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
MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2010
ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH YEAR, Issue 28
www.dukechronicle.com
board of trustees
Average joe
Board urges frugality, OKs Med building by Lindsey Rupp THE CHRONICLE
versities to publish annual safety reports by Oct. 1, reporting crimes committed on campus and public property adjacent to it. As mandated by the Higher Education Opportunity Act, DUPD also released information regarding Duke’s fire safety procedures and statistics. In 2009, 13 forcible sex offenses were reported—eight more than in 2008 or 2007, when five were reported.
Budget cuts and campus expansion were on the agenda at the first Board of Trustees meeting of the academic year this weekend. The Board heard an update on Duke’s investments and plans for growth, a year after a $1.7 billion drop in the endowment forced the University to make wide-ranging cuts. The endowment returned 13.2 percent in fiscal year 2010, which ended June 30, and was worth $4.8 billion at year’s end. Duke still needs to close a Richard Brodhead $40 million budget deficit. “We are still working to get [the endowment] back to the place that it was and that’s going to take a couple more years, and in the meantime we need to make sure our spending is tight,” said Trustees Chair and Democratic state Sen. Dan Blue, Law ’73. President Richard Brodhead said the University is on track to eliminate its $40 million deficit in the next two years by
See clery on page 8
See bot on page 8
chelsea pieroni and ted knudsen/The Chronicle
Students tie-dye T-shirts and pop punk band Cute is What We Aim For performs on Main West Quadrangle during Joe College Day Saturday.
Clery Report reflects increased crime by Joanna Lichter THE CHRONICLE
The Duke University Police Department released updated crime statistics in its annual Clery Security Report, which shows an increase in a number of reported crimes for the 2009 calendar year. The report, released Sept. 30, shows increases in reports of forcible sex offenses, robberies and aggravated assaults. There was also an upswing in liquor law and drug law violations re-
ferred for disciplinary action. University officials attributed the rise in reported crimes to new reporting policies and greater student awareness. “The bottom line is I don’t think the numbers in any way indicate an increase in crime,” Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek said. “I do think that students feel a higher level of responsibility to report those aspects of the community that they feel are having a negative impact.” The federal Clery Act requires all uni-
Dawkins urges students to consider evolution a fact by Alejandro Bolívar THE CHRONICLE
Controversial evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins spoke at Duke to promote his new book, “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution,” and discuss his ideas on the subject Sunday. Dawkins went chapter by chapter explaining the book to a sold-out Page Auditorium and an additional crowd watching from Griffith Film Theater via a live feed. He started his speech by saying that it is time for people to stop calling evolution a theory and instead refer to it as a fact. The word “theory,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as a hypothesis and a speculation, does not reflect the evidence currently available, he explained. “The fact of our own existence is the most unbelievable fact you’ll ever be asked to believe,” Dawkins said. Dawkins was invited to Duke by Todd Stiefel, Trinity ’97. Stiefel, a trustee at the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, told the audience that the foundation’s goals are to support science and reason through education and evidence and to combat religion-based discrimination and religious fundamentalism. Dawkins said one of the challenges science and reason face today comes from the 40 percent of the U.S. popula-
Graduate students sound off on their basketball campout, Page 4
tion that does not accept evolution and instead believes that Earth is less than 10,000 years old. He said creationists pose a threat because they home-school their children, control school boards, have members in Congress and even have presidential candidates. Depriving children of the truth of how they came to be is comparable to child abuse, he added. Even though humans are not eyewitnesses in the evolution process, he said there is still a large amount of evidence supporting it. To explain, Dawkins used the metaphor of detectives arriving at the scene of a crime after the crime had been committed, where clues such as fingerprints and footprints correspond to DNA and fossils. “We can go through the laws of physics and say it’s no accident we see stars in our sky,” Dawkins said. Though many opponents of evolution insist that fossils disprove the fact, Dawkins said humans are fortunate to have fossils in the first place, and added that no anachronistic fossil has ever been found. Additionally, he said the geographic distribution of animals fits precisely with projections by people studying evolution. “Why would all those marsupials have migrated en See dawkins on page 8
DukeEngage to expand in size and programs, Page 3
Larsa al-omaishi/the Chronicle
Author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins spoke in Page Auditorium Sunday on the evidence for evolution.
ONTHERECORD
“I think we’ve been a lot more successful at getting attention to [the project] than actually raising money for it.” —Fifth-year BME grad student Jonathan Kuniholm. See story page 3