We need to Occupy Kunshan next

Larry, my Loyal Citizens and I have won a lot of victories this week. The sorority brothels have been pushed to Central Campus where they belong; Occupy Duke has hopefully opened the way for other, more interesting protests (a “forum for discussion?” Really? What happened to activism? My mom did not buy me this new sleeping bag so I could sit in it and have rational conversations with passersby); and yet another football game was lost without a single fairy princess in the stands—on Halloween weekend, no less. But we can’t get complacent. Duke’s Global future needs our help!

I bet you think that by telling you to “Occupy Kunshan,” I’m telling you to protest it, but that’s not the case. We need to build a second Duke University in a country in which censorship and secrecy are routine, and practitioners of certain religions are killed so we can export things like protest and social action to the Chinese, who I’m pretty sure have never tried to protest the government. If they did, I bet their leaders would listen.

No, when I say, “Occupy Kunshan,” I mean occupy in the literal sense of the word. It is the responsibility of we the Global to move into the Duke Kunshan University campus. Otherwise it isn’t going to have enough people living in it to be able to survive! Right now, only one program has been approved—well, kind of approved—for DKU. To really outcompete the Ivy League in Globalism, we need to take action.

I wanted to help you all understand how great Duke’s latest Global expansion will be, so I Googled “Duke in Kunshan” to get more facts, but for some reason the information available was either really old or not about Duke Kunshan University at all. I don’t really know why. I guess the administration is trying to make it an awesome surprise for us, like when they changed Merchants on Points so antisocial people could congregate at delicious eateries like the Great Hall.

I still came up with some good reasons for the campus in Kunshan. It was hard to find information on the estimated total costs, but Duke will be paying $37 million for the first six years of DKU’s operation, The Chronicle reported in March. That’s great news, because some of that money is coming from our tuition. So even if you’re an unapologetic 1 percenter, you’re still donating money to a less developed country! And that’s only the initial operating costs; we’ll be pumping a lot more into it over time, so you can start feeling good about yourselves right now. It’s the only form of charity that’s even easier than buying TOMS.

We’ll also be able to bring academic freedom to China, which currently doesn’t even allow Facebook access. I’m sure the Chinese government will make an exception for Duke—even though they haven’t even approved our campus yet—and that freedom will spread across the whole country, bringing forth a new era of governmental openness and Chinese students not getting attacked by their Duke peers for supporting Tibet. So the faculty’s fears (I’m looking at you, Dr. Pfau) of opening a Duke University in a country that rewards scientific cooperation and punishes academic dissension are unfounded. We just have to take the first step!

Finally, and most importantly, it looks really, really good for Duke’s Global image to have our very own campus in China. Harvard doesn’t have a campus in China; they just have a dinky office in Shanghai. Stanford is planning a whole building in Beijing, but fortunately, our big Kunshan campus is way more impressive and expensive than both of those, so it’ll look way more Global!

I need to work for the best NGO possible, which means we need to be better than other colleges, so obviously we need to save DKU. It’s up to us Globally-minded students and faculty members to go there ourselves. If we have to put tents on the building site, we will. My daddy will buy us better ones than Occupy Duke has.