It's been a hard week. For freshmen, midterms may have been the first time life at Duke stopped feeling like an extended, posh summer camp-except, of course, for everyone living in the Bell Tower. And to upperclassmen, midterms are a familiar ritual that hardly gets less painful with experience.
Hopefully, we can agree that the time put into our papers and problem sets is well-spent-ok, fine, maybe a fraction of it is. Still, it stings to realize we'll never get any of those hours in Lilly and Perkins back. That is, unless we figure out-as some of us already have-how to take them back.
How do an elite few manage to do it? These students, fringe bohemians that they surely are, dared ask one question: Does studying in the library have to be a black hole for meaningful social growth between Duke students? Their answer: Studying? Maybe. But studying in the library? Far from it.
Divided and diverse as Duke students might be, if there's anything that can bring us together, it is our own art and poetry. If we really wanted to enhance Duke's "arts profile," boy did we go overboard with that whole "Nasher Museum" idea. Heck, we didn't even need the old art museum on East. All we needed were a whole lot of disposable cameras and a few hours in the Perkins and Lilly Library stacks.
Why? Because I humbly submit that there are quite a few Duke students who are artists, and their masterpieces thrive just a hair below our lazy eyes. These artists practice from not just any old school or style-rather, they bear the torch for one of the oldest, most communal types of art in existence: graffiti. And it's time they got their due.
Should guided tours be instituted after the excitement generated by this column, navigating the treasures of the stacks will take days. But I'll whet your interest with a few picks:
There's the realist piece:
On the top floor of Perkins, a near life-sized portrait of our beloved president from the shoulders up, affectionately titled "Dickie B." It was so good (no joke) that I thought it might be suitable as the sketch for the Gothic Reading Room portrait that will one day bear Brodhead's likeness. That is, until it was so abruptly whitewashed by a few Philistines in maintenance. Oh well.
Aspects of symbolism are certainly well-represented. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and the rest of the Greek alphabet abound; the responses from other students appear to be profuse, varied and inclined towards phallic imagery. I suppose one gets out of this tradition what one puts in.
A few poetic declarations of universal Duke truth and beauty also stand out on the walls: "F*** orgo," "Damn pre-med," "I'm going to fail" and "Stop vandalism!"
Maybe you're feeling contemplative? There's no shortage of existential meditations. On one desk, a plea beginning "I want a guy who will accept me for who I am. I want a guy who can be romantic and sensitive..." stands next to the declaration "There is nothing more to life than guitars, girls and grog!"
On the walls of another study space, some engineers and science kids may get their only exposure at Duke to literary giants on the order of Milton, Hemmingway, Pope and Joyce.
Alas, do the offerings so far seem too tame, too safe, too bourgeois? What's art without the shock? Fine, you want shocking?
What about a crude likeness of our sacred Blue Devil sodomizing a poor graduate as he receives his diploma, entitled "A Duke Education?" Or the frequent, unsettling revelation that certain "graduation requirements" were fulfilled here, right here, at the very seat in which you might now be studying primate anatomy? Even in art, it doesn't get much edgier than this.
Finally, for the truly avant-garde, a bit of the bizarre: "Cow poetry," originally penned by Gary Larson, creator of "The Far Side" comics, ending in the angst-filled lines: "Damn the electric fence, Damn the electric fence!"
Seriously, for all the endless blathering that goes on about illustrious Duke students, this might be the closest lots come to 15 minutes of fame-divided into five-second glances of boredom. Yes, it's anonymous, but no one's stopping you from signing your name.
Do it. I dare you.
Philip Sugg is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Friday.
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