Mother Jones magazine may have recently named the University the top activist school in the nation, but administrators, campus leaders and even the activists themselves doubt the ranking's validity.
"Overall, I don't know how activist people are, except about beer-on-points," said Trinity senior Ben Au, a member of Students Against Sweatshops, the only Duke organization cited by the magazine for its work last year. Working with the administration, especially Director of Stores Operations Jim Wilkerson, the group developed a code of conduct governing the manufacture of Duke apparel.
"One does not think of Duke as being a particularly activist place," said Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Dean of Trinity College William Chafe, who has chronicled activism in several history books. "I was intrigued by the ranking."
As reported by the Herald-Sun of Durham, one unnamed high-ranking administrator saw the ranking as almost comical. "I want to know what they're smoking out there at Mother Jones and can I have some," he said.
Student leaders also questioned whether the campus as a whole deserved the activist label. "I think that there is a lot of really important work going on, but the campus isn't as aware of it as they could be," said Trinity senior and Duke Student Government President Jeri Powell.
"But I think because of the SAS work, we deserve it," she added.
The methodology used by Mother Jones may help explain why what many called the campus' general apathy did not figure into the rankings.
The San Francisco-based magazine, which has ranked campus activism for five years, asked 21 non-profit organizations to tell them of recent activist projects at colleges and universities. The magazine compiled the results and adjusted them to achieve a sample of both large and small schools.
The other schools on the list ranged from the 200-student Little Big Horn College in Montana to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which was lauded for its efforts against Nike, a company recently accused of exploiting its overseas workers.
At Duke, SAS was founded in August 1997. By March, SAS and the administration signed a comprehensive code of conduct, which requires an independent monitoring agency to examine factory conditions, minimum age requirements for workers and collective bargaining rights. The agreement-one of the first of its kind-drew praise from U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman and several human rights organizations.
"This has the potential to be one of the biggest student movements since South Africa," Au said, noting that several SAS members attended a conference in New York this summer with anti-sweatshop student leaders from across the country. "This is really only the beginning."
Au said SAS' success is largely attributable to the administration's willingness to cooperate. Wilkerson had become interested in the issue when he saw a television broadcast about sweatshops in June 1997 and had begun investigating the issue even before SAS approached him that fall.
Because the administration was open to talks about developing a code of conduct, SAS' activism proceeded differently than sweatshop activism at schools like UNC, where the administration was more resistant.
Instead of the vocal protests at UNC, SAS held a 'Week of Conscience' in late September and organized a mass e-mail to President Nan Keohane. Members of the group also met weekly with Wilkerson and spoke with former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich while he was speaking on campus.
This approach differs from the one taken by students at the University in the late 1960s. For instance, in April 1968, students protested the assassination of Martin Luther King with a silent vigil on the Chapel Quad. The following February, black students took over the Allen Building to fight racial inequalities at the University.
"I think activism too often invokes an image of radicalism," Au said. "The tactics that we've noticed are really changing. The new activism in the 90's is advocacy, talking calmly to the people involved."
Although SAS members were pleased that their work was recognized in a national magazine, they also were fearful that the ranking might signal that their mission was complete.
"It may be premature to rank Duke as the number one activist school based on the success of SAS," said Trinity senior and SAS member Tico Almeida, one of eight students to visit Central America in August to examine labor conditions in apparel factories. "We still need to persuade the University to fix two flaws in the policy that was written last year."
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