Oct. 25, 2012 issue of The Chronicle

T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y

The Chronicle

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTH YEAR, ISSUE 44

WWW.DUKECHRONICLE.COM

Nasher receives $5M gift

Baby, I was fern this way Prof. names new fern genus after Lady Gaga

by Danielle Muoio

by Margot Tuchler

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THE CHRONICLE

Biology professor Kathleen Pryer’s ferns were born with a little Lady Gaga in them.

Pryer paid homage to the musician and pop icon Lady Gaga when she reclassified 19 species into a new genus—Gaga. Pryer noticed that these ferns were distinct from species within the Cheilanthes genus, in which they were originally classified. Realizing that the 19 ferns could not be categorized under another, already existing genus, Pryer created the Gaga genus, which was inspired by her admiration for Lady Gaga and her Born This Way Foundation, which seeks to empower victims of bullying and create a more accepting society.

“We need more human beings who are interested in making the world a kinder, better, braver place,” Pryer said. “She’s trying to give people the skills and the strength to go past the bullying.... That’s awesome. I don’t see myself naming a genus of ferns after Britney Spears or Madonna.”

Found in Arizona, Central and South America, Mexico and Texas, the Gaga genus includes two new species of ferns—Gaga

The Nasher Museum of Art has received a $5 million gift from its namesake to endow two new programs.

The University announced the twopart gift from Nancy Nasher, Law ’79, and her husband David Haemisegger Wednesday. The first endowment—the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family Fund for Acquisitions—will use $4 million to acquire new modern and contemporary art. The remaining $1 million will be dedicated to the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family Visiting Curatorship Fund, which will invite visiting curators to develop exhibitions. Nasher founded the museum in 2005 with her late father, Raymond Nasher, Trinity ’43.

“We are passionate about the museum,” Nasher said. “We are so proud of everything that’s been accomplished since its inception, and we’re very honored to be part of it in a small way.”

Museum staff hope to expand its collection in upcoming years, and this gift SEE NASHER ON PAGE 12

PHOTO SATIRE BY CHRIS DALL

Biology professor Kathleen Pryer named a new genus of fern—composed of 19 species—Gaga, after pop icon Lady Gaga. Pryer is a fan of Lady Gaga and her message of empowerment.

Durham ‘monsters’ to race for charity Friday

by Jeffrey Cicurel THE CHRONICLE

People in downtown Durham Friday evening should prepare for an unfamiliar sight.

The Durham City-County Planning Department will put on the first-ever Durham Monster Dash Friday. . It will consist of both one- and three-mile costumed races through the streets of Durham. The Durham Police Department, WXDU 88.7 FM and Road ID—an identification tag manufacturer—are sponsoring the event. The event, part of city’s Culture of Service Initiative, will benefit four organizations—KidZNotes, the Scrap Exchange, Keep Durham Beautiful and Girls Rock NC.

The first race begins at 5:30 p.m. and the event runs until 8 p.m. Participants will dress up in Halloween costumes, and the event will include food trucks and music. Although all Durham CityCounty departments are encouraged to put on events, this is the planning department’s first.

“We thought, hey, we all really like running, and we all really like Halloween, and those that don’t like running like Halloween,” said Tom Dawson, a member of the city-county planning department who took a large role in planning the event.

“Why don’t we combine the two ideas and have a Halloween dash?”

SEE MONSTER ON PAGE 3

SEE GAGA ON PAGE 4

RECESS

Duke Arts Festival now a campus mainstay

by Rosalyn Kaddache THE CHRONICLE

The fourth annual Duke Arts Festival is set to begin this Friday, October 26, which celebrates the art of Duke students. Now that the festival has established itself in the arts community at Duke, the two-week long event has garnered name recognition for student artists showcasing their pieces.

Scott Lindroth, Vice Provost for the Arts and opening speaker for the festival, expressed excitement over the increased amount of student art submissions.

“We’re beginning to turn a corner,” SEE ARTS FESTIVAL ON RECESS PAGE 8

PHOTO BY DYLAN ROBBINS

This photo of a yawning cheetah is a submission in the Duke Arts Festival, happening this weekend.

Now Open 10 percent off w/Duke Id (excluding alcohol)

607 Broad St Right Behind Mad Hatters And A Few Steps From East Campus

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2 |THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012

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Expert fights western Filmmaker slams Dept. prejudice against Muslims of Homeland Security

by Ryan Zhang THE CHRONICLE

King’s College London law professor Maleiha Malik seeks to combat misperceptions and prejudices toward Muslims in the western world.

Malik, who focuses on the theory and practice of discrimination law, visited Duke Wednesday as part of the Our Shared Future initiative, an exchange program funded by the British Council, said event organizer Kelly Schwehm, who serves as program coordinator for the Middle East Studies Center. The purpose of Malik’s stay in America is to raise awareness about anti-Muslim prejudices in different western countries—specifically England and continental European nations—by broadening understanding about Muslim integration into society. By comparing the discrimination that Muslims in different nations experience, Malik hopes to address the misconception that Muslim communities are all alike.

“As with most forms of racism, antiMuslim racism tends to play on the politics of fear,” Malik said. “This particular fear is that the Muslim presence in Europe and its outward display of religiosity—through its prayers, its headscarves, even its halal food—are converting the continent into ‘Eurabia,’ no longer the white shining beacon of Christianity that Europe is meant to represent.”

Malik called the fear irrational, pointing out that Muslims are a small minority in Europe. For example, in France, Muslims make up less than 10 percent of the population—the highest percentage of any European country. In addition, European Muslims tend to be both economically deprived and geographically dispersed.

The lecture focused on two key examples of anti-Muslim prejudice: the criminalization and regulation of wearing headscarves and the debates over Sharia law. According to Malik, the wearing of headscarves only became an issue when courts such as the European Court of Human Rights declared the headscarf an aggressive religious symbol.

Throughout the lecture, Malik was critical of the media, at one point calling the British press “catastrophically irresponsible” in how it has dealt with the anti-Muslim issue. She discussed an instance in which an archbishop who suggested that England would eventually have to recognize Sharia law was blasted in newspapers with headlines such as “Bash the Bishop!”

The general public, however, is more accepting of Muslim integration, Malik said, adding that this was grounds for optimism.

She pointed to an example where anti-Sharia activist Tommy Robinson encouraged followers to tweet about how Islam is taking over England, and Twitter users displayed their opposition by co-opting his hashtag.

One user sarcastically responded, “Apparently British high school students are being coerced to learn algebra. Yet another example of #creepingsharia!”

Another positive trend developed during the last Summer Olympics, Malik said.

She noted the number of Muslim athletes, including women who wore headscarves during competition, as a symbol of how the two identities—national and religious— can be reconciled.

Jen’nan Read, associate professor of sociology and global health, will complete the second leg of the lecture series when she visits England in January to speak about anti-Muslim sentiment in America.

This exchange is unique in that it allows more collaboration and sharing between the visiting professors, she said.

Malik has already spoken at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Durham County Library, and has plans to speak at Durham Technical Community College.

“A lot of her talks will be for non-academic audiences,” Read said. “The idea is to get outside of our typical academic circles where we publish articles that laypeople will never read.”

Read praised the program for its learning opportunities, but cautioned that SEE PREJUDICE ON PAGE 4

JENNIE XU/ THE CHRONICLE

Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras speaks about her films, which focus on post-9/11 politics, at the Nasher Museum of Art Wednesday evening.

by Raisa Chowdhury “cheerleading” and falling in line in the face THE CHRONICLE of fear rather than asking difficult questions.

Laura Poitras, a recently named 2012 Poitras makes films to help others underMacArthur Fellow, spoke about post-9/11 stand the war and the on-the-ground expepolitics in America, as well as her journey as riences—such as gentrification, U.S. Army a filmmaker at the Nasher Museum of Art occupation or government surveillance, she Wednesday night. said. Toward the end of the night, she said Poitras came to Duke as the second art- she wished she could maintain all of the relaist in the biennial Barbaralee Diamonstein- tionships with her film subjects and coworkSpielvogel Visiting Filmmaker Series. The ers. films in Poitras’ most recent project—a tril“She’s just so good at presenting an alterogy about the shift in global politics post native reality of people living abroad,” said 9/11—have received many accolades, in- Durham resident and audience member Lacluding nominations for both Academy rissa Oryshkevis, adding that she was deeply and Emmy Awards. The first two films, “My moved by “The Oath.” “Their lives are differCountry, My Country” and “The Oath,” were ent from our own, but you can identify with released in 2006 and 2010, respectively. The them as human beings.” third installment is currently in progress.

Ultimately, Poitras hopes that her films Poitras emphasized that even though some will help spark greater public dialogue and of her films are set abroad, they do not focus debate, though she admitted they have not solely on the problems of the Middle East be- sparked as much discussion as she would cause they are American problems, as well. like.

“If we had all gone into a coma on Sep“I still can’t believe we haven’t had heartember 11 and we woke up today—well, we ings over Guantanamo,” Poitras said. “If we have this prison called Guantanamo, we have perceive ourselves to be a country based on a a kill list, we have legalized torture, we have rule of law, things should be different.” the [National Security Agency] spying on us, Poitras said the MacArthur Fellowship, “ Poitras said. “We would think, ‘What hap- which provides a $500,000 stipend over five pened? What has happened to the country?’ years, has given her freedom to work and She criticized mainstream media for SEE FILMMAKER ON PAGE 12

THE CHRONICLE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012 | 3

DUKE STUDENT GOVERNMENT

Nowicki recommends student-admin dialogue

by Emma Baccellieri THE CHRONICLE

Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost of undergraduate education, outlined the University’s vision for nontraditional learning to members of the Duke Student Government Wednesday.

Nowicki noted current and upcoming endeavors to revolutionize teaching methods on campus. He also emphasized the need to increase transparency and communication between administration and students in discussions concerning the house model, innovations in teaching and the Duke Forward capital campaign.

There is a major academic initiative currently in the works, a proposal that would restructure how the University views the curriculum, Nowicki said. Although he was unable to specify what the initiative was, he said more details would be presented in the next month. “[The] mission here is to increase transparency and connectivity between the administration and the student,” Nowicki said.

The student feedback for DukeImmerse, a semester-long four-course program that unifies classroom learning and global education, has been overwhelmingly positive thus far, he added. The innovative program, he said, is unique in its capability to be “a fundamentally different” way of being a college student.

The program underwent its pilot semester in the Spring, with its two programs— “Black Freedom Struggles in the 20th

Century: A Comparison of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle in South Africa,” spearheaded by William Chafe, Alice Mary Baldwin professor of history and “Uprooted/Rerouted,” with Suzanne Shanahan, acting director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and professor of sociology.

Nowicki added that although both DukeImmerse and DukeEngage are mainly focused abroad, students should not view the experience as one with only a global component. He noted that he hopes the number of students in the domestic Duke Engage programs will increase, thereby creating a greater balance between those abroad and those who stay in the country.

“We want to make sure that the international component is not just a boondoggle,” Nowicki said. “If programs have a pedagogically sound reason to go somewhere else, so be it. But we can’t forget that Duke is in North Carolina.”

Bringing the discussion back to Durham, Nowicki added that Duke should focus its efforts in ensuring that the new house model is implemented to promote community and stability.

“We should use this sense of community to better connect students with each other and faculty,” he said.

Student input, he said, can also be channeled into the University’s discussion on fiscal policy. He cited the Duke Forward capital campaign as an example where students SEE DSG ON PAGE 12

MONSTER from page 1 Two nonprofits receiving the proceeds engage in music education. KidZNotes provides Durham elementary school students, and Girls Rock NC offers summer camps and after-school programs to immerse girls ages seven to 16 in rock music as a way to socially empower them.

The remaining two focus on local environmental stewardship. Keep Durham Beautiful holds cleanups and beautification projects in different parts of the city. The Scrap Exchange is Durham’s reuse center that collects materials from residents and businesses and redistributes them.

The event has already raised more than $500 with early registers, Dawson said. The race costs $10 online, and $15 at the event. Participants can also spend $5 to purchase tails, which will signal for monsters—a combination of members of the planning department and other organizations sponsoring and benefiting from the event—to chase them throughout the course. Dawson compared the tail-monster chase to flag football.

“It’s going to be funny to have people running and trying to navigate our course while in some ridiculous costume,” Dawson said. “We’ve also chosen the streets of downtown Durham because it highlights the interesting architecture.”

Dawson noted that the planning department is not closing roads for the dash. It hopes to work with existing traffic patterns. He also said the race is not timed, but more for “style.” Awards such as “nerdiest costume” are being given out after the last group finishes. The event will end with a rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” put on by Girls Rock NC. After they finish, WDXU 88.7 FM, Duke’s student-run radio station, will host an after-party at The Pinhook on West Main

Street in Durham.

WXDU General Manager Jake Cunnane, a junior, said the station has been promoting the event heavily. The station has aired public service announcements about the dash and an interview with an organizer from the planning department.

“It’s just kind of a natural fit for us because it’s providing a bridge between Duke and the Durham community,” Cunnane said. “They were also looking for a DJ and a couple of other things we could provide.”

The station also puts out PSAs for some of the organizations benefiting from the event, Cunnane said.

The Scrap Exchange is renting out props, making tails and, as Dawson requested, participating as “evil robot monsters,” Jessica Moore, outreach events and community engagement coordinator for the organization, wrote in an email Wednesday.

“When [Dawson] told us about the idea, particularly that he wanted us to help with the Evil Robot Zone, the Scrap Exchange staff was excited to take on the creative challenge as well as be a part of a unique fundraiser supporting local groups that do great work,” Moore said.

The event will promote community engagement, even if people do not actively participate in the dash, Dawson noted.

“It’s our city,” he said. “We encourage people to come be spectators. If the dash isn’t for everybody, it’s always good to come down and see the weird stuff going on and try some of the local restaurants.”

Dawson said he will participate in the event and has already planned his costume.

“I’m going to be Franken-bull so I’ll have this really hideous ugly track suit,” he said. “And a Frankenstein bull-head.”

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THE CHRONICLE

GAGA from page 1

Let’s raise awareness

HA TRAN/ THE CHRONICLE

Members of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority sell cupcakes on the Bryan Center Plaza to raise money for breast cancer awareness.

Exciting Courses in the

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Introduction to Religious Studies Welsey Kort l TUTH 11:45am-1:00pm l Religion 101.01 Shamanism & Spirit Posession Rich Freeman l TUTH 4:40pm-5:55pm l Religion 213s.01 Religions of India David Need l MW 4:40pm-5:55pm l Religion 220.01 Formation of Christian Biblical Canon Julia Lillis l WF 11:45am-1:00pm l Religion 290s.02 Buddhism and Sexuality Hwansoo Kim l TH 1:25pm-3:55pm l Religion 328s.01 Contemporary Judiaism Laura Lieber l MW 1:25pm-2:40pm l Religion 345.01 History of the Christian Church Hans Hillerbrand l W 4:40pm-7:10pm l Religion 355.01 Classics of the Christian Theological Tradition Lucas Van Rompay l TUTH 10:05am-11:20am l Religion 359s.01 Understanding the Qur’an Mohsen Kadiver l MW 4:40pm-5:55pm l Religion 370s.01 Buddhism and Phenomenlogy Takushi Odagiri l M 1:40pm-4:10pm l Religion 490s.01 How to See God and Other Questions of South Asian Visual Culture William Elison l MWF 1:40pm-2:30pm l Religion 690s.01

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monstraparva and Gaga germanotta. Monstraparva is the Latin translation for little monsters, the name given to Lady Gaga fans. The other species honors the singer directly—her birth name is Stefani Germanotta.

Pryer said Lady Gaga has long been an inspiration because she uses her stardom to “push agendas” that empower others. In addition to the Born This Way Foundation, Lady Gaga launched the Body Revolution to encourage fans not to be ashamed of their image after the media criticized Gaga for her weight gain.

“It’s a way of giving her a gift from the scientific community and saying, ‘Even geeks listen to your music and feel empowered by your message—keep doing what you’re doing,’” Pryer said.

Lady Gaga’s outfit for her performance at the 2010 Grammy Awards, moreover, made the new genus’ namesake more appropriate, Pryer added. Made by Armani Prive, the costume was green, heart-shaped and, to Pryer, resembled a gametophyte—the multicellular phase of plants that occurs during the ferns’ reproductive stage.

“When she came out of that silo wearing that costume, it just spoke to me,” Pryer said. “It was like, ‘Good god! For all the world, that was a beautiful gametophyte.’”

Many artists have had scientific discoveries named after them. In January, for instance, the singer Beyonce became the namesake of a horsefly with a striking gold behind, deemed “bootylicious” by its discoverer Bryan Lessard, a researcher for the Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

To top it all off, when Pryer’s lab looked at the DNA sequence of the ferns, they found that one gene had the sequence Guanine-Adenine-Guanine-Adenine lined up, which, when abbreviated, is GAGA. Pryer had not thought of looking at the DNA sequence until she talked to Karl Bates, director of research communications, over lunch about the fern discovery. Bates said it would be funny if she looked at the DNA sequence and saw GAGA lined up, so Pryer and her lab set to work to see if Gaga was, in fact, in the ferns’ DNA. The study’s acknowledgement section now thanks Bates for “stating the obvious.”

After seeing the connections to the namesake, Pryer wanted to make sure she cleared it with the person behind the inspiration. She did not want the name to be released without Lady Gaga formally “blessing” the name. She got help in this task from Cathy Davidson, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute professor of interdisciplinary studies and Ruth F. Devarney professor of English.

Davidson is co-director of the annual Digital Media and Learning Competition run by the MacArthur Foundation, which awards money to projects that explore how digital media affect the lives of young people. She worked with Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter, when the MacArthur Foundation chose to give a $500,000 grant to the Born This Way Foundation in February. Using her connection with the MacArthur Foundation, Davidson contacted Carter about the Lady Gagainspired genus name and received a response in 19 minutes.

“Sounds great :),” Carter wrote in the email.

Senior Anne Johnson, who has worked in Pryer’s lab since her sophomore year, said she liked the reasoning behind the genus name choice and was excited as a Lady Gaga fan.

Davidson noted that the name choice not only honors Lady Gaga’s work, but also shines light on the scientific community and their contributions.

“It shows that the world of science, art, university and pop culture is all continuous—I love that,” she said. “I don’t like when the world gets divided up into little boxes.”

Pryer also noted that the excitement surrounding the Gaga genus shows that scientists are approachable and enjoy having fun.

“I hope people will see scientists aren’t just lab-coated, boring people—we live in the same world,” Pryer said. “We owe it to the community at large to explain what we do... and maybe there are little monsters who were born this way to be fern biologists.”

PREJUDICE from page 2 prejudices against Muslims will be difficult to combat in the upcoming years. One of the biggest challenges is that the only way to overcome a stereotype is by interacting with someone who does not fit the stereotype, which is difficult when the Muslim population is such a minority, she said.

“Out of [about 315] million Americans, there might be a few million who are Muslim—that’s a drop in the bucket,” Read said. “The likelihood of your average American knowing any Muslims is low, and that’s if they actually know the person is Muslim.”

Sports

>> TTHE BLUE ZONE

The Chronicle

THURSDAY

Check out the sports blog for some highlights from head football coach David Cutcliffe’s weekly press conference.

October 25, 2012 www.dukechroniclesports.com

FOOTBALL

FOOTBALL SCOUTING THE OPPONENT

FSU to provide physical challenge Tickets to Florida the bowl State

by Karl Kingma THE CHRONICLE

Following a euphoric victory over rival North Carolina, Duke will face a sobering reality check this weekend in Tallahassee, Fla. Florida State (7-1, 4-1 ACC) comes into Saturday atop the ACC Atlantic Division and ranked 11th overall in the nation.

N.C. State did upset the Seminoles in a controversial fourth quarter comeback three weeks ago, but the loss remains the only black mark on an otherwise flawless record. Florida State returned from that upset with a vengeance, defeating Boston College in a 51-7 shellacking and then overcoming Miami 33-20.

Head coach Jimbo Fisher, renowned for his top-notch recruiting, has ushered in a plethora of talent during his first three seasons at the helm. The Seminole defense is particularly imposing, ranked second in the country with only 226.5 total yards allowed per game.

Upperclassmen Cornellius Carradine and Bjoern Werner anchor Fisher’s defensive line, boasting a combined 20.5 tackles for loss and eight sacks apiece. Middle linebacker Vince Williams will be quarterbacking the defense, as hard-hitting veterans Nick Moody and Christian Jones patrol the strong and weak sides respectively. Also expect freshman Ronald Darby to be in on the action, as the young cornerback has stacked up 11 tackles and a forced fumble already this season.

Duke head coach David Cutcliffe has not been stingy about praising the Florida State defense.

“We’re playing a very physical team,” Cutcliffe said during his weekly press conference Tuesday. “We’re playing the most physical team that we’ve seen—we’re playing the fastest team that we’ve seen if that tells you anything.”

Holding off the Seminoles’ defensive pressure will not be enough for Duke to win on Saturday, though. Florida State’s offense is dangerously explosive despite the loss of running back Chris Thompson in last week’s win over Miami.

An MRI taken late Sunday night revealed a torn left ACL, marking the end of Thompson’s senior season. Fisher announced the injury in his press conference Monday. “[Thompson is] what’s right about college football. I say it all the time, but this game takes no prisoners,” Fisher said.

“That’s a very big blow to us because of what he is to our team.”

Despite losing the leader of the backfield unit, the Seminoles have confidence that back-ups James Wilder Jr. and Devonta Freeman will pick up the slack. Wilder Jr. and Freeman have seen plenty of the ball already, combining for 10 touchdowns and more than 100 carries so far this season.

Florida State will also look to their signalcaller, EJ Manuel, for leadership and consistency. Manuel entered this season as the most accurate quarterback in Seminole history, and has been a rock for Fisher’s offense this season. The versatile senior was recently named Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award semifinalist, and has 2,033 yards and 14 touch-

Seminoles

from Staff Reports THE CHRONICLE

7-1 (4-1) PPG RUSH/G PASS/G TD FG-FGA SACKS-YDS

FSU 44.4 231.2 288.9 44 16-20 21-149

OPP 12.6 69.1 157.4 12 6-7 13-90

Upperclassmen Cornellius Carradine and Bjoern Werner anchor Fisher’s defensive line, boasting a combined 20.5 tackles for loss and eight sacks apiece. EJ Manuel, the most accurate quarterback in Seminole history, will lead the offense. downs already this year.

Manual will receive assistance from deep threats Rodney Smith and Rashad Greene, who will spread the field and provide him with appealing downfield targets.

Florida State will be heavily favored to earn their 18th consecutive win against Duke this weekend. Nevertheless, Saturday’s game will also mark a chance for the Blue Devils to silence their doubters.

CROSS COUNTRY

Elsakr hopes for top-seven

by Nick Martin

MEN’S SOCCER

THE CHRONICLE

From a ‘hothead’ to a leader

by Lopa Rahman THE CHRONICLE

Sebastien Ibeagha went from a penaltycard machine to a team captain, and from tallying one goal in his first two seasons to leading the team in scoring his junior year.

But the junior would not have become one of the team’s stars without tackling his earlycareer setbacks.

“He’s come along leaps and bounds in all aspects of his game,” Duke head coach John Kerr said. “He’s been a real joy to coach this year because I see so much maturity in his approach and his ideas, and for us he saves one or two goals a game just by being Seb.” The defender picked up five yellow cards and two red cards last season. He drew three more cards than anybody else on the team and was the only player to pick up multiple red cards, which force a player to leave the game and sit out the ensuing one.

Always quick to leave his feet and lunge into reckless challenges, he did not display the maturity of a team leader.

“When I came in I was a hothead, but I’ve become a lot calmer as a player,” he said.

The turning point in the Texan’s collegiate career was a Nov. 1, 2011 matchup against Elon, in which he was issued a red

Only a few days after Duke’s 33-30 victory over North Carolina, Blue Devil fans can already register for their tickets for Duke’s first bowl appearance since 1994.

The location and date of Duke’s bowl game is still unknown and will depend on how the team finishes the season. The winner of the ACC Championship game is guaranteed a berth to the Orange Bowl in Miami, Fla. The Blue Devils have four regular season games remaining, two at home and two on the road. They play Florida State and Georgia Tech on the road and Clemson and Miami at Wallace Wade Stadium. If the Blue Devils win the ACC’s Coastal Division, where they currently sit in first place, they will earn a berth to the ACC Championship game in Charlotte, N.C. on Dec. 1.

BRITTANY ZULKIEWICZ/CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO

Everyone knows the classic story: as a sophomore in high school, Michael Jordan is rejected from his varsity basketball team and spends the rest of the year working on his game to prove to the coach he was indeed good enough. Not only does he go on to make the team his junior year but also manages to become the greatest basketball player in NBA history.

Although not of Jordan’s magnitude, senior Joseph Elsakr has a similar story right here on Duke’s cross country team.

Known by friends and coaches alike as Joey, Elsakr is a senior biomedical engineering major who hails from Daytona Beach, Fla. Although he seems like any normal Duke student at first, there’s more to him than meets the eye.

Elsakr attended Spruce Creek High School and lettered in cross country all four years, as well as playing an undefeated tennis season. Although his cross country accomplishments were impressive, they were far from the jawdropping times seen in most Division I schools, such as Duke.

Elsakr, however, still made a point of trying to gain a spot on the team at Duke, sending head coach Norm Ogilvie his personal records in hopes that he could be a practice runner for the team.

“When he first came to me, he didn’t have any credentials that would suggest he could be a Division I runner,” Ogilvie said.

Junior Sebastien Ibeagha has gone from ‘hothead’ to the No. 1 scorer for the Blue Devils.

SEE IBEAGHA ON PAGE 8

SEE ELSAKR ON PAGE 8

6 | THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012

THE CHRONICLE

around the ACC

FOOTBALL

With a 7-1 record this season, Florida State enters its matchup with Duke as No. 11 in the nation. It will face a motivated Blue Devil team coming off their win against UNC—and first chance at bowl eligibility since 1994. Here are some soundbites from FSU head coach Jimbo Fisher.

Renfree granted NFF National Scholar-Athlete Award

>>In your opinion, what player on Duke’s roster has made the biggest impact on their team this year? I don’t know if you can say any one. The quarterback is outstanding, two receivers do a superb job. One of the quiet guys on their team is their punter, 45-yard net average, freshman, 12 returns all year against him, does a tremendous job.

Their turn-around defense, they’re very smart how they play defense, great leverage on the ball, very well coached, picks up the blitz packages. I don’t know if you can say any one player. I think that’s why they’re bowl eligible. It’s not just one player. I think it’s their whole team. They are a very sound team. >>When you look at the Duke film, what jumps out at you? I think they’re playing with a lot of confidence. I think they’re better offensively. The quarterback is even better than he was. We thought last year he was a tremendous player. The receivers, Vernon and those guys, are all doing a good job of getting open. They ran the ball last game for 200 yards. Defensively they’re mixing up blitzes. Very sound in what they do. Create great leverage on the ball. They’re pressing, they’re off, doing great things.

Special teams, I said it before, their punter, net 45 yards a punt, you’re changing field position. Making guys go the long way, not giving up big plays on defense, being sound on the run, making you beat them. They’re playing better overall as a team and have better confidence.

FAITH ROBERTSON/THE CHRONICLE

Sean Renfree is only the third Blue Devil to win the NFF National-Scholar Athlete Award. He is also a finalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy. from Staff Reports THE CHRONICLE

Redshirt senior quarterback Sean Renfree has been granted the 2012 NFF National Scholar-Athlete Award, the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame announced Wednesday. He is also one of the finalists for the 2012 William V. Campbell Trophy, which recognizes the best scholar-athlete in the nation.

Renfree, who has guided Duke to a 6-2 overall record—its best since 1994—has started 30 of his 36 career games and completed 765 of 1,185 pass attempts for 8,145 yards. He has also passed for 43 touchdowns and 37 interceptions.

A native of Scottsdale, Ariz., Renfree currently ranks first in pass completion percentage, fourth in passing yardage and fifth in touchdown passes on Duke’s all-time charts. In the ACC, he ranks first in pass completions per

Salon

game, fourth in pass efficiency rating, fifth in passing yards per game and eight in total offensive yards per game. Renfree also holds the 17th highest passing yardage total in ACC history.

The National-Scholar Athlete Award includes a $18,000 postgraduate scholarship, which Renfree can apply to his pursuit of a master’s degree in humanities at Duke. He graduated from Duke in Dec. 2011 with a 3.40 grade point average, and now holds a 3.81 GPA in graduate school.

Renfree is only the third Duke player to earn the honor, after Mike Diminick (1988) and Bill Obremskey (1983).

If Renfree is awarded the William V. Campbell Trophy, he will receive a total scholarship of $25,000. The winner will be announced Dec. 4 during the 55th NFF Annual Awards Dinner in New York City.

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IBEAGHA from page 5 card in overtime. Stuck in a 2-2 deadlock against an overmatched Phoenix squad, the Blue Devils battled to maintain the draw a man down.

“After that game I had a reality check,” Ibeagha said. “We almost lost to Elon. We should have won that game. I put my team in a really bad position for the overtime period. Since then I’ve tried to keep my penalty cards to a minimum.”

Ibeagha cites his professional aspirations as an additional reason for staying levelheaded on the field.

“Being calm as a player—knowing that you can work through adversity—is a great quality to have,” Ibeagha said. “If I can show that on the field, it makes my stock a lot higher in terms of teams actually wanting me.... I definitely want to play professionally after I leave college.”

In addition to maintaining his composure, Ibeagha has shown development on the offensive end of the field this season, despite his role as a defender. Scoring one goal in his first two years at Duke, Ibeagha did not carry responsibilities beyond anchoring the defensive unit.

This season, Ibeagha has continued to bear that responsibility, guiding a back four that has allowed less than one goal per game and demonstrated solidarity against some of the toughest opponents in the country, as exemplified by one-goal losses to No. 1 Maryland and No. 2 North Carolina. He is balancing more on his plate this year, however, assuming a leadership role on the squad as team captain

and serving as the go-to guy for set pieces, which account for four of his five tallies this season. He ranks first in scoring on the team and is tied for 10th in the ACC. “He’s leading by example and talking a lot more, communicating with the defenders and the midfielders,” Kerr said.

“Anytime we have a corner kick or a free kick we send Sebastien up, and we know that he’s going to take away the other team’s best marker. He has created a lot of havoc in the areas where we’ve capitalized in terms of dangerous free kicks.”

Ibeagha has filled a void for struggling forward and midfield players, who have combined for only five goals this season.

Two of these goals were early-season tallies from sophomore Nick Palodichuk, who is out for the season due to injury. Palodichuk was the third-leading freshman scorer in 2011. The Blue Devils lost their top two scoring threats from last year, Andrew Wenger and Christopher Tweed-Kent, to the MLS SuperDraft and graduation, respectively.

“We’re really missing Nick Palodichuk, and Luis Rendon has been injured most of the season,” Kerr said. “When these instances happen and you lose a Chris Tweed-Kent and an Andrew Wenger the year before, it’s a tough position to be in.

Sebastien has really done a great job of helping us through that this season.”

And with the maturity and skill Ibeagha has demonstrated on the field this season, Kerr is confident that he has what it takes to thrive in the professional ranks.

“He’s going to be a big star someday,” Kerr said.

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ELSAKR from page 5

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Senior Joey Elsakr walked on to the cross country team as a sophomore, after training by himself for a year.

“He clearly wasn’t ready to run at the Division I level.”

This rejection sees only two types of reactions: the determination that one is not good enough and never will be good enough, or that one is not good enough yet.

Elsakr arrived at the second conclusion and began training—alone.

“Generally, that’s sort of a brushoff and you never see the kid again, but Joey was different,” Ogilvie said. “He worked really hard on his own [and] he did a lot of miles in the forest on his own.”

Elsakr dedicated all of his down time to either studying or running. With the help of a college coach back home in Daytona Beach, Elsakr began a rigorous running schedule along the trails of the Duke Forest. Although he befriended several fellow runners, most of his workouts were a lonely business.

“Basically I was running about 80 miles a week, and I’d do workouts once or twice a week on the track,” Elsakr said.

After a little more than a semester of training, Elsakr went back to Ogilvie and sought his approval to run for the track team. Although Joey had improved a great deal, Ogilvie still did not believe Elsakr’s times matched up with those of the Division I level.

“I knew it’d be tough to improve a lot on my own, especially with the adjusting [to college], but at the same time I knew it was possible and I knew that I really wanted to do it,” Elsakr said.

At the end of his freshman year and after many hours of training, Ogilive let Elsakr practice with the track team.

By the time cross country season rolled around, Ogilvie found Elsakr his much sought after spot on the team.

“This [was] not a gift in any way, he’s earned his way onto the team,” Ogilvie said. “He raced his way onto the team.”

Elsakr made sure not to squander his chance, working even harder his sophomore year to improve his times and run his way to the top of the team. He ran a 26:33 at the IC4A Championships, helping Duke to its third straight IC4A victory.

“My long time goal was to be top seven on the cross country team because those are the guys who run at regionals

and nationals,” Elsakr said.

His hard work showed, as he cut 46 seconds off of his 8k time from his sophomore to junior year. Still, his goal of being in the top seven had yet to be accomplished, as he could not crack into the team’s top runners. That frustration, similar to his rejection as a freshman, did not deter Joey—it motivated him.

As one of four seniors on the team this year, Elsakr is now in the top eight, with one race left to push his way into the top seven and be able to run in the NCAA Southeast Regional.

“This year he’s become a legitimate member of the team,” Ogilvie said. “He’s gone out and earned his way onto the ACC cross country squad for the first time.”

Whether or not Elsakr accomplishes his goal this Saturday at the ACC Championships in Blacksburg, Va., he will leave a lasting image on the cross country team, as both a senior leader and as an inspiration to anyone who has been rejected.

“If there’s something a freshman or anyone can take away from this story, it’s that the most important thing is longterm improvement and that you always have to keep that in mind when you’re training,” Elsakr said.

Beyond his athletic success, Elsakr was named to the ACC Academic Honor Roll as a junior, despite having a notoriously difficult major.

“Joey’s done a great job, no doubt about it. You’d like to have a kid like that on your team every year if you could,” Ogilvie said. “The good thing about Joey is his story is so easy to tell.”

Coaches do not have kids like Joey on their teams every year—especially in Division I athletics where full scholarships and recruitment find the biggest and best across the nation with little room for walk-ons to succeed. But it is the few that squeak through, the Jordans, the Rudys and the Elsakrs that have the biggest impact on a team. Luckily for Ogilvie and the team, graduation certainly does not mean goodbye.

“Knowing Joey, he’ll come back to visit from time to time” Ogilvie said. “Joey will be a model story for years.”

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10 | THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012

Step back from the buffet Wednesday’s editorial which a grade or a line on explored the phenomenon your resume can attest, but of the Big Four, which lim- knowledge that permanently its the set acceptable ca- shapes how you view yourself reers for Duke students to and the world, knowledge four: lawyer, doctor, banker that permeates every personand consulal and profestant. Breaking sional decision editorial through the you will make restrictive Big Four para- in the future, knowledge digm can be a difficult task, that an excellent education but proper reflection has a is supposed to produce. lot to do with it.

William Wright-Swadel, Duke students love Fannie Mitchell executive being busy.

Between director of career services, academics,extracurriculars, compares the constantly exsocial calendars and sum- panding workload of Duke mer experiences, there are students to a teenage boy not enough hours in the at a buffet. In this analogy, day to get everything done. the overcommitted student With so much going on, it is similar to a hungry teen is hard to reflect on our ex- that tries to pile everything periences and what we have on their plate at once. At truly learned from them. the end of the meal, the This is not knowledge to teen has gorged everything

“

Thanks to the Chronicle Editorial Board for adding a voice to conversations that we’re having at the Career Center every day. You’ve offered three great pieces of advice to Duke students.

—“Cameo Hartz” commenting on the editorial “The Big Four.”

See more at www.dukechronicle.com.

LETTERS POLICY The Chronicle welcomes submissions in the form of letters to the editor or guest columns. Submissions must include the author’s name, signature, department or class, and for purposes of identification, phone number and local address.

Letters should not exceed 325 words; contact the editorial department for information regarding guest columns.

The Chronicle will not publish anonymous or form letters or letters that are promotional in nature. The Chronicle reserves the right to edit letters and guest columns for length, clarity and style and the right to withhold letters based on the discretion of the editorial page editor.

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E-mail: chronicleletters@duke.edu Editorial Page Department The Chronicle Box 90858, Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 684-2663 Fax: (919) 684-4696

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Inc. 1993

YESHWANTH KANDIMALLA, Editor LAUREN CARROLL, Managing Editor JULIAN SPECTOR, News Editor ANDREW BEATON, Sports Editor CHRIS DALL, Photography Editor MAGGIE LAFALCE, Editorial Page Editor KATHERINE ZHANG, Editorial Board Chair PARKER KUIVILA, Managing Editor for Online JIM POSEN, Director of Online Operations CHRISSY BECK, General Manager KRISTIE KIM, University Editor TIFFANY LIEU, Local & National Editor ANDREW LUO, Health & Science Editor CAROLINE RODRIGUEZ, News Photography Editor PHOEBE LONG, Design Editor MICHAELA DWYER, Recess Editor SOPHIA DURAND, Recess Photography Editor SCOTT BRIGGS, Editorial Page Managing Editor MATTHEW CHASE, Towerview Editor ADDISON CORRIHER, Towerview Photography Editor NICOLE KYLE, Social Media Editor SAMANTHA BROOKS, Senior Editor REBECCA DICKENSON, Advertising Director MARY WEAVER, Operations Manager DAVID RICE, Director of External Relations

at the buffet, but he did not taste a single bite. WrightSwadel’s fear is that, by the time they are seniors, Duke students have done everything but learned nothing more than how to successfully multitask. They are stuffed but unsatisfied— making them an easy target for the Big Four, which capitalizes more on student inertia than student passion.

Wright-Swadel shares another observation. Many students returning from study abroad or DukeEngage claim to have had a “life-changing” experience that has altered their worldview. But when pressed on how they plan to integrate that experience into their classes, organizations or post-graduate plans, they

go blank. Instead, they just jump back into the daily grind, their “life-changing” experience reduced to a neatly worded takeaway, perfect for regurgitating on personal statements.

This lack of reflection among students has become ingrained in campus culture. This attitude partly explains why leaves of absence are so rarely seen on campus. Many Duke students unfortunately believe that, to get the most from their Duke experience, they need to charge blindly forward— blood, sweat, tears and all.

Students rarely pause for an hour of reflection, let alone for a whole semester’s worth, which comes at the expense of their professional lives in the future.

Wright-Swadel says that when unreflective seniors barge into the Career Center in a job search panic, the most he can do is try to make it appear to employers that there was a shred of purposefulness to what these students did over the past four years. We encourage students to start the reflection as early as possible. Freshmen, approach that buffet wisely. Instead of hording everything on your plate and scarfing it down in one sitting, pick a few choice items and truly taste them.

Enjoy them, savor them, let them inform your tastes for the future. If you do not like what you ate, you can go back to the buffet and try something else. Your stomach will thank you.

Sophomore existential angst

onlinecomment

Est. 1905

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MARGOT TUCHLER, University Editor JACK MERCOLA, Local & National Editor DANIELLE MUOIO, Health & Science Editor ELYSIA SU, Sports Photography Editor ELIZA STRONG, Design Editor HOLLY HILLIARD, Recess Managing Editor CHELSEA PIERONI, Online Photo Editor ASHLEY MOONEY, Sports Managing Editor SONIA HAVELE, Towerview Editor MELISSA YEO, Towerview Creative Director NICOLE KYLE, Special Projects Editor MAGGIE SPINI, Senior Editor MICHAEL SHAMMAS, Recruitment Chair BARBARA STARBUCK, Creative Director MEGAN MCGINITY, Digital Sales Manager

The Chronicle is published by the Duke Student Publishing Company, Inc., a non-profit corporation independent of Duke University. The opinions expressed in this newspaper are not necessarily those of Duke University, its students, faculty, staff, administration or trustees. Unsigned editorials represent the majority view of the editorial board. Columns, letters and cartoons represent the views of the authors.

To reach the Editorial Office at 301 Flowers Building, call 684-2663 or fax 684-4696. To reach the Business Office at 103 West Union Building, call 684-3811. To reach the Advertising Office at 101 West Union Building call 684-3811 or fax 684-8295. Visit The Chronicle Online at http://www.dukechronicle.com. © 2012 The Chronicle, Box 90858, Durham, N.C. 27708. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior, written permission of the Business Office. Each individual is entitled to one free copy.

A

bout a year ago at this time I was going matively view a career as something that should be through a major soul searching process. Some pursued for making the world a better place rather might have even called it a sophomore mid- than money and prestige—and they often negativecollege crisis. At one point I actually ly ascribe such desire for money and sat down with my computer, opened prestige to Duke chasers. a word document, and, among many In hindsight, what precipitated other questions, attempted to anmy sophomore soul searching was swer: “What do I want out of life?” the fact that I was caught in the midst and “Why do I want those things?” of these two extremes. This was the and “What was I put on this earth to case externally—I was a member do?” I did this in the New York City of communities at Duke filled with apartment of my brother’s graduchasers and communities at Duke daniel strunk ated college friends, in the midst of a filled with anti-chasers. And it was defining pre-game they were throwing before also the case internally. Chasing by circumstances a night in the city. I did not indulge nature is analytical and ambitious, in the drinking at the time, but talk and I’d always considered myself to about an odd moment to be moved to career and be both. Anti-chasing by nature is ethically normalife introspection. tive, and I’d always strived to evaluate my life with reMany Duke students go through similar such gard to an ethical compass and higher purpose that soul-searching processes, maybe in other exotic lo- would, God-willing, make the world a better place. cales. From my experience, sophomore year is the Caught between these two extremes, I felt myself bemost common time period. You’ll soon be declar- ing tugged in both directions. ing your major or have already declared. Talk of A year later, I don’t regret engaging in that career paths starts getting more focused and feels New York City soul searching. Indeed, I think it more important. As a freshman you can always con- was a healthy thing to do and I would encourage sole yourself that you’re just in your first year—no all sophomores to do it. But if I’ve concluded that need to have things figured out yet at Duke or for soul-searching is healthy, I can certainly say a year your post-graduate future. Starting sophomore year later that both chasing and anti-chasing are pernithough, for the first time, this consolation begins to ciously unhealthy. I’d advocate running away from recede. And for many it begins to feel as though both. Chasing for chasing’s sake leads to a rat race; they should have answers to all the questions al- anti-chasing for anti-chasing’s sake leads to a selfready, or that at the very least their friends have righteous moral superiority complex. more answers than they do. I’d venture to say this is So if there are any Duke sophomores out there not the case—no need to have all the answers yet, reading this, gripped in existential angst, don’t feel and almost no sophomore does. But all this none- the need to conform to one of the two, despite theless leads to soul searching.

Duke culture maybe making you feel as though you Duke is full of students I like to call chasers. have to pick a side. Duke students are intelligent Chasers do exactly what their name implies—they and smart minded—we don’t have to fall victim to chase things. Leadership positions on campus. one of these camps. On this occasion (and probaAwards. Recognition. Many of them chase with a bly some others), ignore campus culture, and comlinear plan in mind: If I get X internship then that bine the redeeming aspects: Chase something, but will land me Y job which will let me do Z thing in for your own anti-chasing reasons. What is needed the future. The Duke chaser is sometimes stereo- is not chasing or anti-chasing, but rather purposetypically associated with the desire to attain wealth driven ambition. First, find out what you want to (think the stereotype of Duke investment-banking do, as opposed to what others are doing. Decide chasers). But that is not necessarily the case, though why based on your own moral values, as opposed to it certainly can be. someone else’s. Then go after it.

On the other hand, Duke also has plenty of antiWhen it comes down to it, life is too short to chasers. They decry credentialing and its influence chase for the sake of chasing or to apply someon Duke students. They’d likely be against taking one else’s moral calculus to your own life’s course. a major for the purpose of bolstering career pros- Choose the third path and do neither. Take it from pects. They think students should be answering the me, and save yourself (at least some) existential heartstring sort of questions like, “What is it that I angst. truly love doing?” They place a high value on having pure motivations—but oftentimes insist on Daniel Strunk is a Trinity junior. His column runs applying their definition of pure to others motiva- every other Thursday. You can follow Daniel on Twitter tions as opposed to just their own. They might nor- @danielfstrunk.

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commentaries

Five (to four) for fighitng

Interested in writing for the opinion pages? Want to contribute to campus dialogue?

F

ifty percent of the Republican students est point at which states can justify bans on I personally like at Duke expressed to certain types of abortions, at 24 weeks. Arime his belief that arguments made by zona’s pre-viability ban bases its justifications Democrats about the Supreme Court over- on fetal pain and supposedly provides for an turning Roe v. Wade constiemergency exception to save tute “fear mongering.” a mother’s life.

Since I usually exist in a The concerning part liberal bubble of one, talking about this case is that it’s to myself and my Twitter feed, based on disputed science it was enlightening to hear in order to justify otherwise from those who don’t think unconstitutional restrictions.

Gov. Romney would nomiContrary to Roe, it places an nate a justice who would join “undue burden” on women. samantha a majority in overturning It’ll be appealed regardless lachman Roe. In my opinion, this fear of the Appeals Court’s rulis a totally valid reason to vote what’s our age again? ing, and then we’ll have a for President Obama (if you case heading to the Supreme believe in a woman’s right to Court that cuts at the heart choose). But since it’s apparently not a uni- of Roe—how and in what way “science” versally agreed-upon likelihood, I wanted to can be used to chip away at what states can explore this further. and can’t legislate at an even earlier stage of His argument was three-fold: Romney pregnancy. wouldn’t nominate a justice who would overThe majority of the Supreme Court in turn Roe, such a nominee wouldn’t get past Gonzalez v. Carhart (Justices Roberts, Alito, a Senate held by Democrats and no cases Thomas, Kennedy and Scalia) wrote in their would make their way to the court that could decision (written by the swing Justice Kenprovide an opportunity for such a ruling. He nedy) that Congress could validly omit a argued that there’s a “1 percent chance” of health exception (from the partial birth ban all of the above happening. being discussed) even when “some part of Though I understand his rationale, I still the medical community” considers the profeel that this issue is an urgent one. It takes cedure necessary. To require the exception a number of logical jumps and contingen- whenever “medical uncertainty” exists would cies to rationalize. You may not consider it as be “too exacting a standard to impose on the immediate as your personal financial wellbe- legislative power ... to regulate the medical ing, or your access to affordable healthcare profession.” So basically, five of the justices or your beliefs about America’s current com- on the Supreme Court found it kosher to almitments abroad. But a woman’s constitu- low bans based on disputed science. Justice tionally protected right to choose is being Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her dissent, chipped away at in states across the country, “The Court’s hostility to the right Roe and and that’s reason enough to consider the le- Casey secured is not concealed.” gal implications.

So going back to that conversation I had: First, the most liberal justices on the court This is the chain of events that could take (Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen place that make the fears I hold pressing Breyer) are also among the oldest. Were one enough to propagate. If that makes me a of them to retire, a President Romney would “fear mongerer,” then call me Scary Spice— have the opportunity to appoint her/his suc- but when we’re evangelizing our views to cessor. other people, we inevitably use fear (as well Second, a President Romney would as hope) to get them to vote the way we do. feel pressure from elements in his party to Romney’s had about seven positions on nominate a Justice with conservative cred abortion so it’s difficult to pin down exactly and a commitment to certain principles. Of what he believes (it’s all a bit Me, Myself and course, not every justice can make it past the Irene). When running for governor of MasSenate—there’s a verb, “to bork,” for that— sachusetts he supported “a woman’s right to but it’s reasonable enough to imagine a situ- choose,” and yet during the Republican presation in which a President Romney nomi- idential primary he said he’d be “delighted” nated a justice who looked OK on paper and to sign a bill banning all abortions. Indeed, sounded fine in a Senate confirmation hear- on “Meet the Press” he said, “It would be my ing but ultimately sided with Scalia, Alito et preference that [the Supreme Court] real. in a reconsideration of Roe. verse Roe v. Wade.” But recently the Romney Third, there are such cases across the campaign is running ads saying he supports country that very well will end up before abortion in the cases of rape, incest and to the Supreme Court. For instance, a case in save the life of the mother. He’ll believe anyArizona will be heard next month by the thing you want him to believe, baby.

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals concerning the state’s 20-week abortion ban. Both Roe Samantha Lachman is a Trinity senior. Her v. Wade and another case, Planned Parent- column runs every other Thursday. You can follow hood v. Casey, stated that viability is the earli- her on Twitter @SamLachman.

lettertotheeditor Online only today!

“Christians: enemies of the earth?”

A letter to the editor by David Swanson Read at dukechronicle.com/opinion

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012 | 11

The Spring 2013 columnist application is now available. Send an email to mfl5@duke.edu for more information.

Who says you can’t go home

I

n trying to live up to my “live every ing to keep up with a TV show. All of these week like it’s o-week” pledge, I finally events that seemed so important and seriintroduced myself to my neighbor ous to me only existed in two dimensions: in my new dorm, Lindjom. Lindjom is the computer screen, or TV screen, and a Cameroonian man who appears to be the conversations between myself and somewhere in his 30s, but beyond that I others who didn’t actually know any of can’t tell you much. As soon as I asked him the individuals affected. what book he was reading, he skipped all Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to formalities of introduction and jumped discredit anyone who is interested in into explain why he loves to read. Reading, ternational relations. I, too, love to travel he explained, is a way of entering into and talk about what’s going on in the dialogue with another, much like having world. For me, I have looked to travel a conversation. By reading, Lindjom is to bridge that gap between the two-dimensional and the threeable to learn from the lives dimensional. Those places of others in order to lead from the TV screen finally a wiser and more fulfilling come to life and those life himself. “people” in the streets fiI couldn’t agree more. nally get a name.

I’m sad to say that as a colUltimately, though, the lege student I have failed most meaningful part of in any efforts to read for my travels has always been pleasure. After trying to philip doerr get through class readings the way in which it brings small world and maybe the newspaper, me to reflect on my own I usually lack the motivahome and my own life. tion to pick up a book on my own. At that When abroad, I have found that we are point, I usually choose to go play some often more willing to confront social FIFA, or just hang out. injustices, questionable traditions and “I’m really glad you introduced your- other local idiosyncrasies. Having little to self,” Lindjom told me. “It is through trav- no implication in the workings of these eling and forming relationships with oth- foreign places, we feel more at ease callers that we can understand the world and ing for change that won’t necessarily aftry to solve its problems. Those who don’t fect or incriminate us. It’s this quality of travel understand very little and are al- travel that makes it special; it makes us cuways close-minded. They can’t tell the dif- rious, observant and thoughtful. We take ference between a Sikh and a Muslim.” the time to seriously reflect on the setup To an extent, Lindjom and I are on of the community at hand and consider the same page. Ever since I was lucky ways in which it could be improved. enough to take a trip to South Africa in And so, though I do agree with Lindhigh school, I have done everything I can jom that traveling and seeing the world is to travel. Travel irreversibly changes your an incredible experience, I think what’s world, and with every trip I’ve learned a truly important about travel is the way in lot about the cultures, politics and life- which it inspires us. Maybe this is just a styles of other peoples. And I’ve learned a revelation inspired by occasional homelot about myself. sickness, but I don’t think that travel is Spring of freshman year I took a class the only way to open up to new worlds. called “Foreign Policy of the United There is an unavoidable newness of travStates” taught by Professor Peter Feaver. In eling that gives us energy and excitement, addition to the assigned course readings, and inspires curiosity. Ultimately though, we had to read internationally focused if we are able to recognize the newness articles of The New York Times every that surrounds us in the very neighborday, on which we were quizzed weekly. I hoods where we live, we should find ourlearned more that semester from reading selves with those same feelings. I don’t the newspaper than I did from any other think it’s an easy thing to do. There’s course readings. I delighted in suddenly definitely a part of us that wants to look being able to discuss current events with a the other way and ignore someone asking pretty decent understanding of what was for money on the side of the road on the going on. It was around that time that I way to school. But even though it’s hard, decided I wanted to be a diplomat and I’m reminded of the fact that so many of dedicate myself to international affairs. us young people travel with the hope of With time, however, my commitment “seeing and changing the world,” and I to the international sphere faded. Rush- can’t help but think of my dad’s old saying to read The New York Times everyday ing: Charity starts at home. so that I could keep up with the next story of a bombing overseas and then discuss Philip Doerr is a Trinity junior and is curits implications with other IR enthusiasts rently studying abroad in Paris, France. His gradually lost appeal. It felt like I was try- column runs every other Thursday.

12 |THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012

THE CHRONICLE

NASHER from page 1

In addition to broadening the scope of the museum’s collection, Nancy Nasher said she hopes the museum will be able to provide more educational opportunities in the future.

Rorschach also noted that she would like to see the museum provide more educational programs for the Duke community and its surroundings.

“We want students to enjoy the programs at the museum and the exhibits and to come and have hands-on learning, and do research relating to the actual art that the museum has,” Nancy Nasher said. “We also want to bring young people and children from the Durham community into the museum and begin to educate all the families in the region about how wonderful art is and the joy that it can bring.”

Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, said the gift fits into a broader initiative to increase funding for the arts as part of Duke Forward.

Duke is soliciting financial support for new curricula in the arts, performances, exhibits and endowments for undergraduate and graduate student scholarships, along with the ability to draw faculty who both study and practice in

will play a helpful role, said Kim Rorschach, Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans director of the Nasher Museum. The curatorship endowment will provide knowledge of areas in which permanent staff members do not have expertise, Rorschach noted.

Rorschach, who has led the Nasher since its founding, will leave this year to become director of the Seattle Art Museum.

“We’d like to have some expert territorial work done— say, on our African collection or pre-Columbian collection, for example, where we don’t have expertise on our staff,” she said. “The visiting curator... will work on collection exhibitions, research, help us steward the collections responsibly and give us expertise.”

The museum’s overall goal is to raise $15 million during the Duke Forward campaign, Rorschach said, expressing her gratitude to Nasher and Haemisegger for the “very significant and meaningful gift.”

emerging areas, Schoenfeld wrote in an email Wednesday.

The museum has gained national and international acclaim in the seven years since it opened, Rorschach noted.

Nancy Nasher said she is thrilled with everything that the museum has accomplished in the relatively short time since it began.

“Everyone involved there is committed to excellence and to the highest scholarship and quality, and I look forward to seeing its dynamic growth in all ways throughout the years,” she said.

Schoenfeld said Duke has established a commendable reputation as a center for the arts. He cited dance, the master of fine arts degree in experimental and documentary arts and Duke Performances as notable aspects of Duke’s arts landscape, adding that he expects the University’s arts reputation to continue to improve.

Nancy Nasher said she hopes Duke students will take advantage of the museum, whether it be through studying the art there or eating at the Nasher Cafe.

“We just want the students to use it and enjoy it,” she said.

“That’s our goal.”

FILMMAKER from page 3

Performance Schedule Oct 26

October 26 – November 4 Duke Players Lab: Metamorphoses

Art Exhibition Opening

Oct 27

FRI SAT

Art Exhibition

Ark Dances

Over 200 works by more than 100 students

Ballet, Modern, Hip Hop, Freestyle

Oct 28 Oct 29 Oct 30

WEDS

Celebrate the arts all week with duARTS Noon The Plaza

Oct 31 Nov 1

THURS

Classical Music Noon Bryan Center

Nov 2 Nov 3 Nov 4

SUN

University Percussion Ensemble

Classic folk, pop & rock 4:30pm The Plaza

Art Exhibition Over 200 works by more than 100 students Thru November 4 Bryan Center

Chamber Music Noon Perkins Library alcove

Music 5pm West Campus Bus Stop

Senior Sylphs, ballet

Momentum Dance Cultural Dance 6:30pm Great Hall

Joseph Mosugu Solo Dance 6:30pm Great Hall

Dance Troupe The Plaza 5pm

Duke Lasya

Art Exhibition

Cultural Dance 1:40pm Bryan Center

Over 200 works by more than 100 students Thru November 4 Bryan Center

duARTS

Betsy Boxberger

Bassoon Trio

Indu Ramesh

Celebrate the arts all week with duARTS Noon The Plaza

Solo Dance 12:20pm Bryan Center

Classical Music 1pm Perkins Library alcove

Solo violin 1:30pm Perkins Library alcove

Salon: an evening of poetry with The Archive

11am – 8:30pm Arts Venues on East & West Campus See full schedule on page 6

Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Def Mo (Defining Movement)

A cappella 6pm von der Heyden, Perkins Library

Dance 6:30pm Marketplace

Over 200 works by more than 100 students Thru November 4 Bryan Center

duARTS

Perichoresis

Opera Workshop

Hoof ‘n’ Horn

Performance Art 2:30pm Bryan Center

Vocal Music 4:40pm Bryan Center

Theater 6:30pm Great Hall

The Plaza

Alumni Panel followed by student performances 5:30-8:30pm The Nasher Museum

DEMAN Career Workshops

Duke Chamber Players

10:30am – 11:30am Perkins Library

Chamber Music Noon Bryan Center

See full schedule on page 6

Art Exhibition

Celebrate the arts all week with duARTS Noon The Plaza

Stop Motion Swing Dance DEMAN Panel & 5:20pm Crew Reception Dance 5pm The Plaza

dupe - Duke

Ophelia and the Quantum Yonders

Schubert’s Death and the Maiden

DEMAN Weekend Begins

SAT

Violin Duet 1pm Bryan Center

Chamber Music Noon Perkins Library alcove

6pm von der Heyden, Perkins Library

FRI

Jackie and Sam

Brahms Clarinet Quintet

duARTS

Rowena Gan, piano

2pm (See 10/26)

5pm Arts Annex

Over 200 works Celebrate the arts by more than 100 all week with students duARTS Thru November 4 Noon The Plaza Bryan Center

TUES

Duke Players Lab: Metamorphoses

Free Halloween pumpkins, food & treats

Thru November 4 Bryan Center

duARTS

2pm & 8pm (See 10/26)

Art Carve Pumpkin Party.

Get scary creative!

Over 200 works by more than 100 students

Celebrate the arts all week with duARTS Noon The Plaza

Duke Players Lab: Metamorphoses

7pm The Ark, dance studio

Thru November 4 Bryan Center

Art Exhibition duARTS

MON

8pm, Brody Theater, East Campus. Free.

Noon. Thru November 4 Bryan Center

Art Exhibition

SUN

By Mary Zimmerman

Over 200 works by more than 100 students

Art Exhibition Ends Over 200 works by more than 100 students Noon, Bryan Center

United in Praise

Anne Talkington

Gospel 5:40pm Bryan Center

Solo Dance 6:30pm MarketPlace

Art Exhibition Over 200 works by more than 100 students Thru November 4 Bryan Center

DEMAN & Duke Arts Festival Send-off Lunch Best In Show & Duke Magazine Photo Awards

11:45am-1:30pm Bryan Center

Art Exhibition Over 200 works by more than 100 students Thru November 4 Bryan Center

DEMAN Music Studio Session Small Town Records 1:30pm BDBEATS Studio Bryan Center basement

arts.duke.edu/festival

Schedule subject to change. Outdoor events are rain or shine.

recognition that allows her to continue making films in the face of government antagonism.

She said she was placed on a United States government watch list and continues to be harassed whenever she re-enters the United States, following the release of “My Country, My Country,” which explores the United States’ occupation in Iraq. The Department of Homeland Security has detained and interrogated her, and they have also confiscated her computer and camera.

“Is there anyone here from Homeland Security?” Poitras asked the audience, waving her arm. “Maybe they could answer that. They don’t tell you why they put you on the list.”

She added that she initially believed the government had made a mistake and would change its mind about targeting her journalistic work. But after six years without a change, she realized that she was naïve. She now lives part-time in Berlin, where she said she feels more free.

“Just because we call ourselves a democracy, doesn’t meant that it will stay that way,” said William Binney, a former National Security Agency employee, in a clip from the third installment of Poitras’ series.

Peter Lisignoli, a second-year graduate student in experimental and documentary arts, said that as an aspiring filmmaker, he appreciated the conversation with Poitras and the critical issues it raised.

“We were given the opportunity to learn more about the entire filmmaking process from the seed of an idea to the promotion and reception of a film as well as the entire arc of [the filmmaker’s] career,” said Kirston Johnson, an archivist with the archive of documentary arts, who was in charge of the event.

Johnson, one of the individuals responsible for selecting the filmmakers for the series, noted that Poitras is one of the most articulate filmmakers she has ever worked with.

“She not only conveys information to her audience, but emotional information, and she does that with the films and in her interactions with people one-on-one,” Johnson said.

The Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Visiting Filmmaker Series was founded in 2010 to feature artists whose work addresses significant contemporary topics of social, political economic and cultural urgency. The artists are invited to Duke for a two-day residency.

DSG from page 3 can offer their insight.

In addition, Nowicki noted the significance of the West Union Building renovations and the creation of a muchneeded student gathering space.

In other business Senior Amanda Peralta, chair of the Intellectual Climate Committee, emphasized the need to continue the discussion on the committee’s recent survey and report. The report, released in September, investigates the intellectual engagement present in undergraduate campus culture.

“We want to broaden the horizons of how we view success beyond GPA and careers,” Peralta said.

Six DSG representatives were elected to a committee that will select the Young Trustee Nominating Committee. Before being put to a Senate vote, the representatives specified their platform and qualifications for the upcoming Young Trustee elections.

The committee’s members include freshmen Kimberly Farmer, Jose Sandoval, Shane Neibart, Alex Semien and Rosie Williams and sophomore Yue Dai.

Recess

volume 14 issue 8 october 25, 2012

(RE)D

R O L Y TA

SWIFT We are never, ever, ever, gonna be that into Red

PAGE 4

SOPHIA DURAND/THE CHRONICLE

kendrick lamar

argo Affleck delivers.

PAGE 3 SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

woods, widowspeak

West Coast rapper releases concept album

Coffeehouse presents Halloween show

PAGE 8

CENTER SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

recess

PAGE 2

October 25, 2012

editor’sNOTE

I

like to think of the genres of art as different languages.

Each genre—dance, music, painting, poetry, architecture, etc. —has its own grammar, its own sensory dominion, its own expertise, method, rigor, citation. Often the thrust of a painting can be translated into poetry (e.g.

Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”); the stoicism of a novel translated into the timbre of opera (e.g. Philip Glass’s Waiting for the Barbarians). Some pieces of art are so language-specific that accurate translations are hopeless: imagine what Ulysses would look like as a painting, a photograph, a curated exhibit or an experimental film. There are new pidgin/hybrid arts that evolve every year, each with its own slang, and some of these dialects have grown to become major languages (e.g. graffiti, slam poetry, R&B) while others live to see their cultural importance shrink to near-obscurity (e.g. flipbooks, Polaroid photographs, royal portraiture). Someone who becomes fluent in a few different arts can more easily learn the next—which may partly explain the abundance of ‘poly-lingual’ artists—and there are good reasons to believe in a critical period for the acquisition of artistic communication.

There’s a famous quip that many music reviewers know: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

The source of the quote is mostly unknown, though its anonymity hasn’t stopped people from crediting it to figures

as various as Frank Zappa, Laurie Anderson, Elvis Costello and Thelonious Monk. Since I spend most of my time with The Chronicle writing music reviews and much of my free time writing poems inspired by and according to the method of jazz, that quote has brought upon me all five stages of grief. Music and poetry—though they both care about the aural and the oral, though they both employ crescendo, gesture, improvisation—are, no matter how hard one tries, very distant languages. Music and journalism are about as difficult to translate as two languages can be—think Chinese and Creole; it’s a task that’s almost as laughably hopeless as food writing. (I’d gladly dance about architecture before I’d pick up a food review.) Anyone who gets her feet wet writing music criticism quickly realizes that it’s best to avoid nuanced, temporal explanations of listening experience—that would require a few thousand words per minute. Instead a writer must give enough historical/cultural/ethical/aesthetic contexts to open up the music to certain concealed joys, to allow it to enter conversations with comparable artworks. As is true of poetry, the task of a music review does not require propositional or even grammatical statements. It can function by presenting a mood and a vocabulary with which to pry open music’s tasty mollusks. Of all of the writing I’ve published in The Chronicle, the sentences that I’m most proud of are the very sentences that arouse the ire of my editors, phrases that are anti-journalistic, phrases that turn like dimes. what our Halloween costumes would dress up as Because, to put it straight, Michaela Dwyer......................................................................................Franny Glass the mood of music is not the Holly Hilliard.................................................................................Patrick “Nothing” mood of words, especially not Katie Zaborsky.................................................................................................sexy cat the mood of written words, let Dan Fishman............................................................................................Taylor Swift alone their mode. The grammar of music is not a grammar Ted Phillips..............................................................................................Restful Beth that shies with disgust from the Sophia Durand.....................................................................................anything ever misplaced modifier, the douEmma Loewe..............................................................Kristen Stewart, pre-breakup ble comma, or the run-on; the grammar of music would make Andrew Karim.......................................................................................sexy seahorse Strunk and White may roll over

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in their graves. A journalism that values science more than art, a journalism that wants objectivity, contestability and methodology—and we need that kind of journalism, probably more than we need good journalism about art—isn’t one that marries with the experience of music.

Of course, most music reviews are written with the ear and eye of the standard journalist, and it’s hard to argue with those who write that way. It’s hard to ask anyone to become a good dancer of architecture, let alone a great one.

But there’s something about the challenge of finding and creating a vocabulary for music that I find endlessly inspiring. I know that writing music reviews has made my poetry better. I believe that music writing has improved my philosophy essays. There is something about wording the inarticulate—a process that all three of these languages share—that I’ve grown to find inescapable and grown to love.

In this issue of Recess you’ll find a handful of music reviews—two of them, for the first time in many weeks, judged albums as worthy of five stars—alongside a few film reviews.

If the quantity of readers of an article is to be judged by its Facebook likes—which, despite its flaws, is a passable measure—then I’d be surprised if the readership for the reviews is as large as that of our other articles. I’ve always had a greater response when I write features and editor’s notes. If The Chronicle were a newspaper that cached out the value of its writing and its writers using tallies of site-visits, then I’m sure I would already have been asked to publish fewer reviews in favor of wider coverage of local Durham artwork and Duke student work. And, in some ways, that would be a very good thing—not only for readership numbers. But I know that when I look back at what I’ve written, the music reviews are always the pieces I think of first. They’re the pieces I’ve been most challenged by, the pieces I re-read as failures or lucky successes, the pieces with phrases I can remember months later without much effort. I keep assigning music reviews because I want other students to have the opportunity to work on wording the inarticulate and to make the joy of music somehow more joyous by virtue of its translation.

—Dan Fishman

recess

October 25, 2012

argo

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

DIR. BEN AFFLECK GK FILMS

When I first walked in to see Argo, I had heard it was good, but I was excited to find out why. Would the backdrop of Hollywood and the Iranian Revolution keep me on the edge of my seat? Would the large shirt collars of 1980 transport me into the era? Would a shirtless Ben Affleck make me wish I, too, were in the movie?

The answer is yes. The political thriller was captivating.

In the film, the CIA is tasked with rescuing six Americans who escaped the attack on the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, when everyone else was taken hostage. The six found refuge in the home of the Canadian Ambassador, and the CIA needs to create cover identities through which to exfiltrate them. The “best bad idea” comes from Agent Tony Mendez (Affleck) who suggests they pose as a movie crew to get past Iranian guards. He heads to L.A. to promote the backstory and then to Iran to pull it all off.

Argo is swimming in dramatic tension: can everyone successfully coordinate to complete the complex mission?

With lives on the line, I found myself reaching into the popcorn bag for emotional support more often than I care to admit. My eyes were glued to the screen until the credits started rolling.

Fortunately, though, the movie doesn’t drown in drama.

John Goodman and Alan Arkin play Hollywood big shots that helped promote the fake sci-fi movie Argo as a cover story (in case you were curious about the film’s title). Their characters are important, but they also provide comic relief: Arkin brings the classic-but-raunchy humor of a bitter, smart aleck old man, and Goodman makes you laugh as he

PAGE 3

delivers some truly well-written, witty lines. And let’s not forget Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston as Jack O’Donnell, head of the CIA agents. Great actors, a great story and great writing form a baseline for the movie, so Argo really had nowhere to go but up, and that’s exactly where Affleck’s directing took it.

Keeping a close eye on history and the style of the period, everything from the clothes to the camera technique feels authentic and helped sell the story. Every moment feels necessary, furthering the plot or developing the characters. Well, every moment except two: the lingering shot on a random barking Iranian pitbull and Ben Affleck putting on his shirt, though the latter of the two shots may seem necessary depending on who you ask. Clearly the director thought it was. But even the fact that two minor shots should stand out so much speaks to how cohesive the rest of the movie feels.

Argo is a must-see. You don’t want to have to pirate it when it’s out of theaters and nominated for every Oscar under the sun.

—Jamie Kessler

v/h/s

DIR. MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN AND OTHERS BLOODY DISGUSTING

V/H/S is a showcase of horror shorts masquerading as a feature-length film. Five found-footage style shorts are crudely tied together by a less compelling found-footage frame story (think “found-ception”). The idea seems innovative, but with six different directors, six different writers and six different casts, all constrained by limited time and only first-person shots, it doesn’t manage to give the genre new life.

The basic premise for why we watch the shorts is that a group of ne’er do well twenty-somethings break into a house inhabited only by a dead old man sitting in front of a wall of fuzzed-out television screens. One of them claims a tape in the house will make them rich overnight. Unphased by the dead man, the friends split up to watch all of the tapes one by one, and so do we.

Not all the shorts are bad; in fact, the main burglary plotline is probably the worst in the bunch. They vary in

quality and gore, from the mediocre (“Tuesday the 17th,” in which a group of friends visits a cabin in the woods and is pursued by a serial killer) to the nail-biting (“The Sick Thing that Happened to Emily When She was Younger,” told through a Skype chat between Emily and her boyfriend).

One feature that all of the shorts (excluding “The Sick Thing”) share is unlikeable characters. “Amateur Night” features a threesome of bros, one of whom has to be talked down from sleeping with an unconscious girl they picked up at a bar. The only characters that we consistently see are the robbers, and from the opening scene they put a bad taste in our mouths. Before deciding to break into an old man’s house and destroy everything in sight with a baseball bat (and videotape it for no apparent reason), our leads were making fifty dollars a tape filming “reality porn,” in which they pull up the shirts of unsuspecting women in parking lots. The problem with the short-film formula is that there isn’t enough time to develop the characters or reveal redeeming qualities, so we don’t feel all that bad when some of the slimeballs get knocked off.

The whole movie feels like a sneaky excuse to get away with using every horror play in the book: an exorcism, a haunted house, teens at a lake and demons disguised as beautiful women, just to name a few. V/H/S does offer a few really great scares and avoids the predictability of normal feature-length horror films through the quick pace of the short-film structure. Unfortunately, the rapid-fire presentation means you lose the potential for a long-term buildup of suspense, especially when there is no thread that ties the shorts together other than a boring plot we don’t care about.

—Megan Rise

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

The Pratt School of Engineering

NAE Grand Challenge Scholars Seminar Series presents

Vivek Wadhwa Academic, Researcher, Writer and Entrepreneur

How Engineers Can Save the World: Why this will be the most innovative decade in history for solving the Engineering Grand Challenges Monday, October 29, 2012 at 7 PM Fitzpatrick Schiciano Auditorium, Side B The Duke Community is invited—faculty, undergraduates, graduate students and staff Vivek Wadhwa serves as Vice President of Academics and Innovation at Singularity University. At Stanford, Duke, and Emory Universities, Vivek lectures on entrepreneurship and public policy. He is a regular columnist for the Washington Post and Bloomberg Business Week. In this talk, Vivek will argue that this will be the most innovative decade in human history and the next decades will be even more so. A range of technologies are rapidly evolving and converging that will make it possible to solve some of the NAE Grand Challenges. Advances in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, computing, synthetic biology, medicine and nanomaterials are allowing small teams to do what was only once possible by governments and large corporations. Vivek will discuss the opportunities for you to help make this happen.

recess

PAGE 4

taylor swift RED BIG MACHINE RECORDS

“It feels like a perfect night to dress up like hipsters and make fun of our exes.” No, that’s not a quote overheard at Recess production, but rather the first line to Taylor Swift’s “22,” one of the more memorable songs on her fourth studio album, Red. While the song still incorporates obligatory ex-bashing, it doesn’t have much else in common with hits from previous albums. The most obvious difference is that it, like every other song on Red, cannot be considered country. In fact, every track is predominantly pop: some, like “I Knew You Were Trouble,” verge on something akin to a Bassnectar remix complete with quasi-dubstep beats, while others, like “State of Grace,” recall the stadium rock sound of U2. But where are the banjos and acoustic guitars, the southern charm? Listening to Red is like listening to a mellow Paramore or an angsty Ellie Goulding, not a practiced Nashville star.

It’s understandable that in her fourth album Swift might want to try something new. Back when she was 15, she only wrote about high school and boys (and more boys), and she kept up the trend throughout her next two records.

Speak Now got especially exciting because it was basically a celebrity burn book in album form, every other song about a Jonas brother, Taylor Lautner or John Mayer. While there’s no lack of love stories in Red, there’s a hollowness about it all, as though Swift has simply run out of ways to describe a break up. Dating a Kennedy apparently hasn’t revitalized her powers of narration: “Loving him was red.

Burning red.” This, from the title track, sounds just as boring on paper as it does in a melody.

Of the massive track list (Red features 16 songs), only “All Too Well” recalls the touching lyricism of earlier hits like “Dear John” or “White Horse.” Telling the story of a relationship long gone, it still manages to take up Swift’s typical tropes in an honest, personal way. “You call me up again just to break me like a promise,” she sings, and for once her voice sounds raw and unaltered, not like the computer-edited TSwift cyborg that drones “Reh-eh-eh-ed” in the chorus of the title track.

Red refreshingly features two guest artists, neither of whom is a country singer. Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody sings most of “The Last Time,” which echoes his song with

October 25, 2012

Martha Wainwright, “Set The Fire To The Third Bar,” by blending a steady, driving beat with haunting vocals. The second duet, “Everything Has Changed,” features singersongwriter Ed Sheeran, and it is in this song that we finally get to hear a simple acoustic guitar unmarred by electronic overtones. Both songs are smart additions to the album, serving to break up the painful monotony of the entire second half.

The problem with Red is that most of the songs lack that spark, that fire, that I’ve come to associate with Taylor Swift. Where’s the picture-burning, kissing-in-the-rain wedding crasher whom I’ve grown to know and love? My biggest frustration with the album is that Swift comes off as a jaded grown-up, not the hopeless romantic who chases her dreams or seeks vengeance on all the guys who did her wrong. More often than not, the lyrics are about sitting back and letting life happen: “I can’t decide if it’s a choice, getting swept away,” she croons in “Treacherous.”

Red is about being swept through life, going through the motions of adulthood, conforming to ideals of who we’re supposed to be. Swift has all but abandoned her country roots and her endearing naïveté, and even dressing up like a hipster won’t hide the fact that her album is disappointingly mainstream.

—Holly Hilliard

The Sanford School of Public Policy and the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy present the 2012 Crown Lecture in Ethics

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

main attrakionz BOSSALINIS & FOOLIYONES YOUNG ONE RECORDS

Music critics and taste-making blogs seem to come up with new terms every day for the rising genre du jour. Chillwave, vaporwave, trillwave were all invented even before artists started making the music itself. Cloud rap, however, preceded its label, gaining steady steam over the past year and a half. Heavily indebted to Southern hip-hop and trap, cloud rap is also distinguished by ethereal, dreamlike beats that often use wordless, dramatic vocal samples and abstract lyrics that are deliberately absurd. Its producers often rely on unconventional sample sources, incorporating elements from experimental, ambient, and even pop songs into their beats.

When done right, cloud rap is hip-hop at its freshest in years—Oakland duo Main Attrakionz’s fantastic mixtape 808 & Dark Grapes II was one of those visionary records. The spacey production of Clams Casino and Friendzone perfectly complemented the lazy weed-rap flow of MondreM.A.N. and Squadda B, the team behind Main Attrakionz. Bossalinis & Fooliyones is MA’s first full-length album, and although the lyrics are as pessimistic and aimless as ever, the production is mostly complacent and conventional. With a seventy minute run-time and seemingly endless track list, there are only five or six songs of note. MA still has much more to flesh out with their sound, and Bossalinis lacks the soul, bravery and aesthetic experimentation of Dark Grapes II. The album is pleasant and fun, but the ultra-shy synths and sing-songy G-funk choruses aren’t what Mondre and Squadda are about—this is, after all, the group that vibes to Glasser and J-pop group Perfume. They’re on that new school, modern sh*t, so it was a major letdown when new producers replaced Clams, Friendzone, ADHYE, and other Bay Area upstarts.

Despite the switch, the new sound still produces a handful of choice cuts. “LFK” is the duo at their most self-aware, and there’s a powerful urgency to their usually easygoing demeanor. Mondre jests that they’re “big time,” but then ruminates on paying off his loans, lost time and his neighborhood.

“Wings” comes completely out of left field and reveals that the duo can craft moving, vulnerable songs as well. Squadda aches with sincerity as he speaks about accepting life’s realities: “If I had wings I would fly and leave the sky / But I can’t so I roll SEE ATTRAKIONZ ON PAGE 8

Marian Wright Edelman Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund

Thursday, October 25, 2012 5:30 - 7:00 p.m.

Fleishman Commons Sanford Building Free and open to the public

Getting Everyone On Board: Our Obligation to Children in Poverty

October 25, 2012

titus andronicus LOCAL BUSINESS XL

Several key pieces of background information about this writer must be disclosed before the subsequent presentation of a review of Titus Andronicus’s third release, Local Business.

First and foremost, I am already a huge fan of Titus Andronicus. Their sophomore album, a loosely Civil War-inspired masterpiece titled The Monitor, was often my only friend during the dark period I associate with the latter half of high school.

The most tangible proof can be found on my AP U.S. History binder, into which I painstakingly carved (in all caps, of course), “As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Second, rather than track-by-track, I heard this album through NPR’s “First Listen” as a 50-minute block of music, which is certainly how it should be done. I personally prefer not to put Titus Andronicus on shuffle, just as I prefer not to listen to any song besides Neutral Milk Hotel’s “King of Carrot Flowers Parts 2 and 3” directly after hearing “King of Carrot Flowers Part 1.” As is the case with the previous albums, Local Business’s tracks bleed into each other, they

wintersun TIME I NUCLEAR BLAST

Eight f***ing years. That’s how long fans all over the world had to wait for a sophomore album from Finland’s Wintersun after their 2004 debut turned the heavy metal community upside down. But somehow, Wintersun’s Time I does not fall short of the impossibly high expectations it set for itself.

When the first album and subsequent tour were met with great critical acclaim, Wintersun’s main man Jari Mäenpää went to work on a follow-up album in 2006. The years between 2006 and its 2012 release were met with announcements of pushed-back release dates and cancelled live appearances, mixed in with teasing statements that the album would be completed soon.

Finally, in March of 2012, Mäenpää finally announced that the album was complete and would be released later in the year. However, they had recorded over eighty minutes of what he describes as “hard listening” and that listening to the entire album in one go was a chore even for him.

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belong to each other, with abrupt, brief pauses and musical interludes that necessitate the next song.

Local Business is not a strong dissent from the band’s prior discography. The same catchy, hummable guitar riffs are ever-present, and, although the band members have shuffled around a bit since their debut record in 2005, front man Patrick Stickles has been a durable constant.

The album begins with the hoarse, strained voice of Stickles disclosing to his audience, “Okay, I think by now we’ve already established that everything is inherently worthless / and there’s nothing in the universe with any kind of objective purpose.”

The album’s lyrics are almost always sardonic, but they’re also sincere and self-reflective. Paired with Stickles’s rough vocals, they take on a new tone of exasperation, like in “Ecce Homo”: “I guess you’re guilty of a terrible crime, and I know, it was my birth / Doing twenty-six to life now on planet Earth.”

You can take Titus Andronicus out of the Garden State but you can’t take the inevitable New Jersey references out of their songs. The first released single, “In a Big City,” contains a line of honest and pithy poetry: “Lifeless automaton feeling like a ghost / I don’t know much, but I know which side’s buttered on my toast / From Jersey I come, but I pump my own gas / I’m a dirty bum but I wipe my own ass.” And “Titus Andronicus vs.

For that reason, Wintersun decided to split the album into two forty-minute releases, Time I being the first.

The opening track on Time I, “When Time Fades Away,” serves as an intro with epic strings, preparing the listener for the journey ahead. The song then transitions seamlessly into the beginning of the thirteen-and-a-half minute epic “Sons of Winter and Stars” where the strings continue, soon accompanied by the familiar sounds of distorted guitars and double-bass drumming, building epic tension.

When Mäenpää’s vocals enter the mix, the album hits its stride. His vocal style is best described as a screamed whisper: he shrieks while still remaining aware of his pitch. Mäenpää easily moves from these death metal vocals to a more melodic style much like he mixes the harsh sounds of heavy metal guitars with the symphonic strings playing chords.

The album continues through “Land of Snow and Sorrow” as Mäenpää’s trademark style continues to show through with fast double-bass drumming and soaring Iron Maiden-esque guitar harmonies. Mäenpää’s vocals have improved tremendously. On their debut, he chanted monotonously. Now he sings acrobatically—jumping throughout his vocal range.

“Darkness and Frost” blends acoustic finger-picking gui-

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

The Absurd Universe (3rd Round KO)” contains the type of repetitive chant that I have come to expect and appreciate from the ensemble. Rather than “You will always be a loser,” Stickles hoarsely cries “I’m going insane!” repeatedly over heavy guitar and fast-paced drums.

Local Business is music that’s polished enough to fit in with the mainstream but harsh enough to count as punk.

It’s music that’s expected but still meets expectations. And if, like me, you’ve been hanging onto every word of the past few Titus Andronicus albums, Local Business lyrics may well manifest in your notebook’s margins.

—Lauren Feilich tar with spacey keyboards playing over the top. The speed and pitch both increase and are joined by bass drums when the song fades.

The culminating track, “Time,” is by far the climax of the album. It jumps straight from the epic buildup into a monstrous pedal toned riff to which it is impossible not to throw Tiger Woods fist pumps. The song jumps from riffs led by electric guitars and distorted vocals to sections highlighted by orchestral sounds and clean singing.

This track also highlights Mäenpää’s neo-classical metal style more than the rest of the album, incorporating string leads atop over-driven guitar chord progressions as well as a guitar solo that would make Yngwie Malmsteen proud.

The song then fades into an outro played on strings to conclude an amazing album.

While I wouldn’t recommend the album to a casual rock fan, anyone with the stomach for harsh metal vocals would be remiss not to listen to this album. It is a heavy metal masterpiece that will go down as one of the best releases of 2012.

—Ben Meiseles

NO TRICKS

only treats

It’s Simply Spooktacular!

Check the Chronicle for more information.

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October 25, 2012

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Kendrick Lamar GOOD KID, M.A.A.D CITY TOP DAWG, AFTERMATH, INTERSCOPE

On Overly Dedicated, Kendrick Lamar’s 2010 mixtape that caught the attention of his current mentor Dr. Dre, he admits, “The hardest thing for me to do/ is to get you, to know me, within sixteen bars.” With Section.80, his first independent album, Kendrick teased many possibilities of representation: a dutiful observer of his generation’s pitfalls, an empathetic poet reciting character studies, a Black Panther Party revivalist, etc. On good kid, m.A.A.d. city, he extends himself to inhabit an identity bigger than any one person—Compton. Structured as a concept album that uses the city as a physical and emotional roadmap to navigate Kendrick’s past, good kid answers the question of who Kendrick is with where he’s from, uniting the two in a fascinating, undaunted narrative.

The storyline of good kid, which spans a day in the life of a 10th-grade Kendrick in Compton, is deceptively simple. He borrows his mother’s van so he can meet up with a girl named Sherane, but abandons the van to ride around with his friends.

The tracks are punctuated with voicemails from Kendrick’s mother and conversations with his friends. The tactic allows Kendrick to rap about what he knows, to confuse the boundaries between life and art. As the day unfolds, so too does Kendrick’s complex history. On “Backstreet Freestyle,” Kendrick begins to improvise over a CD his friend Ali brings. Working with one of the fiercest beats I’ve heard to date, Kendrick raps, “I pray my dick get big as the Eiffel Tower/ So I can f**k the world for 72 hours.” The hook is unpolished—he’s channeling how he rapped at 16—and it makes Kendrick sound brash, confident and starry-eyed. As the track builds, Kendrick, who had been rapping as if hiding a cocky grin, starts to growl, sounding older and more cynical.

The next track, “The Art of Peer Pressure,” is equally menacing. Staged around a failed robbery and subsequent police chase, the hook reiterates different ways Kendrick conforms, such as, “Rush a n***a quick and then laugh about it/ that’s ironic ‘cause I’ve never been violent, until I’m with the homies.”

The struggle between living out the expectations of the city and Kendrick’s hunger for individual rebellion stays at the heart of the album and its title. Meaning both “My Angry Adolescence Divided” and “My Angel’s on Angel Dust,” the acronyms address the constant tension of morality in an environment bent on corruption. On “Good Kid,” a brooding Pharrell-backed track, Kendrick outlines the choices that await him in Compton: “But what am I supposed to do/ When the topic is red or blue/ And you understand that I ain’t/ But I know I’m accustomed to.” As the song progresses, his attempts to resist gang affiliations weaken, and the corresponding track, “m.A.A.d. city,” chronicles his descent into a subculture of violence. Intensified by Kendrick’s urgent delivery, Compton itself begins to emerge as towering force that uses K.Dot as its personal punching bag. It saddles him with dangerous vendettas (“You killed my cousin in ‘94, f**k yo truce”) and premature lessons (“And they wonder why I rarely smoke now/ Imagine if your first blunt had you foaming at the mouth”). In perhaps the most heartbreaking line on the entire LP, Kendrick christens himself “Compton’s human sacrifice.”

After a barrage of lyrical jabs and hooks, good kid offers a welcome break from a sobering reality. The track equivalent of a cold beer after a long day, “Swimming Pools (Drank)” picks up where Section.80’s “A.D.H.D.” left off, reporting on our generation’s desire to drown our dissatisfaction in drug culture. What differentiates Kendrick from other rappers, especially those who are as attuned to such issues, is his humility when it comes to remedying the issues he raps about. He doesn’t condemn or judge—he is simply the truth-teller. It’s precisely why “Swimming Pools” has become his greatest commercial success to date.

In addition to its slick, trance-like production and hypnotic hook, “Swimming Pools” presents a shared reality that, however depraved, exists.

Yet no track speaks more about Kendrick’s truth than “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” a 2-part, 12-minute saga that situates him alongside Nas and Tupac as one of hip-hop’s most gifted storytellers. After he adopts a triad of perspectives that explore the trappings of Compton—living in constant fear for his life, turning to prostitution and his own self-doubt—he needs to be cleansed.

Yet does Kendrick even want to be redeemed? The album is an endless war of him vs. his environment, but he can’t entirely discount its allure. On “Money Trees,” he sings, “Money trees is the perfect place for shade and that’s just how I feel.” He unapologetically acknowledges a lifestyle that he wants, with Jay Rock adding, “What else is a thug to do when you eating cheese from the government?” (Incidentally, my only complaint about the album is the absence of the other Black Hippy members Schoolboy Q and Ab-Soul, while Drake’s insipid ass somehow makes a cameo.)

That’s a lifestyle reiterated by a Young Jeezy line Kendrick and his friends quote in one of the album’s skits: “Last time I checked I was the man on these streets.” But the album does not end with a positive affirmation for hustling. Instead, the most conclusive lesson learned comes in “Real,” where Kendrick says, “You love your hood, you might even love it to death/ But what’s love got to do with it when you don’t love yourself?” After a 68-minute long journey, he is still full of questions, ones he obviously grapples with even now. What’s refreshing is that Kendrick doesn’t provide answers on how to live, he provides answers for how he lives. Good kid, m.A.A.d. city doesn’t set out to be anyone’s gospel, but by presenting such a vulnerable, honest story in the face of hip-hop’s ongoing swagger war, Kendrick may as well be rapping behind a pulpit.

—Katie Zaborsky SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

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CLOUD ATLAS DIR. TIM TYKWER, LANA WACHOWSKI, ANDY WACHOWSKI CLOUD ATLAS PRODUCTIONS

This past summer, I saw a trailer for Cloud Atlas. Some of you might remember its five-minute runtime and absurdly over-the-top presentation of a complex premise (“Fear. Belief. Love. Death. Life. Birth. Future. Present. Past. Love.

Hope. Courage. Everything is Connected.”). Few casts are more prestigious—Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugh Grant to name a few actors, with the Wachowskis (The Matrix trilogy) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) writing and directing— so I was appropriately excited for the film. So excited, in fact, that I ran down to the Kindle store and bought myself a copy of the book.

Unfortunately, Cloud Atlas suffers the fate of nearly every book-to-movie adaptation, especially those that attempt to condense a long and thematically dense novel into one feature film. Unlike a handful of stories that come to mind (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Orchid Thief/Adaptation), the book is always better than the movie.

The conversion from book to film does a few things to a story: dictates what everything looks like, fixes the pace and inevitably cuts out portions of the plot. The Wachowskis and Tykwer did even more, abandoning novelist David Mitchell’s elegantly unfolding “Russian-doll” plot structure for a simultaneous mish-mash of all six plots. Despite having read the book, the constant change of time and place is a lot to keep track of, especially while following the grand-scale progress of each actor’s ‘meta-character’ (each main actor plays characters in multiple eras in an attempt to connect the different stories—more on that later). The directorial trio traded the original structure for frenetic, almost schizophrenic, swaps between epochs and locales. While they may have gained a certain momentum (I was bored only once or twice in 172 minutes), they lost the nuanced connectivity found in the original novel.

By presenting in the novel the first half of each story in turn, Mitchell allows readers to weave their own thematic threads across the ages, resolving and enriching these connections as each story concludes in reverse chronological order. The directors decided to dictate these trajectories to the audience through casting. Tom Hanks has a role in all six storylines; these characters are meant to be linked into a ‘meta-character.’ Taking such grand liberties creates confusion and dissonance when the filmmakers’ suppositions do not match the reader’s. Also problematic are the constant switches between which meta-characters take the lead; Hanks and Berry head two storylines, Jim Sturgess and Doona Bae take two more and Jim Broadbent and Ben Whishaw each have their own main role. The revolving door of protagonists ruins much of the intertwined structure that is central to the novel’s success.

The repetitive use of the same core ensemble, while potentially powerful, is taken to the point of absurdity. Berry, for example, is easily spotted in four of the storylines (five if you really pay attention). But wait! That wrinkly, cackling, Asian plastic surgeon of the future we see for fifteen seconds? A truly unrecognizable Halle Berry. All of the actors have these gimmicky, impossible-to-spot roles, revealed to many “oohs” and “aahs” during the credits reel. I can think of no legitimate explanation as to why the filmmakers decided to shroud their stars in masks and makeup for such tiny roles as “Korean musician” or “Prescient #3.”

The use of makeup in Cloud Atlas has garnered some controversy, especially within the Asian-American actor community. The filmmakers were reportedly race-blind in their casting, and a story set in Korea dictated that most of the actors wear “yellowface” (the term is misleading—Keith David’s dark complexion was left unchanged). Doona Bae made the reverse change, donning a fake nose, colored contacts and faux freckles to make herself appear Caucasian (and in another instance a vindictive Hispanic pet owner). None of the race-changing makeup is convincing. Hugo Weaving (oh, yeah, he’s in it too) is still Hugo Weaving, albeit a slightly creepy, Na’vi-esque version of himself. The liberal use of gender-bending is similarly unnecessary. While a few of the meta-character arcs necessitate it (namely Weaving’s), other instances of gender-swapping accomplish nothing but a few cheap laughs. In all, it seems unnecessary to mask the potential of such a brilliant cast with layers of rubber and pigment.

As I mentioned above, Cloud Atlas follows in the footsteps of nearly every other book-to-film adaptation. While it is hard to extract the film from its associations with the novel, I imagine I would have really liked it had I not read the book. It’s easy to discern the Wachowskis’ influence in the construction of New Seoul, with obvious parallels to The Matrix trilogy, namely the oppressive, dark cityscape and the constantly deadpan acting. And, like in The Matrix, it works.

The Wachowskis know how to craft great sci-fi settings; their New Seoul is far richer and more expansive than my own imagined version. Furthermore, the writers/directors allowed a bit of lightness into their three-hour brainbuster, adding a nice dash of humor now and then, and I, for one, was thankful for the laughs. While Hanks’s Irish accent could use a little work and the post-futuristic speech patterns are too much for Berry, portraying profoundly different characters is undeniably impressive.

Mitchell has said many times that he originally saw Cloud Atlas as unfilmable. I’m inclined to agree. Sure, the Wachowski/Tykwer team made a valiant effort and created something of worth, but when considered alongside the novel, the adaptation of Cloud Atlas is a lukewarm substitute.

—Ted Phillips

Cloud Atlas

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

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Coffeehouse to feature Woods, Widowspeak

by Kathy Zhou THE CHRONICLE

If you’re looking for something to do this Halloween, look no further: Duke Coffeehouse is bringing in Woods and Widowspeak for a hauntingly good show.

Brooklyn-based Woods infuses the band’s characteristic nostalgia of dreamy sunshine pop and folky reflection with the occasional distorted soundscapes or romping rhythms. Frontman Jeremy Earl’s eerily pure falsetto shares somber lyrics coated in sweeter tunes, tambourine and harmonica solos.

All of Woods’ records have been released on Earl’s label, Woodsist. Hugely prolific, the band released their latest record, Bend Beyond, just over a month ago. This particular album was meant to, as best as possible, capture the band’s live sound.

Said band member Jarvis Taveniere, “We wanted to capture more of that liquid motion that happens when we’re on stage.”

The resulting record showcases a more polished effect than in previous albums, while still upholding Woods’ reputation as today’s genre-crossing embodiment of 1960’s jam-bands.

Woods’ Australian tour starts in mid-January. Until then, Widowspeak will be joining Woods for their remaining American performances.

Fronted by singer/songwriter Molly Hamilton, Widowspeak was conceptualized in Tacoma, Washington before kicking off in Brooklyn. After a set at the 2011 CMJ Music Marathon in New York, Widowspeak has become more established and recognized. Their songs comprise of Hamilton’s crooning timbre and two rippling guitar lines that intertwine old rockabilly with the new, creating a hazy but versatile allure.

Widowspeak, like Woods, emanates mobility, creating for audiences a sound that is made up of experimental and foreboding vibes, all set in a Western backdrop.

The two bands are sure to put on a Halloween show with good atmosphere, steady head-bopping or foot-tapping and some stellar dancing. Not to mention baristas— and maybe even performers!—will be in costume, plus the potential spontaneous post-show dance party that is no stranger to the Coffeehouse.

In addition to Woods + Widowspeak, the Coffeehouse has three more shows scheduled throughout the final week of October.

“We reach out to bands with a good fit to our aesthetic,” said Coffeehouse Promotions Director Clare Fisher. Fisher said the aesthetic changes “with the spirit of the Coffeehouse.”

The upcoming acts include Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s and their “melody-driven pop with teeth,” performing October 26 with Gentlemen Caller. Jeffrey Lewis & the Junkyard, an anti-folk outfit from Brooklyn, will be playing for their third time at the Coffeehouse, performing October 28 with Dolfish and Cottontail. And on October 30, Hop Along, a gritty rock group from Philadelphia with an album released just last May, will perform with Celebrity Jeopardy.

Fisher explained that the music scene is shifting and that Durham has become a token stop for musicians. Through past relationships, increased word-of-mouth and outreach, the Coffeehouse is booking a greater number of shows, retaining its prominence as a music venue in Durham. The hope is for more and more Duke students to attend shows.

As Fisher put it, “A show is a show, and it’s gonna be fun.”

Doors for Woods and Widowspeak open at 8 p.m. and the show starts at 9 p.m. Tickets are $5 or free for Duke students. For the full roster of upcoming shows, visit dukecoffeehouse.org.

ATTRAKIONZ from page 4 and get high.” Both “Bury Me a Millionaire” and “La Piñata” are bangers with strong replay value. Yet the last two songs, “Zoney Nights” and “Cloud Body,” steal the show, primarily because they return to Main Attrakionz’ bread and butter: absurdist lyrics over airy marshmallow sounds. Squadda contends on the last track, “cloud rap, it’s that s**t you can trust.”

It’s the idea of going back to one’s roots to solidify an identity.

As the hardest working weed-heads in the game, there’s no doubt Main Attrakionz will find a way to bridge where they come from and where they want to go.

—Suvam Neupane

The Sanford School of Public Policy presents a Terry Sanford Distinguished Lecture

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. Former GOP Candidate for President

America 2012: Challenges and Opportunities at Home Tuesday, October 30 5:30 - 7:00 p.m.

Fleishman Commons Sanford Building Free and open to the public

October 25, 2012

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

ARTS FESTIVAL from News page 1 Lindroth said, noting a particular increase in photography, painting and sculpture submissions.

A unique aspect of the Duke Arts Festival is the Duke Alumni guest list. Among the festival’s more well-known guests include Bryan Unkeless, Trinity ’04, co-producer of The Hunger Games, and Chip Shearin, bass player for The Sugarhill Gang who studied music as an undergraduate at Duke. The alumni will participate in panel discussions and workshops aimed to encourage and further educate students interested in artsrelated careers; these visits are organized by the Duke Alumni Association, also responsible for connecting current students and interested alumni. Will Evans, Graduate School ’12 and a representative for the Duke Alumni Association, used to work in the entertainment business and stresses the importance of DEMAN weekend, a section of the festival geared toward presenting different arts professions.

“Careers in the arts take a lot of different forms and DEMAN shows the different types of careers and jobs that you can get in coming from Duke,” Evans said. “DEMAN is a pretty unique event; not a lot of universities have this opportunity, so I hope students take advantage of it.”

Preparation for the festival and invitations for alumni require ample amounts of time. From booking dates to reserving facilities, Lindroth explained that preparation for each upcoming Duke Festival starts around springtime. Each year, after the festival, sponsors evaluate its success.

“We reassess what worked and what could be improved,” Lindroth said.

The additions to the festival this year include new panels to hang visual art and a Duke Magazine-sponsored photography contest, with the selected winners published in the magazine.

The Duke Arts Festival, which runs October 26-November 4, will present pieces across campus from the Bryan Center to the von der Heyden Pavilion, bringing the arts community to the forefront of Duke culture.