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Richard Boykin
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Three candidates vying to become DSG president**
By ROSE MARTELLI
Trinity sophomore Richard Boykin said he will try to initiate a "revolution" within student government if elected president of Duke Student Government.
"DSG has more or less been useless," Boykin said. "There's no excuse. Students have to make it work or scrap it."
To remedy the problems that plague DSG, Boykin said he wants to make the entire student body more aware of and active in student government affairs. He also wants DSG to become a more forceful lobbying group to the administration.
Boykin said he is personally in favor of an all-freshman East Campus but, as DSG president, would advocate having some upperclass housing there because many upperclassmen like living on East. However, he said the majority of the freshman class should be housed on East, with a smaller number of freshmen placed on West Campus.
To improve residential life, Boykin said that fraternities should continue to receive housing and that other dorms should become more unified to have a stronger presence on campus. He said he opposes moving towards a residential college system because the campus' physical structure is not conducive to it.
Boykin said the faculty are mostly to blame for the anti-intellectual climate at the University.
"The faculty criticizes the students a lot but doesn't seem to be willing to actually do a lot," he said. "The faculty must realize that part of their job is to be role models for students."
Intellectualism is best fostered in places where students eat and live, Boykin said. He said he would like to see the faculty commons open to students, and he strongly favors block housing.
"Block housing is a very basic idea. The best way to get people to talk to others is to put them with people that they enjoy talking to," he said.
Boykin said he does not think the greek system should be blamed for the University's problems and that the administration is using it as a "scapegoat" to avoid tackling issues head-on.
Fraternities should not be expected to single-handedly improve the University's social scene, Boykin said. Instead, independent students and the administration should be responsible for creating alternatives to kegs.
Boykin said he believes he is the best candidate because he is an outsider to the current DSG system. He has had little contact with both DSG and University committees.
"Just trying to run my campaign, I've discovered how difficult it is for an outsider to work with DSG," he said. "That has to change. The student government has to be turned back over to the students."
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