Citizens in the fictitious Gotham City rely on Batman to fight crime when the justice system cannot. The legendary archer Robin Hood took his egalitarian convictions to the road by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Although the English hero probably didn’t exist, the romantic notion of a justice-minded outlaw so entranced us that the story of Robin Hood continues to be retold, over and over again.
Facing injustice, vigilantes take action into their own hands with disregard for their own safety. They inspire an oft-imaginary Manichean world of right and wrong that people crave, and generate the conveniently perfect hero who fights against evil for the good of the common people, the law and the natural order when the proper authorities can’t, or won’t.
A more diluted and common version of the vigilante’s modus operandi is the Neighborhood Watch group, which gives ordinary citizens responsibility to protect their respective communities. Three years ago, Duke students voted in a University-wide referendum that overwhelmingly approved a similar commitment on campus, and appended the pithy but powerful eight-word line to the Community Standard—“I shall act if the Standard is compromised.”
Since Fall 2007, incoming students sign a pledge to act with integrity both on and off campus, regarding “every aspect of undergraduate life.” When encountering anti-Standard behavior, “students are… expected to take action—to do something—as a responsibility of membership in the Duke Community.”
On paper, the new addition gives the Standard more oomph, but does it give students more motivation to act? Perhaps anticipating confusion about what said action entails, Student Conduct offers suggestions on its Web site that include speaking directly to the offending person, publicly calling attention to the behavior, alerting a residential assistant or the associate dean for judicial affairs.
But disciplinary statistics show that students initiated only 11 out of 934 adjudicated cases, and zero of the 107 academic complaints taken since the new clause was adopted. None of the cases were initiated through The Chronicle, only five by an academic dean and around 15 percent by a residence coordinator, graduate assistant or resident assistant. Complaints from these four groups have not changed from numbers before 2007.
It doesn’t seem then, that the new clause is inspiring students to act, at least not in the ways that Student Conduct recommends.
But not only that, the new Standard may be unintentionally lending a minority population greater justification to act above or against the law.
Cases in point: A fellow student who comes from a poor family consistently steals food from the Great Hall because he believes other, wealthier Duke students should pay for his meals and counter the massive wealth imbalance on campus.
Outside Duke, Student Two feels that stealing from stores like Walmart is morally justifiable because theft is an active form of protest rather than passive ones such as boycotting. Student Three fulfilled his commitment to act by humiliating classmates on the former JuicyCampus.com because he thought they behaved poorly.
If we take Turgenev’s argument that all people can be categorized as Hamlets or Don Quixotes, the vigilantes fall into the latter and the majority of the student population, the former.
Both are dangerous—Hamlet’s paralysis results in missed opportunities for community improvement, and Don Quixote’s headstrong and rash decisions can lead to socially destructive consequences.
For both extremes, the impetus to act, or not act, hinges not on what is considered “right” in a higher sense, but by how the consequences of action will affect the individual. Hamlets might hesitate to snitch because they prioritize protecting each other over protecting the institution and its institutionally-issued standards. For Don Quixotes, the claim to action is attractive because it generates instant gratification and a sense of self-affirmation for contributing “to the greater good.” But again, their sacrifices are often actions thinly disgusted over desires to satisfy a personal injury, not duty to a higher law.
Ad-hoc, covert moral judgments and punishments are too vulnerable to personal biases and lack of information. Vigilantes who take responsibility into their own hands may work as superheroes and in fables, but in Duke’s reality--at least in the examples I’ve encountered--vigilantes are too frequently self-rationalists, not martyrs of justice.
We could better fulfill the obligation to act we voted for by seeking the mean between Hamlet and Don Quixote. There’s nothing wrong with Duke students taking action in informal spaces that feel more comfortable than official proceedings, but in this community, there’s no need to break the law. Duke vigilantes, I hope you are reading this.
Courtney Han is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Friday.
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