When Lindsey Harding crumpled to the floor after missing the two free throws that would have beaten Rutgers and advanced the Blue Devils to the Elite Eight, anyone could (almost) relate.
After all, who among us has never failed?
Who hasn't done poorly on a test or bombed a job interview or struck out that night at the bar?
(Of course, Harding did it in front of thousands of people and a television audience, so it's not exactly the same. But it's close enough.)
As TV staffer Ben Cohen writes in his profile of Harding, the Duke guard "is a product of five years, not one tenth of a second." And it is because of those five years that Harding-the winningest player in program history and the National Player of the Year-is one of Towerview's five Dukies of the Year.
But Harding is not the only Dukie of the Year who has been criticized. Last year, Vice President of Student Affairs Larry Moneta took heat for the cost of his pet project, the West Campus Plaza. But the Plaza has been an unqualified success-students have used it as a place to eat lunch, meet up, enjoy the almost daily entertainment or just hang out. The success of Moneta's vision for Duke's day-to-day social life makes him another of our Dukies of the Year.
And in our final issue of the year, it's nice to celebrate those among us who fall down but pick themselves back up. No one is perfect, not even the Dukies of the Year. As Winston Churchill once said, "Sucess is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."
Unfortunately, we won't get the chance to fail-or succeed-any more. This issue marks the end of Volume Eight and its staff. We hope we've succeeded in bringing you new perspectives on life and events at Duke. We hope we didn't fail too often. Mostly, though, we hope that you've enjoyed reading this magazine.
So thank you to those who have helped make this magazine, and thank you-especially-to those who have read it.
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