Campus Council has recommended that residential programming responsibilities fall under DUU’s purview.
This suggestion, made at the council’s meeting Thursday, follows the proposed merger of Duke Student Government and Campus Council, which was announced Jan. 20. Undergraduates will vote on the merger Feb. 15 as a referendum on the Young Trustee ballot. If the DSG-Campus Council merger passes, Duke University Union’s executive board and its parent body, the University Union Board, will vote to accept residential programming duties.
“An undue sense of competition exists between Campus Council and DUU,” said junior Betsy Klein, programming chair for Campus Council. “The solution is to merge with DUU. We know that in the future these events will be somewhat different but we hope the community-building nature of them will be preserved.”
The proposal also recommends that larger campus-wide events such as Homecoming and Old Duke be assigned to existing DUU committees and smaller-scale event planning shifted to house councils—which will then likely receive an increase in funding, said senior Annie Kozak, DUU executive vice president.
The DUU-Campus Council merger aims to maximize event attendance and promote efficiency, Klein said in a presentation to the council. Although residential programming is not DUU’s area of “expertise,” Kozak said the union will strive to incorporate the majority of the council’s events into its own programming.
Kozak added that DUU would like students to take increased ownership of smaller quad or house events—but hesitated to call the new procedure “hands-off.”
“We want [more programming] to be autonomous and student-driven,” Kozak said in an interview Thursday. “Our hope is that this will create a greater diversity of events which appeal to more students while encouraging individuals, houses and groups of houses to pursue new ideas and collaborations.”
The proposal also recommends that DUU create a new executive position, vice president for programming, to facilitate communication between house councils, Kozak said.
“The VP for programming will mainly act as a consultant,” Klein said in an interview Thursday. “This is going to have to be somebody that will really focus on communication between house council vice presidents and serve as a resource and networker.”
As the University transitions to the house model in the coming year, changes to the planning structure of residential programming will be important and challenging, Klein noted.
“Its not going to be perfect in the next year,” she said. “We have the general framework of getting people together and being connected. It will really improve the quality of quad council programming, which always had room for improvement—this is going to be the missing link that could work under either [the house or the quad] model.”
The distribution of Campus Council’s funding to the appropriate groups will be determined within the next few months, Klein said.
In the transition, Campus Council President Stephen Temple, a senior, said DUU and Campus Council should continue to prioritize the student body’s interests.
“There are opportunities for synergies between current DUU and Campus Council events, and providing additional events can certainly provide further benefit to the student body,” he said in an interview Thursday. “But it’s my hope that at least the essence of the events will continue to exist in one form or another.”
He also noted that the house model, which is scheduled to be implemented in Fall 2012, may impose new challenges on programming and residential life.
“There are a lot of benefits coming out of the house model, but I think that maintaining a cohesive Duke culture is going to hinge upon programming and interactions among different houses,” he said. “The responsibility that the Union is obligated to take on will be to make those connections happen, to be a resource to different residential groups and to make sure we’re not having insular entities.”
In other business:
The council’s policy committee will review University smoking policies, said senior Jon Pryor, council vice president and chair of the policy committee.
Sophomore Jeremy Ruch, chair of the public relations committee, said Residence Life and Housing Services has approved the installation of white board walls in K4 residence hall. He added that the administration plans to add them to existing dormitories as well.
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