Chris Brown's Young Trustee email address may have been a signature part of his campaign platform, but it has only received three messages so far.
Brown, Trinity '13, was elected in February as the University's newest undergraduate Young Trustee, a position that allows a student to sit on the Board of Trustees for three years. Brown proposed in his campaign platform to set up an email address that would allow Duke community members to send comments, suggestions and messages to the Young Trustee. Although the email address, Youngtrustee@duke.edu, has been operating for months, the account has received only three messages, all following the October board meeting.
“New things don’t get immediate traction overnight, and I’m not necessarily concerned about the low numbers,” Brown said. “Obviously we’d want to hear from students as much as possible but that’s just one channel that’s supposed to be open to everybody.”
Brown noted the original intention of the email address was both to allow students to contact their Young Trustees as well as to enable a conversation between the Board and the Duke community at large.
“It’s an outlet for students to share what it’s like to be a Duke student with the leadership of the University,” Brown said.
Brown added that the email address was intended to be an unfiltered channel of communication to the Board.
“The thought behind it is that Duke students’ main avenues of communications are often times through student government and the DSG president and through Chronicle articles,” Brown said. “But that’s not necessarily completely representative of every student’s experience... [The email address is] meant to be a channel that has no restrictions.”
Undergraduate Young Trustee Michelle Sohn, Trinity ’11, added that the address seemed like a good way for the Board to hear how Duke programs are affecting students.
“Duke has these great initiatives like DukeForward and Duke financial aid initiatives,” Sohn said. “But it’d be great to hear from students who actually benefit from those initiatives and see how it’s actually playing out on the ground.”
The email address was publicized through the Duke Student Government blast in September before the Board’s Oct. 4-5 meeting, Brown said. In addition, the address received significant publicity during Brown's Young Trustee campaign.
Senior Jacob Tobia, DSG vice president for equity and outreach, said he has not used the email address and does not know anyone who has. He added that direct contact with the Young Trustees was the favored method of communication for him and other senior leaders, especially since they know the Young Trustees personally.
Tobia did, however, laud Brown’s effort to increase transparency and access to the Board.
“I am a huge fan of anything that increases transparency and communication between Board members and members of the Duke community,” said Tobia, who helped lead protests for endowment transparency earlier this Fall.
Both Sohn and Brown said that the email address is part of a continuing effort to enable communication between Board members and students. These efforts have included dinners with students and conversations with house presidents.
Graduate students have a means of reaching out to their Young Trustees as well. Katherine Duch, Ph.D. candidate in public policy and one of three graduate Young Trustees, said that she will be holding office hours for students with questions on the inner workings of the University when she comes to campus in December.
Brown said the efforts to promote the email address will continue, adding that he will ask DSG President Stefani Jones, a senior, to put another notice in the DSG blast before the Board's December meeting and try spreading the word through targeted emails.
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