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(11/30/15 7:54am)
In a week’s time, hordes of sleep-deprived students will be camped out in Perkins, adding to the ever-growing piles of empty coffee cups and plastic food containers from Vondy. As the fall semester comes to a close, many students find themselves scrambling to recover after a stressful last week of classes to review for an immediately looming finals week. Every semester and particularly in the fall, the transition between the last week of classes and the first exam day raises concerns and complaints about the length of our reading period.
(11/24/15 6:09am)
With recent campus controversies and academic and personal stresses weighing heavily on our minds, it is easy to become disillusioned and fatigued by life at Duke. Caught in the daily grind of classes and extracurriculars, we sometimes lose the sense of wonder that we start off with on East Campus and each semester. Yet the arrival of Thanksgiving Break gives us space to breathe before finals and time for well-deserved rest, thankfulness and reflection. In light of this, we take a moment to celebrate some of the things we are grateful for and proud of as a Duke community.
(11/23/15 7:15am)
Last Friday, a coalition of students organized a second conversation in Page Auditorium to cover a range of issues that included racial and socioeconomic diversity at Duke. The event separated itself from the previous forum hosted by President Brodhead, Provost Kornbluth and Dean Ashby in that it centered on a list of demands presented by students and statements by concerned student groups. While a thorough listing of many issue areas that have been launched into the spotlight of national and campus conversations, the demands lacked some coherency, failed to acknowledge the timeline of institutional changes and in some places reflected shallow implementation research.
(11/20/15 2:34pm)
In February, we wrote about the need to “address the student experience on campus” with respect to socioeconomic diversity, and two months later, we discussed normalizing the experience of first generation college students at Duke. Peer institutions like Harvard and Columbia have instituted programs to help students disadvantaged in different ways to adjust to college beyond financial aid packages and have seen their population diversity flourish with more 1G students. Duke is not far behind with one in ten students coming from first generation college backgrounds compared to Columbia and Harvard’s 14 and 15 percent, respectively. Soon however, that may change. At the beginning of this month, the University announced its new Washington Duke Scholars Program that will provide “a financial, academic and cultural foundation” to 1G students, about 30 to begin with plans to double that figure.
(11/19/15 5:57am)
Last week, Dartmouth College joined a growing list of universities in the news for student protests about race. Unlike other instances, however, it was not the actions of the administrators in response to unrest that made headlines but the actions of protesters themselves. According to student reports, a peaceful library protest at Dartmouth “turned ugly” when a small group of participants began to verbally and physically harass their peers. Similarly, protesters at the University of Missouri were criticized for crowding out a student ESPN photographer last week. While it is easy to condemn these groups and discount the national movement protesters stand for, we must remember to be charitable to the nuanced sub-groups and ideas of movements, especially in light of our own on-campus events.
(11/18/15 5:55am)
With next semester’s registration wrapping up, our curriculum and its requirements have been on students’ minds. For juniors and seniors, this often means scouring ACES for those last Trinity requirements (in classes that meet after noon on any day except Friday). For underclassmen, it means exploring different fields of study and finding classes that give them a start on an overwhelming variety of requirements. Registration is just one occasion to remember the many ways the current undergraduate curriculum stands to be improved.
(11/17/15 6:32am)
Last Friday, President Brodhead held a community forum in Page Auditorium with Provost Sally Kornbluth and Trinity Dean Valerie Ashby. The forum was announced against the backdrop of student protests of racism across the nation and the resignation of the University of Missouri’s president after pressure from student activists for mishandling racial issues. It concerned itself with institutional responses that would improve the campus environment along lines of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and mental health. The forum also highlighted an increasingly awkward miscommunication between administration and students over what demands and projects have been accomplished, which are ongoing and which have been passed on.
(11/16/15 6:00am)
Friday evening the world was stunned when six sites across Paris were violently attacked in suicide bombings and shootings resulting in the deaths of more than 100 people. Responsibility for this violence was later claimed by the terror group ISIS who in the 24 hours prior to these attacks had also committed similar bombings in Beirut and Baghdad. On Saturday, we learned that ISIS militants were killed in clashes with Turkish police as the G-20 conference of world leaders was held nearby. ISIS is the same terror organization wreaking destruction across Syria, resulting in one of the most significant refugee crises in history.
(11/13/15 6:40pm)
It has been a rough week for higher education, witnessing the resignation of a university system president following failures to address concerns regarding racial tension on campus, resignations of professors and staff who failed to acknowledge students concerns of bodily threats and the call for resignation of a residential House Master at Yale following an email students found trivializing and divisive. At Duke, we have suffered frequent reminders that despite enrollment at an elite bastion of higher education, we are not protected from the hate of the broader world. We face ignorant words, real threats and the reality that the comfortable belonging we seek cannot be taken for granted on arrival. In every trial, the valid concerns of students of difference—color, orientation, creed—have been played against the idea of an individual’s rights to free speech, no matter how threatening or invalidating it is and regardless of power relationships. But is free speech really the issue here? Perhaps what is really of concern is the authority that some kinds of speech and not others are awarded.
(11/12/15 7:30am)
Tensions flared on Tuesday between student activists and the media on the University of Missouri’s campus. A widespread video shows a crowd of activists physically blocking a student journalist, Tim Tai, from ESPN from taking pictures of their tent encampment. The angry crowd insisted on their right to be left alone by the media. Tai stated his First Amendment right to document the event. The clash is a flashpoint of the larger debate on the borders between safe spaces and free speech.
(11/11/15 7:22am)
On Monday, we discussed our campus’ dire need for leadership to step up with helpful solutions or to enact the ones we offered. On Tuesday, we sought to have a conversation with regular students, answering the common question of “What can I do?” with the usual advice about sympathy and, tantamount to that, demands that they push administrators, academic leadership and DSG representatives to be visibly proactive in their roles.
(11/10/15 7:45am)
Last week, a student and the community of which he is a part were explicitly and violently threatened. We find ourselves yet again issuing perfunctory apologies, gathering on symbolic steps and pledging to stand up against hate, only to have another wall defaced, another threat sent to a minority student, another Halloween party where blackface and ethnic identities are paraded as costumes. This rinse and repeat is draining. After yesterday’s editorial passionately laid out solutions for the administration, Student Government and students in today’s toxic environment, we turn now to correcting the student and administrative cultures at Duke.
(11/09/15 5:45am)
It is a toxic time on America’s campuses. It is a toxic time, and we are apathetic. Some are too tired of speaking against echo chambers—where nobody is willing to listen. Others are too tired of being asked to listen to something they deem “not their problem.” It is a toxic time, yet we have retreated from trying to make it better. We do not know how to make it better. And now, yet again, we are left sad and hurt and uncertain after a student’s life was threatened on account of his sexuality. As these events transpire at Duke and across the country, we risk becoming normalized to experiencing them unless we act otherwise.
(11/06/15 10:03am)
As we move into the last weeks of fall semester, it is time for many first-years to look ahead to spring semester and recruitment for living groups. In the past we have discussed the negative influence of Greek life on Duke’s social culture in “If Greek life did not exist,” but the system remains as popular as ever, evidenced by the more than 30 percent of upperclassmen who are affiliated with a Greek organization or selective living groups. First-years, who up to now have found their social circles without living group selections, are beginning to consider these systems, and we advise them against naively throwing away their fall friendships without due consideration.
(11/05/15 6:11am)
An alarm goes off, and you grope in the darkness for your laptop. Your registration window has arrived. Early today, the senior class woke up to register for classes. Although that mouse-clicking 7 a.m. race to success takes only a few minutes, it is the conclusion of the exhilarating part of the year that is bookbagging. Classes are a fundamental raison d’etre in college, and the bookbagging that precedes enrollment is the most important part of registration.
(11/04/15 7:06am)
In the United States, North Carolina’s public university system is a flagship of state school systems. Last month, its Board of Governors named former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings as the successor of Tom Ross, the current system president who was forced to resign in January. Many have speculated the removal of Ross, whose tenure has been widely regarded as successful, is a political move by a Board of Governors controlled by Republican members. His resignation in January was followed closely by the similarly suspect closing of three major system research centers, including the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill. And again, the Board of Governors is being put on the stand for naming Spellings. The selection process lacked transparency and sufficient engagement of relevant stakeholders—including faculty, students and the residents of North Carolina—and her qualifications and beliefs have been called into question.
(11/03/15 5:50am)
Yesterday, we commented on the culture of mentorship and advising opportunities at Duke and made suggestions to improve institutionally-facilitated mentorship on campus. Today, we turn to the nature of informal peer mentorship during the undergraduate experience and hope to illuminate disparities in students’ abilities to think about opportunities for authentic growth and development during their time at Duke.
(11/02/15 6:21am)
As deadlines for summer internships, DukeEngage applications and registration for spring semester classes approach, students are beginning to consider all their choices in the next round of crafting their undergraduate experience—or their first round of life after graduation for our seniors. In any of these decisions, authentic mentorship from peers, upperclassmen, professors and advisors is vital to navigating the abundance of opportunities and choices we have at Duke. Today, we offer suggestions for strengthening mentorship relationships at Duke and encouraging a culture of introspection for students caught up in just getting by.
(10/30/15 9:00am)
This Halloween, step into a dimly lit, old room, hear the dripping of the water pipes and walk obviously as black mold slowly spreads through your walls. Don’t mistakenly assume you have been dragged to yet another haunted house by your friends because you may have stepped into your own apartment on Central Campus. While not as reviled as it was years ago, Central leaves much to be desired for its residents. Satire and mockery aside, the apartments of Central have recently had several serious concerns brought to light giving housing equity questions more to work with after Edens saw its renovations this year.
(10/29/15 6:25am)
This year, the Durham County Tax Administration will begin its appraisal of Durham property values to reassess property taxation. For many Durham residents this represents a significant risk to their home security and well-being. Property values in many neighborhoods have skyrocketed, and reassessment presents the possibility that yearly tax burdens could rise above what residents can afford to pay. Tax increases will affect renters similarly as costs are passed on, leading to the movement of poorer residents to less central neighborhoods. At the beginning of this month, the Franklin Humanities Institute sponsored the first in a yearlong series of talks titled “Gentrification and Durham’s Future.” We turn now to Durham’s development and Duke’s considerable stake in it as Durham’s largest employer and with its off-campus student population.
