The independent news organization of Duke University
Greek life does not make sex-offenders out of good people, nor does it make us any more exclusive than we naturally are as humans.
The war against political correctness is a war against accountability.
But what there is not is a multitude of sermons on what it means to be in happiness, in extended states of peace, or to be okay with thriving and not expecting that suffering will bring an end to every good moment you experience.
What’s the point of playing a fixed game? Perhaps the answer to that question is that politics are not a game at all, but for many people—particularly those of us who are not cis white men—a matter of life or death.
I am a month away from graduating and concluding the most transformative four years of my life. It fills me with equal feelings of fear, excitement, and deep sorrow.
Duke is composed of several categories of people who hold a stake in the university and care about what it does and what happens to it. Like an urban mural or a ceiling fresco, I want you to picture them all arranged in a close group how they’re normally not pictured: right next to each other, sitting around a table, talking in earnest about the place they all love.
I strongly prefer sweet to savory, so when I saw people walk out of the Brodhead Center carrying white cardboard boxes, my first instinct was that the academic deans were doing another Insomnia Cookies event, or that CaFe was selling cookies by the dozen.
Graduation is a momentous occasion, maybe most of all for the families and loved ones who have invested so much in their students. They deserve an invite, just as they have received at peer institutions.
If it wasn’t for the women—their voices, their courage, their strength, their wisdom, their ingenuity, their expertise, their love, their care and concern—where would we be?
It shouldn’t have taken a mass shooting to garner attention towards the rampant discrimination that Asian Americans face.
If the “work hard, play hard” Duke is ending then what will take its place? In its place will be the independent’s conception of Duke, a school where students work hard, pause for online moral preening and then work harder.
As I continued to expand my political understanding and envision a more just world, I found what I had taken for granted all along: the arts.
Women deserve to be seen for the strong, beautiful, magical beings that we are. Our bodies deserve to be treated as holy, hallowed and revered dwellings, not just when men find them “attractive” for their own use, but in our autonomy and individual existence.
Remember that your world at Duke is full of very deep thinkers besides yourself, and consider often the benefit of entering into others’ ways of knowing.
What we need to realize, collectively, is that nobody who is genuinely interested in your perspective is going to challenge you to a debate. If they wanted to understand you, they’d ask you to explain your beliefs—they would have a discussion.
We are almost through this bizarre year. Almost. We must put our individual needs aside and value the good of the entire Duke community during the final weeks of this semester.
Honestly, we’re just sick of listing campus resources when students express concerns about their mental health.
We can’t let the voters who just saved America once again become silenced by these racist pieces of legislation.
When I go out somewhere with a group of gays, I know people might laugh at us or give a side-eye. To be fair, we probably look a little bit ridiculous or over-dressed. But at least now, I’m not alone in my experience. We’re in on the joke together.
There will always be more than eleven options at the Brodhead Center, so long as you use your imagination.
