When the sit-in of the Allen building began, Duke Workers and Students in Solidarity issued seven demands of administration. Over the course of the next several days, the protesters elicited a public apology from Executive Vice President Tallman Trask as well as received amnesty for those sitting-in. Given the current negotiation impasse initiated by the administration on Monday, we turn now to scrutinize the demands issued by students through their original issuance and the clarifications announced yesterday evening.
The first unanswered demand calls for the immediate termination of three administrators: Tallman Trask, Parking and Transportation Services Director Carl DePinto and Vice President for Administration Kyle Cavanaugh. The grouping of these administrators unfortunately confounds two separate though related issues in the allegations against Trask and a wider hostile and discriminatory culture at PTS. We agree that the call for Trask’s dismissal and reparations to Shelvia Underwood ignore due process in the current civil litigation. But without further investigation, termination from the University is premature and a dangerous precedent, but we fully support independent investigation and adjudication under University policies. We urge protesters to continue seeking light shed in these matters and to be willing to commit to whatever conclusions come from such processes.
A call for a $15 per hour minimum wage, even implemented over time, ignores the current national debate and far-from-settled discussion in academia over the benefits of a living wage. It also fails to account for Durham’s own living costs. It further fails to understand that state- or city-wide minimum wage increases are different economically than raising the wage floor at Duke alone. We recommend the protesters shift the focus of this demand toward transparent review and revision of Duke’s employment standards. Currently, most Duke employees are subcontracted and do not receive the $12 per hour minimum wage that only approximately 400 employees earn. We encourage protesters to seek change in Duke’s negotiations with these contracting companies and the administration to recognize the power it has in subcontracting thousands of workers on campus.
The sixth demand listed asks for transparency and “community input” in hiring administrators. Not only does the demand fail to define community input, but it overlooks the role of the students every year who participate in the Board of Trustees and in consulting administration itself in shaping the direction of many different parts of the University. If more students are to be consulted, we propose students learn the distinction between different administrators and their roles between academic leadership and University administration. However, we recognize that Duke’s lack of transparency, especially regarding a comprehensive organizational chart, makes this difficult for students looking to learn more about the workings of our university. The creation of a more transparent system would pave the way for important changes, including the shorter-term appointment of investigators into PTS, the Duke Police force and Office of Institutional Equity for their handling of Underwood’s case and the claims of other former and current PTS employees under DePinto.
Transparency would place burden on administrators to work with students, rather than seemingly against them. However, as members of our community, even when urgency drives us toward change, we must be precise in our language and reasonable in our negotiations especially with respect to popular but complicated issues like wage floors. That change is required as Duke continues to strive to be a welcoming and open environment is undeniable, but we urge students to stay grounded in the facts and to understand the processes at work.
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