Dear Dr. Monday,
I’m going to be honest—I haven’t done my civic duty. Even with the Yik Yak campaigns, forests-worth of flyers poster all over campus and daily argumentative columns in The Chronicle, I really can’t distinguish between the field of Young Trustee candidates. Can you help me decide who deserves my vote?
Thanks,
Undecided
Dear Undecided,
I’m going to be honest, Undecided—the fact that there are members of our community who would take a role like Young Trustee and debase it by not being informed voters is sickening. If we aren’t careful, how can we be sure to choose the candidate who picked the right platform out of the “identity politics, financial aid, global focus” grab bag?
To those of you not pretty enough to be on Duke Student Government, allow me to explain the Young Trustee process. First, in early February, DSG’s president and the University secretary pick the people who will sift through the same “I would like to be Duke’s Young Trustee because my resume is 3 lines short of a full page” application a few hundred times. This committee gives interviews to a few finalists, who are ranked based on their organization’s current position on Greekrank.com. A complex algorithm then removes most of the women, ensures at least one candidate will talk about social justice issues, adds a half a cup of flour to whiten the mix and VOILA—out pop your candidates!
But voting for Young Trustee is perpetually unsatisfying, for many reasons. One, a complete lack of pre-election polling means that you never have the luxury of being able to switch your support to the side that is going to win. What’s more, Board meetings are secret business—we conveniently have no idea what the impact of past Young Trustees has been. Was Neil Kondamuri a driving force in halting the Muslim call to prayer, or does he just grab the Papa John’s delivery? Did Anna Knight secretly advocate for Coach K’s firing after we lost four of five? No one knows except the walls of the Washington Duke Inn.
You can’t even blame the candidates for being broad with their platforms, since they understand that their “voting privileges” mean they can turn a 36 to 0 vote on a “murder every undergrad at the school” proposition to 34 to 2. With how many new demands the Brodhead’s P.O. Box receives every week, it seems communicating through a student who left campus a year ago might be even less effective than screaming about guilt through a megaphone.
So who do we vote for? How do we force the candidates to differentiate themselves, to show us who has the mettle to sit in a room of 37 men whose net worth is greater than most countries and not just disagree, but make them listen?
We test them. There is one group at Duke that has gone above and beyond in its ignorance of student sentiment—a group of people that commit micro aggressions against each and every one of us on an almost daily basis. Its name? Parking and Transportation Services.
This one group manages two of the least efficient systems at Duke: busses and parking. Only in the 6th circle of Hell, where PTS’s office is located, could reducing bus service on central qualify as “improving efficiency.” Who but PTS could respond to concerns that construction was reducing the number of spaces in Blue Zone by telling students “Nah, you guys are just forgetting about some spots”? When the cost of parking in the BC parking garage is four times more per square foot per hour than your dorm room, who else could say, “We don’t feel like letting you know when the garage is empty—we need some spots for visitors”?
My slow, simmering anger combined with literal hours spent looking for spots have led me to start to park in more and more outlandish ways. Two weeks ago, I ate an entire Chipotle bowl with my flashers on in the bus circle. Last week, I parked in the Enterprise car rental spaces at the BC without paying—the rush I felt sticking it to the man was worth every penny of the $80 ticket. Just a few days ago, though, my brutal crime spree came to an abrupt end as I walked back to see the toothless grin of a tow truck driver, hauling my car away to never be seen again. To get to the PTS office, I’d have to take the bus—but I won’t bow to them any longer.
A Young Trustee needs to do the impossible, to negotiate with those who have infinitely more power than him. If you want my endorsement, and the confidence of the people with it, you know what you have to do.
Bring me my car, gentlemen. The race is on.
Dr. Monday would like anyone who is a real doctor to please email him at askdoctormonday@gmail.com, because this rash isn’t going away and Obama took my health insurance.
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