OPINION
Campus readership: a new direction
By Editorial Board | August 31, 2015Last Wednesday, Duke Student Government canceled the existing undergraduate campus newspaper readership program.
Last Wednesday, Duke Student Government canceled the existing undergraduate campus newspaper readership program.
Debate continues to rage on campus over one freshman’s choice not to read his class’s assigned summer reading, Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” Writing in The Washington Post, freshman Zach Stuman explained that he could not read the work on account of the objectionable images it contained. “After researching the book and reading a small portion of it, I chose not to complete the assignment.
I hope that this column will not be a vain voice in the wilderness but rather the impetus for students to reflect upon their own thinking and the way in which they argue with others, particularly those they disagree with. It is incumbent upon us to raise the level of campus dialogue to a standard consistent with the intellectualism we aspire to as a university. Duke deserves nothing less from her students.
It can be easy to toss aside the idea of trigger warnings as frivolous and silly, especially if you aren’t a victim of trauma. But as human beings, we should care about the experiences of other people and in having authentic interactions with our peers.
Freshmen, as you begin the school year and start your remarkable journey here at Duke, I would like to begin with telling you all that through your Duke journey, you will most likely fail.
Once a month, I open my shipment of Enbrel refills and see a receipt with two numbers: Medication Cost: $3,200 Patient Responsibility: $0 That’s pretty nice.
Each fall semester, the pleasantly warm weather and the crisp, autumn air that will hopefully soon follow complete the picture of couples on our main quad, strolling across the grass hand-in-hand.
Another year, another “scandal.” I use the term loosely. If we call having a porn star a “scandal,” then this probably qualifies as well.
Before campus was filled with the new semester mantra of “how was your summer?”, the tranquility of a deserted Duke was disrupted by the laughs of eight to ten year old girls.
The school year begins with a cacophony of rhetoric, especially for the Class of 2019, whose orientation is built, in part, to inspire them grandly about what they can do at Duke.
I spent the summer participating in the DukeEngage Seattle program, but now beginning a different internship in New York, it feels natural to keep plowing ahead, compartmentalizing my summer in Seattle as just that — another summer experience.
The August 21 story in the Duke Chronicle entitled “Freshmen skipping ‘Fun Home’ for moral reasons” begins by stating that “several” incoming Freshmen have chosen to forgo the recommended common reading for the incoming class of 2019 because they objected to the “pornographic” nature of Alison Bechdel’s award winning memoir Fun Home. The Duke Chronicle article has by now circulated well beyond the Duke community, and responses range from people outraged that students would reject a book without reading it first to people lamenting the loss of traditional conservative values at Duke. With around seventeen hundred students in the incoming class, there were bound to be some people who reacted as these abstainers did.
Earlier this month, a column arguing for the merits of the Iran deal was published in The Chronicle, titled “If it sounds too bad to be true, it probably isn’t.” Although I believe that this administration’s deal with Iran will go down in history as one of the most detrimental foreign policy failures, I think that it is a topic that has already been well covered here on The Chronicle by both sides.
The new year crinkles. Sounds of a new semester are those of bubble wrap popping, nylon scratching, tape unsticking, cardboard tearing.
As Democrats debate the prospect of nominating another Clinton, recent history provides incredible perspective on what I believe is the worst decision made by President Bill Clinton: the disarming of uniformed U.S.
Even as all freshmen spend Orientation Week getting to know East and West Campus together, some arrive already acquainted with a circle of classmates and with some of the culture of Duke thanks to our pre-orientation programs.
In response to The Chronicle's story on some Duke students objecting to reading Fun Home for religious reasons, I would recommend that those students take themselves and their summer reading assignment a little less seriously.
I don’t care for A Clockwork Orange. I have got a pretty good stomach for unsavory scenes, but reading Anthony Burgess’s novel and watching Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation as a sophomore brought a visceral reality to violence that made me squirm.
Beyond the FAC chats and author’s talk during Orientation Week, this year’s summer reading selection, “Fun Home,” was accompanied by an informal class-wide discussion on its content.
In an effort to pump myself up for the upcoming semester, I decided to look for some inspiration.