Saturday is wedding day at the Duke Chapel. From the windows of the Chronicle office in 301 Flowers you can see the parade of bridal parties cycling through every couple of hours-if you're lucky enough to be in the office all day on a Saturday. After plenty of Saturdays-and Sundays through Fridays-in that office, you really start to appreciate that view.
During my first three years of college I spent a lot of time watching Duke from that office. I watched students basking in the sun and protesters shouting and wielding signs.
I served as editor of The Chronicle my junior year, which meant I pretty much never left the office. Senior year was a welcome break-instead of living in 301 Flowers I got to live off campus, go out on weekends (and weeknights) and spend more time on my schoolwork and with my friends. Instead of watching campus life from a tower room, I was literally down on the ground, actively participating in it.
I'll still look back on my college experience primarily as a Chronicle experience, and I wouldn't trade the time I spent at The Chronicle for anything. This year, however, I've realized two things. The first is that after seeing everything on campus through the lens of being a reporter and editor I can never look at it in quite the same way again. The second is that observing college for the first three-quarters of it made actually doing college this year way more fun.
When I walk through the arch to Bostock Library, I smile thinking of the times we heard the administration's pitch for an "interdisciplinary quad" framed by CIEMAS, the new library wing and the Divinity School addition.
Listening to Duke Student Government hopefuls talk about course evaluation websites, kegs on the quad, internal efficiency and other campaign issues, I laugh remembering that they've all been suggested before.
Some are serious problems that need to be addressed, some are unrealistic ploys designed to garner votes and all have been recycled since before my freshman year. I wonder if DSG insiders know the history of their pet issues as well as any of the student government beat reporters I've known.
Some of my fondest memories from The Chronicle are from our editorial board meetings, when we would cram into the lounge to giggle as we shared weekend gossip and occasionally yell as we debated current issues and events.
We talked about academic policy, construction, town-gown relations, social life, personal responsibility, athletics and everything else imaginable, building on topics garnered from the news pages and from our own gripes. The common thread in those conversations was that we were always talking about the kind of place Duke was and the kind of place we wanted it to be. And sometimes, what we recommended actually happened, and I wonder if our voice contributed to that.
And now, as the University deals with the lacrosse situation, I feel more than a little sympathy for the administrators I got to know during my year as editor. We have commiserated during volatile times before, especially during the Palestine Solidarity Movement conference and its aftermath last year. Although The Chronicle and Duke's administration can often be at odds, individuals at the top of both have an appreciation for crisis management that few others at this University have ever had the need to experience.
After all of that watching and reporting and debating and opining, I arrived at senior year. It felt like I was finally doing college instead of just telling other people what I saw. I became active in my sorority again, ventured into Durham more with friends and made my apartment a home instead of just a place where I slept. I was a regular student again, taking a full course load and doing most of my homework. As new issues developed on campus, I was on the outside for the first time, reading The Chronicle to find out the day's news-but with enough perspective to be able to read between the lines.
Even though at the time I thought I was just watching for those first three years, in that tower office I got the chance to engage more with this campus than most students do in their entire college careers. This year, as I've rejoined the non-Chronicle world, I wasn't experiencing college for the first time-I was just interacting with it in a different way. Duke is a big place, and if you throw yourself into whatever you do here, it can never stop feeling new.
Karen Hauptman is a Trinity senior and former editor of The Chronicle.
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