Letter: Duke knows the Grateful Dead

This is in response to Olivia Bokesch's article, "No one at Duke Knows the Grateful Dead."

Duke knows the Grateful Dead. At least, the 17 people in Professor Mlyn’s Long Strange Trips first-year seminar do. Every Monday and Wednesday, we get together to listen to the Dead’s music and discuss their history. We have become experts on individual songs, ranging from Ripple to Touch of Grey, and been assigned individual Dead Buddies - members of the Duke community to mentor us in our Deadhead journeys. In October, we travelled to Charlotte to see Dead and Company live.

If you’d like to take your first step in learning about or listening to the Grateful Dead, we have the perfect thing for you. For all of December 2021 and January 2022, our class will have a gallery on display at the Campus Club Wall in Perkins Library titled THE DEAD AT DUKE. Come check it out for vintage Grateful Dead x Duke posters, 70s and 80s era photos of Duke students at Grateful Dead Concerts in Cameron and stories of how “the circus came to town” when the counterculture’s most beloved band came to campus. 

Simran Kapoor, Gus Gress and Ben Koch are Trinity first-years.