Dissecting alphabet soup

Here’s a bad joke: What do you get when you cross DSG, CC, and DUU? A really crappy alphabet soup.

I sat on a newspaper to eat an acorn for lunch and stumbled upon this very interesting story. Two of these three sets of letters are divvying up the responsibilities of CC, which is no longer going to exist separately.

That being said, I’m a bit confused as to what is actually happening. First, CC says it is dissolving due to the change from the quad model to the house model. Its policy-making responsibilities will be taken up by DSG, while DUU will take over CC’s programming. This should have happened five years ago. This begs the question: What, exactly, are these multi-hour conversations producing? Luckily for me, I heard various members of the organizations discussing the answers—including people like Steve Synagogue, Zhe Yang, and Like My Fever.

I heard someone tell his friend, whom he referred to as “trinitard,” that it is pretty logical that the policy-side of CC will just become a new branch of DSG. So this new branch of DSG will make decisions like switching to the new housing model. (Perhaps this group will avoid self-dissolution.)

But what will occur in the programming split, which is arguably the more visible element, is rather murky at this point. Clearly DUU will get most of the events, which is logical as it is the largest programming body on camps. These events comprise three programming tiers: desirable-to-program events with high publicity, moderately popular midsize events and generally unattended, small-scale shindigs.

Large events­—Is there really any large scale programming on this campus? Is there any time where over 1000 students all gather together? Basketball games! Oh yeah, and LDOC, too. Surprisingly LDOC is planned by a freestanding committee, which CC and DUU have overseen and allocated money to each year on top of the separate LDOC budget (Zhang and Synagogue take large briefcases of unmarked bills to give to the LDOC committee). With the proposed change, CC’s money and power goes to DUU. This is like saying my girlfriend and I each have half a year timeshare on this beach house (squirrel size). We break up and she moves out of the state, so she gives me her timeshare. Am I now free to do anything? Will LDOC become sole custody of DUU or will the committee retain autonomy? Does a squirrel really need a timeshare on the beach?

Middle tier events—Homecoming? Old Duke? Endless Summer? Halloween? I wonder if these events will continue to suck, endure with some much needed modifications, or be taken away completely so their funding can be diverted to innovative programming that would benefit students and squirrels alike.

And of course there is the “smaller programming.” It has been said that the residential programming of CC will fall under DUU’s purview. What? When did CC ever do residential programming? I never saw CC having a pizza party in Crowell­; they always farmed it out to their underlings, the quad councils. All the crappy flyers for these events I’ve used to line my nest say quad council, not CC. I never saw CC buying Panera for a mid-morning coffee break—that was the Graduate Resident. CC never made bizarre room decorations that either took way too much time or way too little time; those are made by RAs. Exactly what is CC/DUU going to do that the GR/RC/RA doesn’t? If both groups program, isn’t that redundant? I don’t think there has ever been dorm-scale programming that benefitted from CC’s expertise. I guess there needs to be collaboration between the dorms sometimes, but that’s nothing a quick Spacebook chat couldn’t fix. Quad council leader 1: “Craven is having a poker tourney?” Quad council leader 2: “So is Crowell! We should have the winners play each other”.