Until last year when Duke Student Government and InterCommunity Council named Ben Abram, Trinity '07, Duke's newest Young Trustee, my impression of the post was overwhelmingly negative.
Duke students were relinquishing their most powerful voice to what appeared to be resume builders. Did top-down administrative decisions frustrate these Young Trustees? When brainstorming how Duke could improve the undergraduate experience, did a passion for change consume them? Were they truly committed to making Duke a better place for all Duke students-students with divergent needs and desires, backgrounds and life experiences? Or were they more concerned with increasing their own self-worth, using the experience as a three-year window to hobnob with powerful individuals and acquire a few more connections.
Instead of a slick politico, we should choose someone who will be our voice, our say and our opportunity to resolve all the parts of Duke that have failed us-and bolster the parts that have propped us up-so that others may prosper from four years of collective learned lessons.
Tonight members of DSG and ICC gather to select the Young Trustee and in their hands lies this imperative: choose carefully. Already it seems like they have taken this imperative more seriously than past selection committees: the final three this year lack the political slime and grease that characterized the bulk of last year's pool. Here I admit I have no empirical evidence, only the gut feeling that a few of last year's finalists gave me the heebie-jeebies-sort of the same feeling I get when watching political debates, trying to discern who is genuine and who has other intentions up their perfectly ironed dress-shirt sleeves.
So yes, for authenticity and genuine intentions, I believe this year's troop is already netting ahead.
But what other factors can push one candidate to the top of the heap?
I start with the individual's ability to pursue policies that dramatically alter campus culture. Please forgive me for re-printing this nasty phrase, one that takes an entire campus suffering post-traumatic stress disorder back to the days when media vans dotted campus lawns. Yet this phrase keeps rearing its head because it so pointedly asks Duke, "Who are we?" and "What are we?"
We are-according to the University's financial aid announcements last semester-an institution that values socioeconomic diversity, with an announced unprecedented commitment to making the Duke education affordable. However, increasing financial aid is a symbolic commitment until Duke releases a plan to actively recruit qualified students from lower income levels. The Young Trustee should be someone who will move the University toward making this commitment real.
We are, they say, a top-notch academic institution, one of the best in the world. In the mean time, pre-major advising remains a crapshoot, with some students getting lucky, while others harass their adviser for a PIN multiple times a semester before achieving success. Language classes are a requirement, but the introductory levels are painful and unproductive. T-Reqs say you are getting a "writing" or an "ethics" concentration, but often I find the coding bears no meaning. And undergraduate research opportunities in the social sciences are plentiful junior and senior years, but sparse freshman and sophomore years. The Young Trustee should be someone who will make Duke's claim to provide superior undergraduate education wholeheartedly real.
We are, finally, a supposed member of the Durham community. In truth, we are members of the Duke community, not Durham, and we live in isolation. With the exception of some Durham tutoring programs, we think service is work abroad, not involvement locally. The Young Trustee should be someone who strives for a Duke-Durham partnership that is real. Not just a partnership defined in money and staff members, but a partnership where students are no longer community members in isolation, but active contributors.
So I say the Young Trustee should come and heroically rescue us from all our ills. I realize it's an overzealous demand; the Young Trustee is still one voice among many.
Nevertheless, a fresh, passionate voice, a voice that understands these issues and will use this power to pursue positive growth-well, this is a helpful thing. In the Young Trustee there should be no quiet complicity, but a charge to move the University forward with boldness, and to pursue the improvement of the Duke undergraduate experience with fortitude-and an open ear.
Rachel McLaughlin is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
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