Occupy Duke

Duke must join the Occupy Together movement as an academic institution, employer and collection of workers while explicitly standing with Durham and North Carolina.

Many have criticized Occupy’s horizontal structure for being an indirect, uncoordinated churning mess—this is what democracy looks like. Unions were hierarchical, well-organized, politically connected and very specific about their demands during the bipartisan deconstruction of workers’ rights and deterioration of the American manufacturing sector. In The Chronicle, the movement’s self-identification—occupy, an impolite word historically functioning as a coital euphemism—has been criticized. More shockingly, the article attacked the Southern poor while disregarding Occupy’s proliferation. No, most Southerners, like most Americans, may not understand derivative markets and have nothing financially left to risk, but does this really delegitimize our demands for equality?

In my hometown I have seen mom and pop shops shut down by Walmart (ironically started as such in my state), the middle class get poor and the poor get poorer. I see good people unable to work with their hands—something most Duke students couldn’t do if their life depended on it. I see people die for a profit-procuring medical system. The unemployed and working classes have never had agency in this political system; this must change. Occupy must empower the Lumpenproletariat and force recognition of solidarity among the middle classes.

“Why should I care,” says the stereotypical i-banking Dukie. Most likely you don’t care about my type of folk (no, I reject the yuppie liberalism helping you sleep at night) but what about your fabled “Duke Degree” job sector: The banking industry will take another round of cuts to maintain the disproportionately inflated average earnings; the medical system increasingly forces doctors into unethical relationships with hospital administrations (profit maximization) and pharmaceutical companies; engineering firms are going elsewhere; graduate students of all fields are facing increased costs and shrinking federal aid.

Being a Southern Socialist, at least from the tagline—I am not a 99 percenter, I am more of a 50 percent type of guy. I do not agree with everything said by Occupy protesters. That is their right and mine. Occupy needs to bring all people to the table. Whereas the Tea Party is a racist and plutocrat-funded knee jerk, Occupy respects—and desperately needs more—color, workers and dissent. The Wall Street protest is greatly symbolic by holding ground zero of the American financial collapse. Occupy should stand in international opposition to our collapsing oligarchy’s tendency to sacrifice the 99-99.9 percent while locally discussing what Duke can do to improve itself and all the lives that it touches—globally abstract and locally nuanced. Occupy’s strength comes from its diversity.

America’s student loan debt now surpasses credit card debt. Unlike mortgages, the bank can’t roll in and steal back your education—despite the public school system’s preemptive degradation—nor can you easily declare bankruptcy and watch loans melt away. Student loans get put on forbearance during which time your debt balloons to unimaginable levels. It appears the only way to get out of this type of debt is to stay impoverished—which about 15.1 percent of Americans are, a statistic shockingly skewed along lines of racial identification. The moment you get out of poverty, that debt puts you back in.

Princeton became arguably the first American university to opt for a no-loan financial aid system in 2001. This helped Princeton attract vital socioeconomic diversity and remove a hefty burden on its graduates, allowing real post-graduation options. Amherst, Columbia, Harvard, Yale and others followed suit. Smaller financial aid systems, like Duke, removed loans for students coming from households below a financial marker: Brown, $100,000, Cornell, $75,000, Stanford, $60,000 and Duke, $40,000. Dartmouth grants free tuition to students coming from families with incomes below $75,000. Like the no-loan grouping, Duke falls embarrassing behind in loan caps—another financial aid mechanism used by expensive universities for the appearance of equality. If you are lucky enough to stick around past your eighth semester like me (decided to get another major in English enabled by athletic eligibility) well, there’s no financial aid for you beyond the Federal Pell Grants in Republicans’ sights (education hurts their base, I guess).

There are many reasons why I want an occupied Duke, but I must start with those that the majority of Duke students and employees can agree upon. Most students took out loans with the expectation of employment. That is no longer the economic reality. This is the reality that most Americans have woken up to for the past 30 years. It is sad it has taken this long for the privileged to care. Duke’s financial aid must become transparent and modernize to properly respond to divorces and terminal illness. Duke must eliminate loans for lower and middle class students.