Demands made, revised, rejected, reiterated and (in some cases) retracted have been in the spotlight recently—on our campus and on countless others.
“I fear that this will not be the last time I write to you with such a tragic message ...” These were the words of Larry Moneta, Vice President for Student Affairs, in his email to the Duke community on Tuesday morning.
There are many things that cannot be achieved by simply re-naming something. Commemoration of a prominent and deserving figure in the history of a university is not one of them.
As applause from the previous monologue died down, the next actor took center stage. He clapped his hands together and began confidently, commanding the attention of every single person.
This Sunday, some 189 million Americans will watch the Super Bowl. Very, very few of those people will pause their snacking and drinking and cheering to ponder how an iconic cultural spectacle ended up with such a ridiculous-sounding name. The issue is not the fact that the game is called a bowl; championship games have been called bowls since the construction of the Rose Bowl stadium in 1922.
Most of the time, we speak and write without fully considering the motivation for our speech or the origins of our words.
I’ve spent the last year studying oppressive language. My honors thesis in Public Policy (which I submitted on Friday!) explored how the language surrounding racial profiling, stop-and-frisk and use of force in the New York Police Department offers strategic policymaking insight.
As the November 20 article on Friday’s forum noted, the forum began with a prepared statement recounting fifty years of unanswered minority demands—a fitting reminder of the many brave people who have fought institutional oppression.
To any Duke student, the October 8th article about excessive fire alarm activations seemed incredibly predictable because it has happened to everyone at least once.
