1000 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(08/31/15 6:46am)
Last Wednesday, Duke Student Government canceled the existing undergraduate campus newspaper readership program. Started in 2000 by University President Nan Keohane and taken up in 2002 by DSG, the program sought to engage students with national and world affairs through print subscriptions of major newspapers like The New York Times and USA Today. After its cancellation, however, DSG now has plans to reboot the program to match the rapidly-evolving digital news media landscape that now defines the market among college readers.
(08/28/15 4:03am)
Each fall semester, the pleasantly warm weather and the crisp, autumn air that will hopefully soon follow complete the picture of couples on our main quad, strolling across the grass hand-in-hand. Yet, year after year, many Duke students find themselves hanging back from a seemingly inescapable dating scene of hook-ups. This failure to create and participate in a less hook-up oriented dating culture is ironic considering nearly three-quarters of students expressly want to be dating more. While the Duke Social Relationships Project study that generated that figure is almost two and a half years old, its findings still ring true today in conversations about dating. The fact is that there is a tragic miscommunication and misperception among students, a coordination problem with solutions that simply require courage to make your own spaces for relationships. Curiously, we will find this means something different than just moving away from hook-up culture or any other form of relationship.
(08/27/15 5:30am)
The school year begins with a cacophony of rhetoric, especially for the Class of 2019, whose orientation is built, in part, to inspire them grandly about what they can do at Duke. Their week ended with closing remarks from several speakers. President Brodhead advised students to be the “builder of your best self.” Dean Nowicki looked at what it means to question authority and be “engaged and productive.” Today we explore one of the paths students walk in those visions: leadership.
(08/26/15 7:34am)
Even as all freshmen spend Orientation Week getting to know East and West Campus together, some arrive already acquainted with a circle of classmates and with some of the culture of Duke thanks to our pre-orientation programs. This year the five programs of Project WILD, Waves, BUILD, Change and Search were joined by Project Arts, a new program that engages incoming first-years with Durham’s art community and themes of social justice. The program divides students into the media of visual arts, dance, music and theater, but all students explored this year’s theme of classism together in their art projects. Joining Project Change as a pre-orientation program with a focus on social activism, Project Arts gives us a chance to ask to what end pre-orientation programs are meant to serve incoming first-years.
(08/25/15 7:04am)
Beyond the FAC chats and author’s talk during Orientation Week, this year’s summer reading selection, “Fun Home,” was accompanied by an informal class-wide discussion on its content. Many first-years took issue with its sexual images and the book’s themes, bringing to light concerns about what is appropriate for the University to select as the first common intellectual experience of new students.
(08/24/15 5:17am)
Welcome back to campus and to another FDOC from Editorial Board! In addition to the second largest ever admitted class, this year brings a great deal of change to campus, and we are excited to critically examine the stories that unfold. For those who have taken their fingers off the pulse of campus news, today’s editorial presents a small selection of what lays ahead in addition to some summer events you may have missed.
(08/21/15 7:14am)
With every new school year, Duke welcomes a diverse class of first-years, and this year is no exception. The Class of 2019 topped last year’s international representation of 47 states with an astounding 79 countries. The class also includes 49 percent students of color with 11 and 28 percent African-American and Asian students respectively as well as a record number of 10 percent Latino students. But today we want to bring a different number to the fore. Understanding one class’s diversity requires more than seeing how many students come from different geographical and racial backgrounds. It requires recognizing the diversity of the 100 percent of all Duke students who bring their whole lives to campus.
(08/20/15 7:54pm)
This Tuesday, international and other early move-in students will be joined by many more new arrivals to bring a larger-than-ever horde of 1,750 first-years to East Campus. The day begins with Freshman Advisory Counselors running minivan-load after minivan-load of possessions up and down dormitory staircases in a massive act of controlled chaos. Similarly, many new students find themselves thrown into a week packed with events, their heads abuzz with all the new stimuli of life at Duke. For some, however, the adjustment puts their minds in a kind of fog, one that bewilders them almost as much as it welcomes them.
(06/15/15 8:56am)
It was announced early last month that the 2011 lawsuit regarding former University cancer researcher Anil Potti had been settled with undisclosed terms. Between 2006 and 2010, 127 cancer patients participated in Potti’s three clinical trials based on invalid medical research, some receiving inappropriate chemotherapy treatments. The Editorial Board called five years ago for greater transparency from Duke’s administration, and today even more questions remain unanswered, raised by news of a whistleblower quieted early in the case as well as the Institute of Medicine’s external review about how other challenges to Potti’s work were badly mishandled by School of Medicine professors and administrators.
(04/27/15 8:04am)
Our University is a place of many changes. Physically, socially and academically, the Duke our seniors will bid farewell to shows no intention of preserving itself in amber for future visits. Our Duke is more dynamic than that as a point of pride. The Duke that will greet a new freshman horde in August will give them a pat on the back and hearty push forward into our vibrant community and smorgasbord of opportunities. The literal rise and fall of our buildings, ongoing curriculum revisions and social justice and cultural advocacy of our student body this year are symptoms of the winds of change reaching every corner of our campus. But before we get swept away in the commotion, we would do well to mull over this year’s events and find questions in the challenges we face in moving forward as a student body and institution.
(04/21/15 9:17am)
Housed in the Duke archive repository lay the illustrious fruits of the year-long toiling and many sleepless nights of hundreds of students through the years: senior honors theses. Spanning all departments and delving into topics of boundless diversity, these projects take their writers on careening intellectual paths and, like a needy partner, demand all-consuming energy. To the seniors triumphantly returning the last of their towering book stacks and whose work will soon join the theses in these archives, we extend hearty congratulations and commendation.
(04/20/15 8:20am)
Duke’s 1G Network is a community of first generation college students, administrators, faculty and staff committed to improving the experiences of first generation college students on campus. The programming provided by the Network ranges from academic support to skills like financial literacy. The Network also runs a pre-orientation program each year dedicated to ease the transition to the world of college and, later in the year, discussion groups give times and places to discuss, especially in earlier years, the unique position of first generation college students on campus, a niche that we turn our attention to today.
(04/17/15 9:04pm)
LDOC is a mere five days away, and T-Pain, Jeremih, MisterWives, and Spencer Brown await us after our last wave of work wraps up. Though different parts of the year lend themselves to different sorts of stress, reading period and Spring finals are some of the most jarring with the social high of LDOC and academic intensity of finals. MIT’s four suicides this year due to stress and mental health issues coming knocking the door to remind us that the way we manage our everyday stress is crucial to our emotional health and physical wellbeing.
(04/16/15 8:45am)
The tumultuous events of this past year have prompted a wave of student activism on campus, an increase that asks for a close assessment of student activism at Duke. An event held last week, titled “What is Wrong with Duke’s Activist Culture?,” examined the flaws of Duke’s activism scene, focusing on advice in the spirit of more effective activism. This inwards analysis is timely and important for addressing Duke’s recent scandals but, also, raises questions about our student activism.
(04/15/15 8:46am)
At the beginning of this month, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel was chosen to be the Class of 2019’s Common Experience summer reading book. But for every glowing review of this annual shared experience, there are too many other stories of incompetent FACs, half-hearted discussions and the many students who neglect to read the book altogether. Today, we look at the on-campus events centering on summer reading and how they can be improved.
(04/14/15 9:43am)
Today, elections are being held for Duke Student Government committee vice presidents, senators and class offices. Yet, many of these elections are either uncontested or lack candidates entirely. Though a dip in interest is not unusual for Spring semester elections, we find this dip to be a disturbing bellwether for next year’s DSG representatives. Last year, five of the seven vice presidential races were contested. The year before, thirteen people ran for those same positions. We take issue with the lack of candidates running and believe it to be a symptom of the external perception problems and internal dysfunction of DSG.
(04/13/15 8:18am)
This year, the Editorial Board was disappointed by the lack of competition for Duke Student Government vice presidential positions. Given the potential for collaboration between administration and students, we hope all candidates will work next year to change DSG’s internal environment and campus perception.
(04/10/15 11:55am)
Amidst an incredible whirlwind of scandals, speeches, protests and celebrations, it was easy to take for granted and routine Duke’s regular decision offers for the Class of 2019 just two weeks ago. With all those following Duke’s recent visibility in the national media coverage, there are surely 2,650 newly admitted students now following those developments attentively. As the first Blue Devil Days wraps up and the others approach, we want to take a moment to discuss Duke’s current state and its direction in higher education for admitted students.
(04/09/15 8:23am)
In yesterday’s editorial, we discussed the Duke administration’s response to the noose incident. For many students, constant racism is a daily reality. Racism and micro-aggressions often take different forms, moving in and out of campus dialogue. Why does it take an event as abhorrent as a noose for us to have last week’s conversation?
(04/08/15 8:14am)
“This is no Duke we want, this is no Duke we accept…and this is no Duke we want to create,” President Richard Brodhead declared on the Chapel steps last week before hundreds who came together in solidarity, in outrage, in hurt. Last Wednesday, a noose was found hanging from a tree on the Bryan Center Plaza. It was the most egregious act in a recent string of hateful behavior that had erupted both on campus and across the nation, including a group of students chanting to a black student the racist chant from a video of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members at Oklahoma University. Although details surrounding the motivations behind the noose and the ongoing investigation are unknown, its effects ravaged and shook our community to its core.
