Life at Duke revolves around cycles.
There’s the academic calendar with standard, annual signposts from fall break to the inevitable countdown to LDOC. Then, there’s the student life calendar built around major events like rush or tenting season with each year mirroring the same ebb and flow of social activity across campus.
Since stepping on this campus nearly three years ago, I have come to recognize a third, far more pernicious yearly cycle at Duke. For lack of a better term, let’s call it the “scandal cycle”—the moments that remind us just how far as a society and an academic institution we have to go before we ever come close to becoming the equitable and ethical university many of us want Duke to be.
Every year, there’s another stark reminder of racism, classism, sexism or religious bigotry among the multitude of societal injustices embodied in the daily life of this campus. National media coverage turns what should be a moment to question and respond with institutional change into another scandalous moment of Duke on the national stage scrambling to contain the bad publicity. Every year, like clockwork, another rally, another set of public statements of horror at the event and support for those affected and a bevy of social media posts and hash tags.
Every year the words just seem emptier and vain. All bark and no bite.
We keep posting about change and the systemic and institutional barriers that have built the Duke of today. We keep making noise with protests, campaigns, posters and forums. And little to nothing happens beyond statements and speeches in response.
And then it just happens all over again.
That’s the problem with cycles. Systems of oppression continue to reinforce themselves not by conniving back room deals but truly by the complicity of the masses. We might be some of the most intelligent people in the country, but our failures to recognize the cycle and take action to work actively against it fundamentally restrict progress. That burden does not rest squarely on the leaders of Black Student Alliance, Blue Devils United or committed activists in our community. It rests on every single individual from the average undergraduate student all the way to President Brodhead.
Some have the ability to shift policy by their position but, for most of us, our power relies on the collective action of a democratic body. Each person has a part to play. There are members of this community whose malice builds walls around the systems we seek to tear down. More often than not, however, it is the failure to translate good will into action where many get stuck.
Duke might be guilty, but that means that every single member of this community is guilty. “Guilty of what?”, one may ask defensively.
Complicity.
If we follow that logic, then the natural recourse for change would be reparative action, tangible material steps of progress whether that entails building an acceptable Muslim life center, forming a black student pre-orientation program, investing heavily in financial aid, deconstructing a classist and racist Greek system or hiring diverse faculty among others.
The end goals seem pretty clear, but let’s dig a little bit deeper. We’ve known about these kinds of issues for years, yet none of the examples I just laid out have been undertaken. Here we can see the tandem of failures of complicity and blatant bigotry in their naked reality. It begs the question of why we can’t seem to take the words of every press release and turn them into institutional change.
Anytime activism is mentioned, the topic of love is often at the heart of the discussion. I do not think we know what love means though we use it so frequently to describe responses to hatred or to the kind of community we want to embody. If we could put up a mirror to our words and to our actions, we would quickly realize that very few of us, myself included, grasp what love is and why it’s important. We’ll only ever break this cycle and translate those statements into action when we do.
When we say only love can put out hate, what we’re really saying is that all humans, regardless of the hatred they have in their hearts, are in fact human and that the only way to respond positively to a racist Yik Yak post is to reject disdain. When we say only love can put out hate, what we’re really saying is that the response to systems of oppression is to shine a light on their realities in practice no matter how many times we need to do so. When we say only love can put out hate, what we’re really saying is that our daily actions reflect on our love more than anything else; that our words are not enough.
Three years in, many of us are tired feeling stuck in the mires of university politics and an institution resistant to ask, let alone answer the honest questions about its current state. Three years in, I’m praying for patience, the fortitude to keep pushing forward and the love that breeds courage. Three years in, I’m hoping beyond reason that the third time is the charm. Maybe just maybe, this can be the moment for authentic change when we wake up and begin to address the roots of injustices in this institution and this community.
Until then, the cycle will keep revolving. And time will march on still.
Jay Sullivan is a Trinity junior.
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