Duke's investment
(11/29/11 11:00am)
Duke University’s endowment holdings invest in a future well beyond Duke’s campus.
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Duke University’s endowment holdings invest in a future well beyond Duke’s campus.
Duke is a very strange place for me. There is a tension here that I could not deconstruct for many years. My background led me, for four years, to work maintenance at a community college in Arkansas. Most of my coworkers were professional Labor, a few specializing in a trade. Many students at this school were either from, or studying to join, the professional Labor ranks. Due to this connection, we workers were respected and could easily connect with the student body.
At Occupy Duke, I have engaged in conversations unbound by traditional or conservative constraints. During this experience, I have constantly challenged my conception of self and knowledge. Unfortunately, these anomalous experiences juxtapose Duke as a reflection of the Academy, primarily due to the mechanisms currently and inappropriately defining this space: departments, majors, faculty tenure and grades.
Duke must join the Occupy Together movement as an academic institution, employer and collection of workers while explicitly standing with Durham and North Carolina.
Two overwhelmingly segregated traditions exist at Duke.
The North Carolina General Assembly has dishonored itself within the legal tradition by passing the Defense of Marriage amendment. As explained by Bob Geary’s “Citizen” column in The Independent, this bill was only passed using two thinly veiled political loopholes, one including the oh-so-slight amendment of Senate Bill 514 from a classification of pertaining to “Nutrient Sensitive Waters” to this monster before us. Moreover, the decision will be made by voters in the May primary election rather than in the November general election of 2012 because those 10 Democrats—cough, sell outs, cough—feared that the traditional hate-mongering crowd might vote with the other lever. Is this democracy?
I am a varsity athlete. Were it not for athletics, I would not be at Duke. Of the schools that recruited me, I chose Duke because it had the best academics—a frequent deciding factor among student athletes. Although most of us respect Duke as an institution, some among us singularly or firstly identify as athletes. To this group, as most recognize, Duke exists only as an athletic stepping stone. The duality of institutional condemnation and encouragement baffles all. In the meantime, Duke Athletics gets away with everything it can. Admittedly, I benefit from the existence of Duke Athletics, at the moment typing away on a K-Center computer. Duke desperately needs the socioeconomic and pigment diversification brought by athletics. Personal, obvious and outlandish admissions aside, a central question has failed to surface from the justified hoopla and whining about the athletic subsidy—why exactly does Duke need institutional athletics?
Linguistic discrimination remains the longstanding policy of our beloved Chronicle’s opinion section—blessed art thou among college publications. Why, for example, should I be forbidden from using “foreign words” despite specificity or particular connection simply because these words bring forth the uncomfortable but increasingly realized fact of monolingual ignorance? Despite North Carolina’s linguistic intimidation (English was named the official language of N.C. after 1987), Durham’s linguistic diversity continues to rise. Particularly, those individuals identifying as Latino or Latina continue to shape Durham and add to its intellectualism through, and often beyond, bilingualism (13.5 percent of Durham County responders to the 2010 Census identified as Hispanic, Latino or Latina, and 17.6 percent noted that a language other than English was spoken at home).
Behind the bar at 9th Street’s Dain’s Place, you’ll notice a small wooden square crudely cut during the owner’s junior high shop class. Against the unfinished and roughly hued wood, “Dain’s Place” is burned in hand-carved letters. Dain, the owner, who has wanted to own a restaurant for his entire life, doesn’t remember exactly when that vision solidified into a bar. When Dain did open his bar, however, luck was on his side: The first week he was open, George’s Garage—now closed across the street—was forced to close its incredibly popular lunch buffet because of tax issues. The majority of the customers surprised by the padlocks on the door walked across the street to Dain’s for a great burger and a beer. Next, during a large ice storm, Dain—living nearby and used to winter weather—opened up unlike every other bar in town. Word got around and people from all around walked to Dain’s—the only time the bar has had a line out the door. Needless to say, profits were good.
Durham calling to the Gothic Wonderland: