Let me be the first to say that I love Thanksgiving. It is, in my opinion, the most magical holiday of the year. But, sadly, I have not been able to go home for Thanksgiving break. Like many other students, I cannot afford the expense of flying across the country to stay at home for a few days and then return to campus for only two short weeks.
First of all, Thanksgiving Break only lasted five days because classes were still scheduled on Monday and Tuesday. Five days aren’t enough time for plane tickets to be worthwhile, even though most classes on those two days end up getting canceled. Unfortunately, most of us don’t get enough warning about cancelations before ticket prices skyrocket to really unfortunate rates. For Duke to insist on those extra two days of classes seems unreasonable if we can’t even expect those classes to happen. Now, if break were a full 9 days, maybe more of us would be able to convince our parents to pay for the plane tickets.
Even then I’m not sure that would be practical. With my parents paying out of their ears for me to come to Duke, the cost of a plane ticket seems huge. Proportionally, it takes up a significant amount of our budget. Yes, the budget Duke sets for us does account for travel—my financial aid allocates just over four hundred dollars for travel expenses. But that’s barely enough to cover the trip from my house to Duke and doesn’t even pay for the trip home in May, let alone Thanksgiving, winter or spring breaks. Duke’s financial aid should be expected to provide aid based on reasonable estimations of the various costs students have to pay while attending—sadly, it failed me in this respect.
I don’t know what ticket prices Duke is looking at, but travel to Duke does not cost four hundred dollars. I don’t even want to think about how much money international students have to pay to go home—oh wait, a lot of them don’t even get to go home for Christmas. I consider myself lucky that I don’t have to experience this godforsaken empty campus for a full three weeks.
I had good reasons to decide to stay at Duke for break, but they didn’t quite make up for the costs. I haven’t seen my family since August, and it’s been a hard semester. As you can probably tell, I’m really bummed about my Thanksgiving options.
So let me be quite frank when I say that I’m very disappointed in Duke’s level of attention to the students left behind on campus last week. Our needs, physical and emotional, were simply not adequately cared for over break.
On Friday, for example, students had only two dinner options: McDonalds and the Washington Duke. Then—oh, what joy—Panda Express opened on Saturday. I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t really have the food points for the WaDuke nor do I have the desire to eat junk food for all of my meals.
Thankfully I am lucky enough to own a car, so I was able to eat off campus. Having parked on East Campus because of the coming football game, I found myself stranded without a bus. So of course, when Duke Vans didn’t answer their phone, I chose to pay for a cab rather than make the trek to the other side of a deserted campus in the dark.
Thinking that I could at least get some work done as a consolation prize for my seclusion, I sought out a study space other than my dorm room. To my disappointment, I was unable to retreat to my customary refuge in the library. I figured that I could find somewhere else, but I didn’t feel like I could find a space that felt safe enough for a lone female student. Everything else was either very dark or completely deserted.
Yes, I get it—it doesn’t make sense to pay workers to run campus restaurants, watch over the library, and drive the buses when only a few students are around. And employees should also be able to be with their families for the holiday.
But that doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t have access to adequate transportation services, safe study spaces, groceries, or affordable and healthy food options while they’re stuck on an empty campus when they should be with their families.
I find it hard to believe that a school with a seven billion dollar endowment and numerous unnecessary construction projects can’t afford to provide adequate services to its tuition-paying students. I know that my desire for Perkins Library to be open may not be possible given logistical constraints. But there should have been buses running in the evenings between West Campus and East Campus, where Blue Zone permit-holders were told to park over break. And the Lobby Shop or Uncle Harry’s should have been open along with a healthier food option like Au Bon Pain—this leads to the issue of the overall lack of healthy food on campus, but that’s beside the point.
This experience, along with a series of unfortunate construction projects and my overall disappointment with the condition of student facilities like the dorms, has led me to slowly become convinced that Duke might not actually care about current students and just wants to make as much money off of us as possible. Some people would argue that we knew this all along..
Prove me wrong, Duke. Do more.
McKenna Ganz is Trinity junior. This is her final column of the semester.
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