forward, we’re just continuing to reach our goal of getting stories to our readers in the most efficient way… we’re really focusing on our online presence because it’s the best way to get information to the most people. It doesn’t mean stopping the thoughtful effort we put into print.”
Board members said that although finances were considered in making the decision, they were far from the driving force. The print media industry has suffered in recent years and The Chronicle has not been immune to those trends, but significant reserve funds have provided a cushion against those problems.
The Chronicle is not the first to switch to a more digital format. Syracuse University, The Daily Orange and University of California, Berkeley’s The Daily Californian have both made similar moves recently. Ultimately, the hope is that a digital-first model will resonate more with our readers.
“The college paper is definitely print-and-digital or all-digital now,” said Rick Edmonds, researcher and writer for non-profit journalism school Poynter Institute. “It’s targeted to an audience that’s by definition pretty young and on digital platforms.”
Van-Dwelling Alum
Ken Ilgunas, who received a master’s degree in Duke Graduate school’s liberal arts program in 2011, published a memoir recounting his time spent living in a van while attending the program.
Having lived a rather rugged lifestyle—two years in the northernmost tundra of Alaska and several months with Canadian voyageurs who paddled 20 miles a day in wood canoes eating salt pork and pea soup each day—Ilgunas chose to continue his unconventional life style while at Duke, by living in a van as a social experiment.
“The thought of coming to grad school and moving into an apartment and hanging curtains and buying a rug to tie the room together was just unthinkable,” Ilgunas said.
The experiment began as a way to save money and avoid debt, but progressed into a 20th century manifestation of philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s decision to leave civilization to live on his own ability in the woods.
Although Ilgunas initially kept his lifestyle to himself, he kept records of his day-to-day life on his blog, “Ken Ilgunas: Vandwelling.” As he began wrapping up his graduate experience at Duke, however, he began to share his living situation with his classmates and professors in the form of essays and final projects.
One of these pieces was published on the front page of Salon.com, an online news website. Now, Ilgunas has further developed his class papers into a memoir. Despite having gained recognition from authoring this book, Ilgunas is still unsure if his future profession lies in the writing field.
“The overarching goal is just to live a full and adventurous life and if that leads me into one or several professions, that’s okay,” he said. “The decision [to live in a van] wasn’t entirely economical, it was the thrill of doing something novel and adventurous and bold.”
Man-made Blood Vessel
After 15 years of research, Duke scientists have genetically engineered a working blood vessel, which was implanted into the arm of a patient with kidney failure for the first time in the United States on June 5.
Made of Teflon, plastic and knitted fabrics, the engineered blood vessel is strong enough to be universally implanted, said Dr. Jeffrey Lawson, the professor of surgery and pathology at the Duke University Medical Center who performed the implant. But he added that it is still unable to replicate the full functions of the body’s own vessels.
For the patient, the implantation of this new blood vessel close to the surface of his skin made it easier for a dialysis team to access and filter his blood three times a week.
Lawson explained that engineering such a blood vessel, required vascular cells—the muscle cells found in arteries—to be grown in a tubular scaffold which would degrade over time, leaving a tube of arterial muscle tissue.
“When we implant [the scaffold], your own cells grow into it. It becomes a part of you. We provide the matrix for your blood vessel,” Lawson said.
His partner in the project Dr. Laura Niklason, who was a faculty member from 1998 to 2005, formed the company Humacyte in the Triangle to work on further developing the technology.
The successful launch of this new biotechnology was due to the concerted efforts of the department of surgery, anesthesiology and biomedical engineering, once again demonstrating the effectiveness of an interdepartmental collaboration.
Housewarming for Duke Medical Pavilion
After nearly four years of planning and construction and nearly $600 million, Duke Hospital’s new Medical Pavillion officially opened its doors to the public in June. Although the facility will not be taking patients until July 29, visitors were able to tour the building to see the new medical units.
The facility adds 44 pre-operational bays and 18 operating rooms, which will allow sections of Duke North to be taken out of use for renovation without compromising patient volume.
The new operating rooms condense the necessary equipment into mechanical arms, which doctors can easily manipulate throughout the room as needed to facilitate surgeries. Each arm has its own power source, eliminating the danger of power cords lying around on the floors.
In addition, intraoperative MRI machines are available in two of those rooms which provide detailed images of the body’s interior during operation, which could help physicians decrease the need for a second surgery. Even the lights have undergone a transformation, switching to adjustable LED diodes that boast low energy usage and low heat emissions, making the room a more comfortable temperature for doctors and patients.
From a more aesthetic point of view, new floor to ceiling windows flood the interior with natural sunlight.
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