It’s much too easy for the stressed organic chemistry student to grab a glass of chocolate milk to feel better about an upcoming midterm; our natural tendency is to search for these comfort foods. When they are spread out for the taking, how often will we be able to resist?
The biggest takeaway: don’t sell-out to the sell-out culture.
While most students probably apply to the program motivated by the ideal of doing good for others, learning from the local community, and engaging with the culture, often, the program does not offer that possibility because it frames the students as privileged outsiders.
That’s right, we are going through a spinal health crisis, and I think it has something to do with the oversized, Santa-approved sacks we haul around (better known as backpacks).
At present, DSG is a tin-pot democracy. Its grand delusions of popular representation butt heads with the reality of its inadequacy.
Often minimized, if not lost, in this conversation is the moral argument for educational justice—incarcerated people are, like the rest of us, entitled to free public education.
If there is anything that all Duke students can collectively get behind, it’s that Duke Parking & Transportation is the worst.
To fight this mentality, we have to develop the understanding that even if we are not the star player, we are still on the team, and to preserve the integrity of the team, we should strive to contribute the most.
In the end, a willingness to pay the prescribed penalty does not excuse outrageous violations of rule and law.
To all the other Indian-Americans in the room, I ask only one thing: own that hyphen. Don’t let the American Desi be written off as “confused.”
For Duke students today who struggle against what Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. called the three evils of society—racism, poverty, and militarism—the anti-war movement at Duke in the late 1960s and early 1970s is proof that fellow Duke students dared to imagine a different society.
Try instead: *Silence*
If my form fails, Gillespie never interjects. But I suspect that’s because every time I spill something, he gets to pop it in his mouth.
I held onto some hope that I would be planted somewhere quiet, like in a patch behind Keohane. Instead, I was unloaded onto dirt in Krzyzewskiville.
Duke should minimize its interference in the freedom of its students and employees to make choices related to their personal health.
Those not specialized in a specific field would be hard-pressed to find any opportunity for which our service in another country–or even in another community–is efficient, useful, and sustainable. An eight-week exploration of Thailand or India or Ghana may satiate our desire to travel to a foreign nation, but it does little more than that.
When entire subcultures of Duke are built around a shared interest in acquiring specific skills and becoming employed, the humanistic aspect of an education seems to be lost and instead become a collective group of hammers looking for a nail.
Duke Conversations should go beyond faculty to include staff members as the guests of honor.
While you’re half-listening to your brunchmates exchange lukewarm takes about Tallman Trask’s retirement, smile to the waiter and whisper the magic words: "caprese platter."
I will leave quintessential toxic masculinity aside, opting to explore the subtler though no less pervasive aspects of what I think characterizes masculinity here at Duke.
