We reviewed an album in Recess this year called Swansong For You.
Fortunately, I get to write my own swan song here. It's the last chance I will have to speak for myself in print for quite awhile, so bear with me.
I came to Duke torn between the artistic and the practical. Equally in love with indie rock and the law, I came consumed by a passion for writing, as well as a desire to justify my parents' expenditure through a relatively profitable and traditionally successful "career."
I leave Duke torn in another way, both enlightened and disappointed. At Duke, I have met some of the finest, most inspiring intellectuals I will ever encounter. True to my internal divisions, some have been professors, some practitioners. Uncompromising yet open-minded professors like Joe Ashby Porter, Kathy Rudy and James Hamilton taught me the best values of the academy and the possibilities of the mind. And practitioners like lawyer Hugh Stevens and columnist William Raspberry instilled in me an undying love for both journalism and the law. To these fine people, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have my undying and unqualified respect.
But my Duke experience has been tainted, too. Our shallow administration has helped to confirm a disturbing national trend: that the academy, in many ways, is no better than the church. It is ideologically inflexible, economically corruptible and unresponsive to opposition.
I struggled to get here; I have at times questioned whether my intellectual ability merited my being a Duke student. I watched bright-even brilliant-and much more hardworking students in my public high school get rejected in favor of me: Jonas Blank, 12th in his class, the only kid accepted to Duke in three years. That this administration admits, at least internally, that it accepts one-fifth of its students not for their intellectual merit but for the financial attainment of their parents, is an incalculable offense and affront to students like me, as well as the thousands of public school students who are probably better than me whose lack of money or athletic ability keeps their open, fresh minds out.
This administration claims to respect diversity, but only does so in the shallowest sense. Admissions practices that favor prep schools and potential donors directly engender a culture of privilege; parochial academic practices-failure to defend and encourage open debate-perpetuate an ideologically conformist culture that is both stale and dangerous.
The administration did nothing two years ago when two students' lives were threatened for writing outrageous letters to The Chronicle. It did nothing this year when an obscure office in the Bryan Center wielded its administrative axe against a pro-life group. It also did not take a stand when some expressed the idea that offensive material was not only unwelcome here, but did not deserve the right to be printed. I am neither a friend of conservatives or liberals in the traditional sense, but it is clear that the most liberal ideal of all is lost at Duke: freedom. Freedom means the freedom to outrage and to be outraged.
Rarely have I been so transformed as when I am angry. Perhaps, then, the administration deserves backhanded praise for its faults. I love Duke for its faculty; I love it for the friends I have made. But I am ashamed of an administration that kowtows to privilege and political correctness, that bends to the inflexible and tyrannical will of "liberal" pedagogy. One that, in short, has proven to me that I do not belong here-because I do not believe in playing along.
I thought that by choosing law school over journalism next year that I was selling out my artistic side. But my Duke experience suggests to me that my artistic/practical dichotomy is a false distinction. There is a dire need in this country for people willing to say what they mean. But there is an equally dire need for those who will dedicate their lives to securing them the right to say it.
The most important lesson I will take from Duke, with all its wonderful opportunities and lingering faults, is that art is a broad term. Art means passion for whatever you do; personal, near-religious zeal for your practices. It means having intense, reckless enthusiasm for your career and for life.
I titled my column after a line in a Liz Phair song. It begins: "Moderation is a memory...." Moderation, to me, means stagnation. In all things-in writing, in law, in music, in consulting-let your life be an exemplary one. Live your life, as a mother, father, judge or writer, like an artist: immoderate, outrageous, unbridled, incredible. Free.
Moderation is a memory for me. Duke-beautiful, brilliant and spectacularly flawed-will soon be as well. And no matter how mixed, that memory will be sweet.
Jonas Blank is a Trinity senior and editor of Recess.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.