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If we have any sense at all, we should get a lot from our experiences at Duke. But do we give back enough? We ought to stop and ask ourselves occasionally: Is this university better for having had me as a student? Have I left this place better than I found it?
An open letter to the president-elect regarding his cabinet-to-be
Tomorrow are the Duke Student Government elections. And you should vote.
Although you might not know it, we’re in the middle of the campaign to decide who will be the next president of Duke Student Government. Election day is April 6. The DSG President is the single most important student when it comes to policy making at this University. Current DSG President Mike Lefevre, a senior, said of the job: “It’s such a huge opportunity; [the president is] the most empowered student at the University.”
Athletics—excellent athletics—are central to the Duke “brand.” And that brand is pretty successful judging by the fact that more than 26,000 people applied for admission to the Class of 2014. Our athletic department, too, is gearing up for a round of investment in the brand. The Triangle Business Journal reported in February that Duke Athletics is set to launch a $100 million fundraising campaign this spring. The money will be used mainly to renovate Wallace Wade, adding 10,500 seats, including 24 suites and 700 to 800 club seats. These additions obviously will generate revenue themselves.... Did you know donors who sit right above the student section in Cameron donate about $25,000 per year?
I’ve long been of the opinion that so-called “campus culture” problems get vastly more attention than they deserve, and I made a vow never to dedicate a column to them. I break that vow today.
The institutional importance of the presidency is surpassed perhaps only by the Board of Trustees. I recently interviewed all the living presidents of Duke to help me understand the nuances of presidential leadership: Keith Brodie (1985-1993), Nan Keohane (1993-2004) and Richard Brodhead (2004-present). They represent fully one-third of those who have occupied that office since James B. Duke’s 1924 grant that transformed Trinity College into Duke University. Their time in office represents 26 years—which is longer than I’ve been alive.
My favorite place to eat on campus is the Refectory. My next favorite spot is Chick-fil-A.
I helped deliver babies in Uganda two summers ago. That’s not a normal college experience for your average history major.
About a month ago, I set out to find the answers to several questions about what it takes to be a good member of our Board of Trustees so as to be able to cast my vote for Young Trustee intelligently.
They exist to provide a forum in which students can seek redress. They serve as a check on the other two branches of government. They stand for impartiality, fairness and the rule of law.
I want a Duke Student Government that is the most efficient it can possibly be.
One of Duke’s signature appeals is its curriculum. Duke students don’t have cumbersome general education requirements like they do at other schools. Indeed we don’t really have any classes that all students are required to take, aside from Writing 20 and a freshman seminar. There are even dozens of variations among those two. Duke’s curriculum, called Curriculum 2000, is probably just about as flexible as you’d find at any university in the world.
Our three Young Trustees—Ryan Todd, Trinity ’08, Sunny Kantha, Trinity ’09, and John Harpham, Trinity ’10—were in attendance at this weekend’s Board of Trustees meeting. Their presence gives the Board a cadre of members who have recent experiences as students on campus. These Young Trustees, after their first year, are fully empowered, sitting on committees and voting on actions of the Board. Their charge is to make decisions in the best interest of the entire University.
Agenda setting has been the purview of outside forces so far this year, much to the chagrin of student leaders.
The legitimacy of the University undergraduate judicial process depends on student involvement, but the extent of that involvement, while always acknowledged as necessary, has not always been quality. Too often students feel that they have no meaningful input into the formulation of judicial policies. These frustrations came across clearly in former-DSG President Elliot Wolf’s series of Chronicle columns on the topic in 2007, which every Duke student ought to read. In 2008, Student Affairs agreed to the formation of a Judicial Affairs Student Advisory Group that was to “consider all proposed changes to Judicial Affairs policies and procedures and issue recommendations with respect to those changes to the Vice President for Student Affairs.”
In the Spring of 2009, as he was leaving office, then-DSG President Jordan Giordano called for the disbandment of Campus Council. That same April The Chronicle’s Independent Editorial Board called on Campus Council to surrender its role as a programming body to Duke University Union. Just days after his election as Campus Council president, senior Stephen Temple faced two public calls for what amounted to the dismemberment of the organization he’d been selected to lead. More recently, then-DSG President Awa Nur and her executive board (myself included) echoed Giordano’s criticisms of Campus Council in 2010.
In December 1993, Duke’s famous English professor Reynolds Price wrote a Chronicle op-ed in which he vociferously argued in favor of a residential system at Duke based on residential colleges. Since Price wrote, we’ve moved to an all-freshman East Campus. We moved all fraternities off the Main West Quad. We moved away from the house model entirely to a quad model. Each of the changes brought about unintended negative consequences, which each further change intended to remedy.
The Duke Student Government academic affairs portfolio is not an easy one and is often misunderstood. The challenge for this particular vice president is to generate the types of ideas that take years to mature but to work on them for only eight months. Almost no academic affairs project can be accomplished in a single year.
Is the new housing model anti-greek? And should greeks resist it?
