November 21, 2019

The Chronicle

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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

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019 DUKECHRONICLE.COM

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 27

MEET THE CLASS OF 2023

By Selena Qian, Bre Bradham, Daria Patterson-Smith, Isabella Wang and Michael Model

For the third year, The Chronicle has fielded a survey from the first year class about their beliefs, choices, backgrounds and plans for their time at Duke.

More than 190 first-year students completely filled out the survey, giving

a response rate of more than 10%. They answered more than 30 questions, ranging from what type of phone they use to their family’s income.

Below are some key points from the survey data. On page 2 is more information of the

methodology and the limitations of the survey, and page 3 includes a graphic breakdown of the class.

You can find more articles online about the survey, and additional stories will be released throughout the next several days.

EARLY DECISION VS. REGULAR DECISION

TRINITY VS. PRATT

FAMILY INCOME

Selena Qian | Graphics Editor

Positivity in the face of hate

Duke hopes to rid old ‘Demons’

How to fix The Chronicle

Duke Law students hold inclusive counter event as the Westboro Baptist Church protested.

PAGE 4

After last week’s embarrassing loss to Syracuse, Duke hopes to bounce back against Wake Forest.

PAGE 12

What if The Chronicle was more like the Daily Mail, columnist Sami Kirkpatrick wonders.

PAGE 14

INSIDE — Data insights that you’ll love, or your money back | Serving the University since 1905 |

@dukechronicle @dukebasketball |

@thedukechronicle | © 2019 The Chronicle

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2 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019

The Chronicle

CLASS OF 2023

Digging into the data: Limitations, methodology

By Bre Bradham Special Projects Editor

Above: Where the Class of 2023 calls home in the United States, according to the official admissions profile. The darker the color, the more people hail from that state.

Below: Where respondents to The Chronicle’s survey call home in the United States

This week, The Chronicle will release survey data about the Class of 2023.

For the third consecutive year, we have fielded a survey from the first-year class about their lifestyles, demographics, plans for their time at Duke and more. The results of this survey will be released throughout the coming week in a series of stories and will give a deeper look at Duke’s newest undergraduate students.

The questions ranged from students’ religious beliefs to their interest in tenting, approximate family income and whether they intend to rush Greek life.

The survey was administered from Sept. 28, 2019 to Oct. 23, 2019, and first-years submitted 193 complete responses, with 293 total students starting a response. The survey was distributed in the Class of 2023 official Facebook group.

In total, more than 10% of the first-year class finished the survey, and some random prizes were awarded to participants.

Professor of Statistical Science Jerry Reiter has previously told The Chronicle about the limitations of the survey. He detailed that the reasons some students may opt out of completing the questionnaire—such as a lack of enthusiasm about Duke or not having access to the survey—could skew the results.

Since the survey has more than 30 questions and some students may not have time to complete them all, that situation would not be as likely to dramatically change the results.

The survey included mostly identical

Above: The Class of 2023’s race and ethnicities (left is the official data, right are the survey responses) Below: The Class of 2023’s schools (left is the official data, right are the survey responses)

See LIMITATIONS on Page 5

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He was named a MacArthur “Genius” grant winner for 2019.

nasher.duke.edu/voices LEFT TO RIGHT: Photo of Jeffrey Gibson by Andrew Kist. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Jeffrey Gibson, I PUT A SPELL ON YOU (detail), 2015.

Repurposed punching bag, glass beads, artificial sinew, and steel. Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Museum purchase, 2015.11.1 © Jeffrey Gibson. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

Admission is always free for Duke students.

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019 | 3

CLASS OF 2023

Breaking down the first-year class: The results

By Selena Qian

Getting into Duke

Graphics Editor

What are the Class of 2023’s academic preferences? We asked them about which school they’re in at Duke, the type of high school they came from, whether Duke was their first choice and if they applied Early Decision.

Beliefs and Choices From religion and politics to what type of cell phone they use, we asked the newest Blue Devils to tell us about their beliefs and choices.

Plans at Duke How do they plan to spend their time at Duke? We asked the firstyears to tell us about whether they want to tent this year, rush Greek Life or a Selective Living Group and what they plan to major in.

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The wearisome fix of adding weatherwoman and weatherperson to weatherman only results in an ever-increasing collection of unwieldy gender-specific words.

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4 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019

The Chronicle

Notes of love to counter Westboro Baptist Church’s hateful protest

By Jake Satisky Editor-in-Chief

The scenes were polar opposites on a cold, rainy day at Duke.

At an intersection just past the edge of campus, three members of the Westboro Baptist Church stood in the rain, waving hateful and apocalyptic signs at cars and passersby.

Meanwhile, at Duke Law School’s Star Commons, scores of law students stopped by a table throughout the afternoon, writing letters of encouragement to those who needed them.

The aromas of Café De Novo mingled with the chatter of students busy writing notes on colored paper.

To provide a counter to the WBC protest, law students decided that instead of counterprotesting, they would promote inclusion and positivity. Hosted by OutLaw, the Law School’s LBGTQ+ affinity group, the event raised money for the LGBTQ Center of Durham as well as Legal Aid of North

Carolina. At the event, students were presented with a list of people from the website More Love Letters to write hopeful and encouraging messages for, and their letters were sent to those strangers through the website.

“It was really nice. We got a lot of letters for each person who we had on the list. Some of them are so beautiful—kids sat down, students sat down and took so much time crafting really beautiful notes,” said President of OutLaw Bobby DeNault, a second-year law student.

Deemed “arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the WBC came to Durham Monday to protest First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams calling their speech “outrageous, meanspirited, harmful” at a Law School event in late October.

WBC members sought to protest directly at Duke, but the University prohibits outside groups from protesting on campus, so they picketed on the corner of Towerview Road

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and Erwin Road instead.

After a student noticed that the WBC planned on coming to Duke, DeNault noted that everyone was shocked and angered. Leaders of around 10 law student organizations met to discuss whether they wanted to plan any action in response.

DeNault said that the group decided it wasn’t worth giving them more attention or fuel for their hatred by confronting them in person.

The idea for the alternative response came from Nicole Ligon, Law School ‘16 and lecturing fellow at the Law School.

Ligon, also a supervising attorney of the First Amendment Clinic, moderated the event where Abrams condemned the WBC’s speech. She noted that she had protested the WBC when she was in college, which strengthened her convictions against hate.

“Part of why we have the First Amendment is that even though offensive speech is allowed, we get to see where the sentiment of society lies when people respond to that speech,” Ligon said. “There’s such an overwhelming outcry of support for these organizations—for Legal Aid, for the LGBTQ+ Center of Durham. There’s so much positivity toward those organizations that it shows the sentiment doesn’t rest with the WBC. It lies elsewhere.”

DeNault’s favorite part of the event was seeing students appearing in solidarity and then connecting with someone from More Love Letters whose story resonated with them.

“Just watching complete strangers spend time writing notes of love to people going through tough times on a really personal level was just a really nice way to spend the afternoon and made us forget that we weren’t there to do this randomly,” he said.

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Ashwin Kulshrestha | Contributing Photographer Students protested Duke’s connections with Palantir in front of the Allen Building on Tuesday.

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Three suspects arrested in Gilbert-Addoms burglary

By Nathan Luzum Managing Editor

Three individuals suspected of a theft in Gilbert-Addoms residence hall were arrested Wednesday afternoon, according to a news release.

The suspects were jailed after a tip to the Duke University Police Department led to their arrest near Lilly Library at 3:45 p.m.

Wednesday. They were each charged with two counts of larceny and two counts of seconddegree burglary. The fourth suspect has not yet been caught.

On Monday night, four individuals entered Gilbert-Addoms on East Campus and stole electronics and personal items from two dorm rooms. They gained access to the hall because a student had unlocked the door at one of the dorm’s entrances, but the suspects were caught on video as they left the building.

Less than 48 hours later, Ibn Wilbur Ross, Gilbert Dejesus and Jermalley James were arrested for the crime. Ross is from

Poughkeepsie, N.Y., while Dejesus and James hail from Durham.

“We talk about safety being a shared responsibility, and we are glad for the cooperation of so many in this effort,” Vice President for Administration Kyle Cavanaugh said in the news release. “We are grateful for the tireless work of our officers and investigators to help make this campus safe.”

First-year Jared Andrade told The Chronicle Tuesday that his laptop, AirPods, Beats headphones and Apple Watch were stolen from his room Monday night. However, his roommate’s items were not.

DUPD Assistant Chief James Bjurstrom cautioned students to beware of such crimes in a Tuesday email to The Chronicle.

“Property theft is the most common crime on campus. We tend to see such incidents increase as we approach the holidays,” Bjurstrom wrote. “We encourage all students to lock their dorm rooms and vehicles when away, even for short periods of time.”

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019 | 5

LIMITATIONS FROM PAGE 2 questions from the two previous years, and the data analysis and graphical representation for the soon-to-be-released articles was done by Graphics Editor Selena Qian, Digital Strategy Director Michael Model, Staff Graphic Designer Isabella Wang and Staff Data Analyst Daria Patterson-Smith.

Below, we compare our survey data with the official Class of 2023 profile from Office of Undergraduate Admissions to show areas where the survey responses may differ from the overall class.

Race and ethnicity

The survey responses overrepresent the number of Asian students, underrepresenting students who are Black/African-American, Native American and White. Meanwhile, students who are Hispanic—12% in the whole class, 11% in the survey—are underrepresented, and those who identified as another category—5% in the whole class, 6% in the survey—were slightly overrepresented.

7

Academics

The Chronicle’s survey data overrepresents the number of students from public high schools, but is very close to correctly aligning Percent of Chronicle survey with the number of students who attended respondents who indicated they private schools.

41

Percent of Chronicle survey respondents who indicated they applied early to Duke

Courtesy of Student Affairs Electronics were stolen from Gilbert-Addoms dorm, shown above, this past Monday.

in Pratt—25% of our respondents are in engineering, while 75% are not.

Whereas 41% of our respondents applied early to Duke, 49% of the actual Class of 2023 did. This indicates that The Chronicle’s data overrepresents the number of regular decision applicants compared to the actual class data.

80% of the first-year class is in Trinity and 20% is in Pratt, but our data slightly overrepresents the number of students

live outside the United States

Geographic and socioeconomic diversity

A 2016 analysis by The New York Times included data about the University’s socioeconomic diversity based on tax records. Comparing to the Times’ data, the survey showed that The Chronicle’s data overrepresents the percentage of students from the bottom 20% of family income brackets.

However, there are differences in the metrics used to report the data between The Chronicle’s and the Times’ analysis.

The survey data also underrepresents the number of international students. Although 11.5% of the Class of 2023 is composed of international students, 7% of survey respondents said they live outside the United States.

In addition, The Chronicle’s survey lacked respondents from several Midwest and Northeast states.

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019 | 7

VOLUME 115, ISSUE 27 | NOVEMBER 21, 2019

great scott!

Lindroth to step down as vice provost for the arts in May 2020, page 9

so long, sarah Nasher director Sarah Schroth is retiring, page 9

one giant leap for film Panel to discuss “Space on the Silver Screen,” page 8

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8 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019

recess

What are you retiring from?

Nina Wilder ............................recess

Kerry Rork .......... stanning agatha

Will Atkinson .............. high hopes

Sydny Long ............................. sad

Miranda Gershoni ............. twitter

Jack Rubenstein ............greek life

Sarah Derris .........pitching stories

Selena Qian .................... graphics

Alizeh Sheikh ....................... sleep

Eva Hong .............. wine & cheese

On the cover: “Hot Rhythm” by Archibald J. Motley. Now on display at the Nasher.

staff note Ever since the dawn of my movie-watching days, I have been singularly obsessed with animation. My fascination transcended fondness for the princesses in Disney films or the squishy CGI characters of early Dreamworks entries: I was fixated on the animation itself, the creation of elaborate setpieces and fluid movement from drawings alone. I grew up watching Pixar movies exclusively with the director’s commentary turned on, marveling at the innovation and invention that went into making something as commonplace as a ponytail or a garbage bag look realistic.

Dissatisfied with what I could learn from special features and Internet searches alone, I started collecting “The Art of...” books — special volumes of concept illustrations and technical explanations

for a particular animated film. I soaked up every word and image, from the miniature construction diagrams used for the stop-motion environments in “Paranorman” to the piles of preliminary sketches of the characters in “The Peanuts Movie” that were eventually mapped onto threedimensional models. Before I could blink, I had devoured every bit of trivia available about every animated film and, in the twilight of adolescence, was searching for something more substantive than fantastic foxes and neighbors named Totoro.

That was when I discovered Don Hertzfeldt.

Don Hertzfeldt does not operate out of a studio. He does not use cutting-edge computergenerated images or even the evolved technology available for two-dimensional animation. Most of the characters in his pieces are stick figures, set against blank-white backgrounds. In spite of his work’s almost sterile simplicity, it is some of the

most striking and gorgeous animation ever drawn, spanning the generic range from darkly hilarious ruminations on capitalism to heartbreaking dives into the generational trauma of mental illness. And nearly every single aspect of the entire production is done by Hertzfeldt himself.

Trying to cover the breadth and influence of Hertzfeldt’s work in any amount of words is an impossible task, but his filmography deserves even a cursory examination. After beginning with minutes-long short films — including the Oscar-winning “Rejected,” which quickly became a staple of early-Internet surrealist culture — he started creating longer-format pieces that would eventually culminate in his undisputed magnum opus, “It’s Such a Beautiful Day.” Though not quite feature-length, the movie — composed of three 20-minute short films — is a stirring examination of mental illness and what it means to be sick in our modern world on an individual, generational and eventually cosmic scale. The protagonist is a stick figure, like all of Hertzfeldt’s other characters, but he is imbued with such depth and presence by both Hertzfeldt’s droll narration and the minute yet expressive tweaks made to his simple face that he becomes more than just a flat sketch: He becomes human.

When I found “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” I was rattled. I had always enjoyed animation on a technical level — and even come to love some animated films more than their live-action counterparts — but I never thought that just an hour of stick figures could be so breathtakingly profound. Instead of lush graphics and crystalclear sound, “It’s Such a Beautiful Day” is interspersed with sporadic splashes of color photography and crackles with homemade foleys, designed (again) by Hertzfeldt to most accurately reflect the soundscape of daily life.

Through this attention to sensory detail and

The Chronicle a script packed full of lines in turns hilarious and haunting, Hertzfeldt creates an experience totally divorced from reality yet entrenched in the drudgery of the human condition. Where other animated films tried to achieve verisimilitude by using contemporary CGI technology or rotoscoping human actors, “It’s Such a Beautiful Day” finds that affecting verity by removing all the crenellation and distraction of life, reducing it and the people in it down to the few broad strokes that define them.

Animation has always served as a flexible medium through which human stories can be told through any object or entity imaginable, yet it is Hertzfeldt’s grounded work that fully demonstrates the power of animation to go where cameras and computers cannot. His dialogue would seem cheap coming from the mouths of actors, his metaphorical notions of what it feels like to die impossible to visually conceptualize with even the most stunning CGI technology. When Bill dissociates and his neck begins to elongate, eventually sending his head into space to explore distant planets, it is easy to see the meaning behind the imagery with nothing obscuring its starkness.

A simple, floating head on a squiggly line says what no film frame ever could.

As much as I love the structural intricacies of stop-motion and the cell shading that goes into two-dimensional animation, the pinnacle of animation as an art form will always begin and end with Don Hertzfeldt to me. His devotion to creating every single feature by hand and mining incredible depth from the most mundane, miserable parts of life makes his work uniquely necessary. Hertzfeldt shows us that art does not have to be conventionally beautiful or cuttingedge or complex: sometimes, all you need is a stick figure.

—Sydny Long

local arts

‘Space on the Silver Screen’ panel explores outer space in movies

By Stephen Atkinson Staff Writer

In 1902, a rocket landed in the moon’s eye, and audiences were in awe. Pirated versions of George Méliès’ silent black-and-white film “A Trip to the Moon” screened in theaters across the United States to rows of captivated eyes. That year gave birth to a new genre of film — one that would later spawn multi-million dollar budget deals, elaborate theme parks and zeitgeist-defining, imagination-widening stories.

That year, the “space movie” began.

The genre has since rocketed to new heights in Hollywood. Since the space race of the ‘50s and ‘60s, when spaceships and moon-landings became reality, studios started churning out space movies, and they never stopped. Just this year, the tradition has persisted in blockbusters “Star Wars,” “Ad Astra” and “Avengers: Endgame.”

As far as the eye can see, the space movie is here to stay.

So what makes a good space movie, then, in a world of so many? While there are certainly several factors, Duke professor and Science Communication program director Jory Weintraub wants us to think about about the science, or lack thereof, behind our favorite films.

For a few years now he’s hosted a biannual event, “Science in the Movies,” that brings together science and film experts in a panel that dissects the science in various movie clips.

In the past, the event has covered cinematic depictions of dinosaurs, mental illness and natural disasters. This Thursday, Nov. 21, at 7 p.m. in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, a panel of three will tackle, for the second time, one of Weintraub’s favorite topics: “Space on the Silver Screen.”

“I just love this topic so much,” Weintraub said. “And especially since this is the year of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, I thought, ‘Okay.

It’s been long enough — let’s do this one again.’”

The panel will include Tony Rice, a NASA ambassador and WRAL contributor, Dr. Rachel Smith, head of the Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Lab at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and Dr. Marsha Gordon, professor of film studies at NC State University and co-host of “Movies on the Radio” on WUNC’s “The State of Things.” Weintraub will moderate, presenting clips from space movies through the decades — beginning, of course, with the one that started it all: “A Trip to the Moon.”

A film doesn’t have to be totally scientifically sound to have critical value. Take “A Trip to the Moon,” for example; it was made long before space exploration became a possibility, and it features anthropomorphized planets and insectoid lunar animals. Instead, Gordon appreciates its fantastical take on space travel.

“What I like about [‘A Trip to the Moon’] in the context of thinking about space movies is just sharing with a contemporary audience what a filmmaker dreamed up over 100 years ago as the way you’d imagine getting from earth to the moon and back again,” Gordon wrote in an email. “It’s really quite delightful.”

Another movie that the event panel will discuss is Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In addition to its dramatic aesthetic power, Dr. Gordon finds the film prescient in its imagination of artificial intelligence. “‘2001’ raised questions about, for example, what might happen if computers could think and feel,” Gordon wrote. “It also raised the specter of AI taking control in a nefarious way that is a rather serious issue that we will all be confronted with in the relatively near future.”

While many directors would openly admit to taking creative liberties in their depictions of science, a recent bevy of space-themed blockbusters have prided themselves on their scientific accuracy. In the making of “Interstellar,”

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons George Méliès’ silent black-and-white film “A Trip to the Moon” birthed “space movies” in 1902.

Christopher Nolan enlisted astrophysicist Kip Thorne, and conversations about the wormholefilled movie’s scientific authenticity abounded in popular culture. Nolan even followed up the film’s release with a book written by Kip Thorne, “The Science of ‘Interstellar.’”

The general consensus in the scientific community is that “Interstellar” really does take inspiration from sound theoretical astrophysics — although it certainly takes some creative license, as all movies branded as “fiction” necessarily do. But not all films that

claim scientific accuracy are so well-researched Weintraub wants to use these examples — good and bad — as a way of teaching the public what is true about space and space exploration.

“I definitely am an unabashed science geek so I’m not ashamed to say that,” Weintraub said. “But I think a lot of people you almost have to sneak [science] in in the form of entertainment.

Like the universe we live in, the audience of “Space on the Silver Screen” knows no boundaries — it is for science geeks, film freaks and laypeople alike.

The Chronicle

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campus arts

Vice Provost for the Arts Scott Lindroth is stepping down in May

By Tessa Delgo Staff Writer

Dr. Scott Lindroth will remain a composer, but for his role as vice provost for the arts, this year is a swan song. Lindroth, who took on the position in 2007, will retire next May to return full-time to teaching and composing.

In Lindroth’s 13-year tenure, the arts at Duke have grown exponentially. Lindroth first arrived at Duke in 1990 as a professor in the music composition program. Upon arrival, he encountered an up-and-coming Duke with under-resourced but close-knit arts departments, stashed away in East Campus buildings Bivins and Biddle — which were, at the time, inadequately equipped to accommodate artists.

“Because we were all in the same boat, there was a sense of collaboration across the arts … to band together,” Lindroth said. “I think it built a nice infrastructure, despite the marginalization.”

However, as Duke’s status as a prominent academic institution was on the rise, the role that the arts could play in distinguishing the university entered the conversation. Around the turn of the millennium, then-president Nannerl Keohane pushed for the opening of the Nasher Museum, insisting, according to Lindroth, that in order for Duke to be a great university, it needed a great arts institution.

Lindroth remembers that Keohane’s push for the Nasher initially met resistance, but the museum found immediate success upon opening in October 2005. This led to the Arts Initiative, a strategic plan for positioning the arts institutionally — including the addition of a vice provost for the arts.

“All these things were geared to try to find

a larger campus culture for the arts. It’s slowgoing, you know — there’s so much going on at Duke,” Lindroth said. “To get something to rise above that basic noise threshold on campus is a challenge, but at least we were part of that noise now.”

In the new role, Lindroth focused on making space for the arts — literally and figuratively.

Student-led initiatives supported by Lindroth created the Student Arts Annex, DuArts, the Duke Arts Festival and DEMAN. From 2011 to 2013, Lindroth played an instrumental role in the renovation of the Baldwin Auditorium, which had last been renovated in the 1960s. Alongside Aaron Greenwald, former director of Duke Performances, Lindroth developed a multi-visit model for visiting artists to develop sustained relationships with Duke, such as a three-year collaboration with the American Ballet Theatre.

“What surprised me was that we were able to get artist residencies in public policy, in chemistry, in neuroscience,” Lindroth said. “To see that there was interest in artist residencies all across campus … that helps begin to shape an argument for why a research university that isn’t an arts school should invest in the arts.”

The rising impact of the Arts Initiative culminated in an opportunity to build the Rubenstein Arts Center, which opened in 2018.

“The spirit of the entire building is … [a space] where students from all areas of the university can come develop arts projects, make them, but also share them,” Lindroth said. “We create this flow of projects that we can dream up in our respective places on campus, but then we go to the Ruby to pull them together.”

The existence of an all-encompassing arts space fostered genuine collaboration across

Tessa Delgo | Contributing Photographer Lindroth is stepping down as vice provost for the arts to return to teaching and composing.

arts departments, according to Lindroth’s student Brooks Frederickson, a Ph.D candidate in music composition.

“It’s a space that isn’t owned by a particular department; people from all departments can feel comfortable,” Frederickson said. “Working to make this space for departments to interact is a huge thing that [Lindroth] has done, and that’ll outlive his tenure.”

The search for Lindroth’s successor began Nov. 15. The search committee is chaired by Tom Rankin, professor of the practice of art and documentary studies and current director of the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts.

“Being able to bridge [arts] spaces on campus helped create a moment — it set the table for the next phase,” Rankin said. “The next vice provost for the arts has a really wonderful place to start based on what Scott’s done in the past 13 years.”

According to Rankin, the search committee is seeking an “advocate and champion” for the arts at Duke, in Durham and in the world, with a broad perspective beyond their own artistic practice.

“It needs to be somebody who has big aspirations, because you’re not going to get very far thinking the status quo is good enough,” Rankin said.

Lindroth’s successor will be responsible for developing a new strategic direction for the arts, in light of the impact made under Lindroth’s leadership.

“It feels presumptuous to say that we have a vibrant arts community at Duke — I actually believe that, but there’s still a long way to go,” Lindroth said. “But that more and more people that I meet at Blue Devil Days are thinking about [the arts] is gratifying. That’s more of a long, slow burn that will continue to play out, I hope.”

Nasher director Sarah Schroth will retire in May, leaving behind a legacy

By Jonathan Pertile Staff Writer

Sarah Schroth would like you to know that museums don’t run themselves. It takes a lot of effort to get those paintings on the walls of the Nasher Museum of Art — 37 people, actually.

And with her coming retirement in May 2020, the Nasher will have to replace one of the most important people in its history.

Schroth, who is currently the director of the Nasher Museum of Art, first came to Duke in 1995, when the arts were virtually nonexistent on campus. With a doctorate in hand, she joined Duke as a curator specializing in 17th-century Spanish artwork. Crowded into the small Duke University Museum of Art on East Campus that didn’t even have a loading dock, Schroth was limited in her opportunities for the museum.

Although she didn’t know it at the time, she would go on to lead Duke through an arts renaissance unparalleled to anywhere else in the country, creating her own breakthroughs along the way.

“It was a miracle,” Schroth says of the Nasher’s inception. A confluence of circumstances made the museum a resounding success once its construction was finished in 2005: an immigrant architect ready to prove himself, a willingness to fund on the part of Duke and the Nasher family and and a world-renowned exhibition that put the Nasher on the map.

That exhibition? “El Greco to Velasquez,” a display of art from 17th-century Spain. The overlap between the topic and Schroth’s specialty is no coincidence — she had envisioned the exhibit long before the Nasher finally allowed her dreams to come to fruition. And come to fruition they did, gaining recognition in prestigious national publications such as Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

Courtesy of Duke University Sarah Schroth, currently the director of the Nasher Museum of Art, will be retiring in May 2020.

In 2013, Schroth was elevated to her position as the Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum of Art. As museum director, she would continue to find success readily, with seemingly everything she touched turning to gold. Among these achievements are the successful launch of a museum theory concentration in the art history department, the creation of pipelines that draw local teenagers into the museum and even a program for Alzheimer’s patients.

Although she left her curator post, Schroth continued to have great influence in the Nasher’s exhibitions — perhaps most notably, the wellreceived “Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now” exhibit that opened earlier this semester. Now, perched atop an overflowing bookshelf in her office is a painted gourd. A gift from the director of the Museum of the Southeast American Indian at UNCPembroke, it comes as thanks for her work on the Nasher’s most recent triumph.

Other objects scattered throughout her office provide reflection on her eventful career. Joining the gourd on the bookshelf is a vast collection of art history books, many in Spanish (she’s fluent).

On the walls hang prints of Spanish artwork, while the table is covered in layouts for a future edition of the Nasher’s magazine. Clearly, Schroth is keeping herself busy until her retirement comes. One of her biggest goals in particular is museum fundraising.

“I want to make as much money as possible,” Schroth said. “I want to fill the coffers for the next director.”

When that next director comes, they will have big shoes to fill. The job of appointing the future head of the Nasher falls to a 12-person committee that will search internationally to find a suitable replacement for the seemingly irreplaceable Schroth.

Schroth has some ideas on what the committee should look for in her replacement.

Perhaps the most important quality she hopes the committee keeps an eye out for is vision.

“I think that’s why I was chosen,” she said.

“I wanted to start a concentration in museum theory and practice for undergraduates. I wanted to start a program for teens so that the teens of Durham would step their foot in here and also learn about what a pleasure it is to be a museum goer, but also all the jobs that are available at museums. I wanted to start a [sculpture park].”

Regardless of the next museum director’s ambitions, plans and visions, they certainly have a challenge ahead of them to live up to the standard established by Schroth. Still, Schroth already has ideas for her time post-Nasher.

Specifically, she has dreams of direct carving, or making sculptures out of wood — quite a fitting retirement plan for somebody so entrenched in the arts.

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THE BLUE ZONE

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MEN’S BASKETBALL

Blue Devils set for spotlight in 2K Empire Classic

By Derek Saul Sports Editor

There’s no place quite like Manhattan as the holiday season approaches. Luckily for Duke, the Blue Devils will return to New York after a two-week stint in Durham.

Duke’s last trip to New York was quite successful—the then-No. 4 Blue Devils took down then-No. 3 Kansas 68-66 at Madison Square Garden Nov. 5 thanks to the guard tandem of Tre Jones and Cassius Stanley.

This time around at Madison Square Garden, No. 1 Duke will take part in the Cal 2K Empire Classic, vs. opening play against No. 1 California Thursday Duke at 9 p.m., playing either Georgetown or Thursday, 9 p.m.

Madison Square Garden No. 22 Texas Friday evening depending on the outcome No. 22 of Thursday’s Tex/GU vs. tournament contests.

Though the stakes No. 1 may not be quite as Duke high for the Blue Friday, 5 or 7 p.m.

Devils as they were Madison Square Garden for their top-five matchup against the Jayhawks, staying

motivated is not a concern when playing at Madison Square Garden.

“I’m not gonna shortchange our arena, Cameron [Indoor Stadium], but [Madison Square Garden] is the one I love to play in after Cameron,” Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said after the Kansas game about Madison Square Garden. “The balls bounce different, the noise. There’s just something about this place. I’ve now coached over 50 games in here, I’ve coached a hell of a lot more in Cameron. Eventually when I stop coaching, I’ll look back at the times here as very special times in New York.”

Krzyzewski was not the only one to beam about Madison Square Garden’s mystique. In his first-ever game in a Blue Devil uniform, Stanley seemed to only improve as the lights got brighter, scoring 11 of his 13 points against the Jayhawks in the second half.

Stanley will certainly welcome the added attention that a venue like Madison Square Garden brings. After all, the Los Angeles native is used to having celebrities like Kendall Jenner cheering him on. “[Madison Square Garden] was rocking.

It was amazing,” Stanley said following the Kansas game. “That’s what you look for.

I was at the free throw [line] and I looked and just realized…sold out. The amount of people that have sold out [Madison Square

Rebecca Schneid | Associate Photography Editor

Cassius Stanley will look to follow up his solid season-opening effort in New York this week.

Garden], that’s amazing.”

While Stanley is coming off his worst game of his young career, shooting just 2-for-12 from the field against Georgia State last Friday, his partner in crime against the Jayhawks is looking to stay in the flames.

Jones scored a career-best 31 points against the Panthers, firmly looking like someone

who can shoulder the scoring load for the Blue Devils (4-0).

Even though Jones’ offense was the story against Georgia State, his swarming defense may be the key against the Golden Bears (40). Jones and the rest of the Duke defense are See SPOTLIGHT on Page 13

FOOTBALL

Slumping Duke out for revenge against Wake Forest

By Evan Kolin Assistant Blue Zone Editor

It’s been almost a year to the day since Wake Forest spoiled Daniel Jones’ final home game, embarrassing Duke 59-7 at Wallace Wade Stadium.

The Blue Devils Duke are set to take on the Demon Deacons once again, this time Wake at BB&T Field in Winston-Salem, N.C., SATURDAY, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

BB&T Field Except now Duke is Winston-Salem, N.C. coming off perhaps its most humiliating home loss of the year rather than preparing for it, having gifted Syracuse its first Power Five win on the season in blowout fashion.

For head coach David Cutcliffe, the defeat offers him and his team an opportunity to test their inner willpower. “[Former Duke cornerback] Ross Cockrell said it best, way back when,” Cutcliffe said.

“He said, ‘We have two choices—we can run to it, or we can run from it. And the best

Eric Wei | Sports Photography Editor

David Cutcliffe needs to get his team to rebound if he wants to head to another bowl game. choice is always and only to run to it, and that’s what Duke football should be.”

There’s a lot on the line Saturday, with the Blue Devils (4-6, 2-4 in the ACC) heading into a rivalry game needing to win their final two games of the year to secure bowl eligibility. But Cutcliffe—as he’s emphasized

so often over the past couple of weeks—isn’t worried about all the potential implications of a win or a loss.

He’s focused on how he and his team can respond following perhaps the toughest loss during his tenure here in Durham.

“When you face those [tough losses],

there’s your moment,” Cutcliffe said. “Those are your chances to have a defining moment.

You’re not going to be defeated by them, and you’re not going to let yourself be defined by a loss, but you are inwardly going to know who you are.

“Your darkest moments—I’m not talking about team, I’m talking about individual—I learned that early in life: there lies your best.

It’s in there, all you have to do is seek it. It’s in there—that’s where effort lives, that’s where every bit of this lives. And it’s not a cliché. It’s real.”

While the Blue Devils’ mental response after last Saturday’s debacle will certainly be essential as they finish off the season, there are still some on-field problems Duke needs to clean up. For one, the team’s defense has been dreadful against the run.

The Blue Devils have allowed an average of 259.7 rushing yards on 6.0 yards per carry over their last three matchups, despite their three opponents averaging just 157.8 yards per game and 4.1 yards per rush on the year.

For a defensive unit that was supposed to See REVENGE on Page 13

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019 | 11

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Five things: Duke to return to familiar MSG

By Shane Smith Blue Zone Editor

Many people around college basketball casually refer to Madison Square Garden as a second home for Duke, but heading into the third week of the season, the Blue Devils may need to actually find a permanent locker room in “The World’s Most Famous Arena.”

Just two weeks after opening its season in New York for a Champions Classic clash with Kansas, Duke will head back to play its second and third games of the season at Madison Square Garden, this time as part the 2K Empire Classic. The Blue Devils will face off against California Thursday night, then play the winner of No. 22 Texas and Georgetown Friday, assuming Duke beats the Golden Bears (if the Blue Devils lose Thursday, they will play the loser of the Longhorns-Hoyas matchup). Duke’s last appearance in the event came in 2015, when it knocked off VCU and Georgetown to win the event.

The tournament will be this year’s Blue Devils’ first appearances as the No. 1 team in the country, as Duke rose from No. 4 in the preseason over the first two weeks of the season. Here are five things to watch for when the Blue Devils return to Madison Square Garden later this week.

Tre on lockdown duty Last season, Blue Devil point guard Tre

Jones feasted on some of the best guards in college basketball, completely shutting down star guards like Shamorie Ponds, Coby White and Chris Lykes. The sophomore will face more great competition this week and could use the opportunity to kick off his Defensive Player of the Year campaign.

Starting with the Golden Bears, sophomore guard Matt Bradley has exploded in his second season, similar to Duke’s Grayson Allen in 2015. Bradley is currently averaging 21.3 points per contest, up from 10.8 last season, and is knocking down three 3-pointers per game on 52.9 percent shooting from deep.

Regardless of Duke’s opponent in the second game, Jones will again have his hands full. Longhorn guard Matt Coleman III is a heady guard who can score from all three levels. The Norfolk, Va., native leads Texas in scoring and assists and could have an answer for Jones thanks to his experience. If it’s Georgetown for the Friday game, Jones could matchup with Mac McClung, who may not have the same statistics as the other guards, but would be one of the most athletic guards Jones has faced in college.

A familiar face Duke fans may recognize Hoya big man Omer Yurtseven during the Empire Classic as the Turkish center that started his career at North Carolina State before transferring to Georgetown. Yurtseven sat out the 2018-19

season due to transfer rules.

The 7-foot, 264-pounder averages a double-double with 17.0 points and 12.5 rebounds per game, but Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski should have an answer if the two teams square off. Kansas center Udoka Azubuike lived a nightmare in the season opener against the Blue Devils, facing double-teams every time he caught the ball in the post, scoring just eight points in 30 minutes. Yurtseven posted an impressive 16 points and nine rebounds in his last game against Duke, so a similar double-teaming gameplan may be in order.

Shaka-ing it up Texas head coach Shaka Smart has a talented group that is back in the AP Top 25 after winning the NIT championship last season. Smart’s teams are known for forcing a lot of turnovers with a havocbased defense, something they haven’t accomplished this year. The Longhorns are forcing less than 17 turnovers per game, good for just 87th in the country. They have the athletic guards to do it in Coleman and Andrew Jones, yet in Texas’ biggest win of the year against Purdue, the Longhorns lost the turnover battle.

There is no better option for the Blue Devils than to put the ball in Jones’ hands and let him operate, but if Texas truly creates chaos like in previous years, then Jones and other perimeter options will have more leeway to score instead

OVERTIME

Mary Helen Wood | Photography Editor

Tre Jones will have a chance to show off his elite on-ball defense in the 2K Empire Classic. of force-feeding center Vernon Carey Jr. Bearing towards the 3-point arc If there’s any reason to see an upset Thursday, it will be because of the Golden Bears’ ability to launch it from deep. California ranks No. 3 nationally in 3-point shooting efficiency at 47.1 percent as a team. Five of the Golden Bears’ eight rotation players are See FIVE THINGS on Page 13

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FOOTBALL

Scouting the opponent: Duke hopes to rid of old ‘Demons’

By Cam Polo Associate Sports Editor

After last Saturday’s embarrassing loss to Syracuse, the Blue Devils will now face a primetime game where both teams are fighting to not get shellacked again: Wake Forest for the second week in a row, and for Duke, the third.

As the Blue Devil faithful know, the contest against the Orange was anything but what it was expected to be. Duke was demolished by the Orange 49-6, its largest margin of defeat on the year—even larger than against then-No. 1 Alabama in the season opener. The Blue Devils must show fight if they wish to seize their thin chance at a postseason berth.

Both Duke and Wake Forest have reason to come out with a bit of an edge. Here are a few things to look for when the Blue Devils travel to Winston-Salem, N.C., Saturday evening: Can Duke get rid of last year’s Demons?

Last year, Wake Forest marched onto Brooks Field in Durham and pounded the Blue Devils into the dirt, winning 59-7.

There isn’t any escaping that.

The Demon Deacons put up 21 points in the first quarter in that 2018 matchup and never looked back, hitting the Duke defense in the mouth repeatedly and mimicking those actions on the other side of the ball as well. The Blue Devils will have to get out of the shadow of that 59-7 loss to have a fighting chance to

keep their season alive. “[An] embarrassment,” Duke defensive end Chris Rumph II called the 2018 loss. “They came on our field and put 50-something on us. We’ve had this marked on our schedule since last year.”

Though this is an entirely new Duke squad, the returning players will have to escape the psychological turmoil that has the potential to occur if the Blue Devils fall behind early.

Can the Blue Devils contain the run?

The Orange ran all over Duke last week.

Two rushers passed 100 yards and four of Syracuse’s seven scores were punched in on the ground. Against a rushing attack that was not feared whatsoever going into the game, the Blue Devils faltered. They will need to turn things around quickly in order to stop running back Cade Carney and the Wake Forest ground game.

The Demon Deacons average 162.3 yards rushing yards per game, a strong number for a team that also has a respectable passing attack. Wake Forest has relied on a committee this season, with four running backs getting consistent touches.

Between Carney, Kenneth Walker, Christian Beal-Smith in addition to designed runs by quarterback Jamie Newman, the Duke defense will surely have its hands full.

Especially since the last time these two teams met, Carney ran for 223 yards and two scores

himself.

“It isn’t going to be easy,” Rumph noted. “Wake is a good team, but we are ready for them.”

Will Duke get the running game going?

On the other side of the ball, the Demon Deacons have given up slightly more yards on the ground than they’ve gained this year— something that can be exploited if Duke can reverse course from last week.

However, the Blue Devils ran for just 122 yards on 45 carries last Saturday, a poor showing from a running corps that was expected to prey on a supposedly weak Syracuse running defense. Football fans grow tired of the phrase ‘establish the run,’ but it is still said to this day for a reason. The inability for Duke to run the ball allowed Syracuse to focus solely on the passing game of the Blue Devils, which never seemed to materialize as the game went on.

Quentin Harris threw the ball on 36 occasions, and backup quarterback Chris Katrenick came in to add four attempts of his own— but this play style proved to be futile against the Orange.

“There is no magic to this,” Duke head coach David Cutcliffe said. “The only magical thing is work, and that’s not very magical. That’s just getting sweaty and dirty and focused…and doing all the little things you have to do in football to be successful.”

See SCOUTING on Page 13

Eric Wei | Sports Photography Editor

Chris Rumph II and the Duke defense will need to step up against the Demon Deacons.

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SPOTLIGHT

REVENGE

FIVE THINGS

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FROM PAGE 10

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shooting above a 50 percent clip 3-point defense hasn’t been an issue for Duke yet this year, but, in a recent close win over Georgia State, the Panthers shot a respectable 5-for-12 from deep.

Can Duke take the first step toward clinching bowl eligibility?

The Blue Devils have two tough games left on their schedule, but the season is far from over. With wins in both, they would secure bowl eligibility for the third straight year, having won their postseason matchups in the prior two seasons.

While they face a respected opponent after Thanksgiving in Miami, the tougher of the two contests comes on the road against the Demon Deacons. Duke’s fight in this game can either propel it toward bowl eligibility or send it packing for good.

“Coach always says they remember what you do in November,” said Blue Devil center Will Taylor. “It’s crunch time. I feel like this is a good time for our team.”

among the nation’s best at forcing turnovers, carry this team, those are numbers nobody while California ranks in the bottom half in wants to see. terms of giveaways. Golden Bear guards Matt Duke’s offense hasn’t been much better, Bradley and Joel Brown may be on fire from if better at all. The Blue Devils have scored outside, with a scorching 15-for-27 combined 13 points over their last two contests, with mark on 3-pointers, but the guard duo also the majority of that production aided by averages more than five turnovers a game, a good field position courtesy of shanked surefire problem against the Blue Devil ball- punts from their opponents. hawking guards.

Quentin Harris hasn’t ended a game Assuming Duke gets past California with more touchdowns than interceptions Thursday, it will play the winner of the since the team’s win against Virginia Tech matchup between Georgetown (3-1) and Texas Sept. 27—nearly two months ago. Duke’s (4-0) in the 2K Empire Classic Friday at 7 p.m. running game, meanwhile, has averaged a If the Blue Devils fall to the Golden Bears, they meager 112.3 rushing yards on 2.9 yards per will take on the loser of the Hoyas-Longhorns carry during the team’s current four-game game Friday at 5 p.m. losing streak.

Texas and Georgetown profile as very “We play a really good football team different teams, which could make for [this Saturday],” Cutcliffe said. “A really some interesting rotation decisions from good football team. They’ve done a great Krzyzewski. Only six Longhorns average job there [at Wake Forest]. So, to beat Wake more than 10 minutes per game, with just Forest, to play well against Wake Forest, one of those Texas players weighing more will take balance. We will have to play well than 200 pounds and none standing taller offensively and give us a boost there, muchthan just 6-foot-9. needed. We’re going to have to be consistent On the other hand, the Hoyas’ offense and play well on defense—they provide a lot runs through 7-foot, 264-pound center of problems. And we got to play well in the Omer Yurtseven, who is averaging 17.0 kicking game.” points and 12.5 rebounds per game this The Blue Devils’ current situation also season. The North Carolina State transfer rekindles memories of Duke’s 2017 unit, torched Duke in the Wolfpack’s 2018 upset which sat at 4-6 before winning out to clinch of the Blue Devils, as Yurtseven put up a bowl eligibility and then defeating Northern team-high 16 points, nine rebounds and Illinois 36-14 in the Quick Lane Bowl. three blocks in the contest.

The Blue Devils can only hope some of Regardless of who the Blue Devils match their elder leaders can help the rest of the up with, the goal for Jones and company team repeat that late-season run against the remains the same.

Demon Deacons (7-3, 3-3).

“I expect the same from this team, being “Your mindset,” redshirt sophomore extremely hungry still,” Jones said following defensive end Chris Rumph II said, Duke’s win against Georgia State last Friday. regarding what the team can learn from “No matter what happens, we start off the that 2017 squad. “You got to come with a week extremely hungry, going up there with mindset that no matter, we’ve got two games one goal in mind: to come back with two left, so we’re going to have to win these two. wins and to continue to on defense So, you got to buckle down and put your Thegrow New York Times Syndication Sales Corporation 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018 and offense.” nose down and grind.”

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Back in the holiday spirit?

Last season’s holiday tournament didn’t end so well for the Blue Devils, as R.J. Barrett’s failed heroics in the championship game of the Maui Invitational led to a loss against Gonzaga for then-No. 1 Duke.

That loss was the Blue Devils’ first holiday tournament loss since 2014, when Aaron Gordon and No. 4 Arizona took care of Jabari Parker and No. 6 Duke.

The Blue Devils have lost just four holiday tournaments since 2000.

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Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 7,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).

Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

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Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 7,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).

Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

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

“

Big Boomer energy The members of the Community Editorial Board are independent of the Chronicle’s editorial staff.

community editorial board

L

ast week, former President Barack Obama condemned the leftward shift of the Democratic party at an event in D.C. Pointing the finger primarily at young “activists,” he argued that such a shift would alienate crucial moderate voters prior to the 2020 election.

Considering the insistent emphasis on electability this election cycle, Obama’s call for a more palatable and centrist Democratic party appears reasonable.

But in doing so, Obama is reproducing an ideology that actively excludes dissenting voices, especially those of young people, in the name of civility.

For years, pundits have invoked respectability politics as an all-purpose deterrent against new ideas as well as to silence dissent. This legacy threads its way through American history, from the logic used to justify slavery, to the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement, to the shocked responses to ACT UP and other AIDS activism. Such emphasis on “civility” or “respectability” to the detriment of both dialogue and progress is also clearly alive and well today in national politics as well as here on campus.

hot take of the week “I want Marianne Williamson to astral-project me past finals.”

—Bre Bradham, Video Editor on November 20, 2019

LETTERS POLICY

One recent column argued for activists—especially women—to remember “mannered-ness,” even if doing so makes them appear “lackluster or conformist or meek.” Whether intentional or not, this again enforces the implicit association between civil behavior and adherence to the status quo—an option for some perhaps, but often not for those who are actively harmed by white supremacist or patriarchal structures (to name just a few).

Outside the pages of the Opinion Section, evidence of condescending respectability politics abounds. During President Price’s address to alumni last year, Dean Sue Wasiolek handed fliers to student protesters, reminding them that they would only have their “message[s] heard” as long as they did so without “disruptive… demonstration.” Actions such as these belittle those with valid concerns and weaken their voices by intentionally directing them towards outlets in which they are unlikely to receive any substantial attention.

This obsession with process and manners is also central to the “boomer mindset,” which, beyond being fabulously memeable, centrally consists of a dismissal of ideas and people outside the norm. We see this most obviously in the treatment of young people as lacking wisdom. While older people inherently have more experiences, we should reject the notion that age is the only acceptable measure of wisdom.

On the issue of gun violence, for instance, Millennials and members of Generation Z have live in an era of seemingly endless school shootings that older members of society simply did not experience. In terms of climate change, young people have the most at stake, yet are placed entirely at the mercy of blasé politicians that frequently take actions detrimental to their future livelihoods. When a Duke first-year asked Joe Biden about the donations he receives from the fossil fuel industry at an event last month, he dismissed her question calling her “child.” this is in-keeping with his track-record of belittling anyone, especially young women, that dares

”T

Direct submissions to:

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.

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

JAKE SATISKY, Editor DEREK SAUL, Sports Editor STEFANIE POUSOULIDES, News Editor NATHAN LUZUM, KATHRYN SILBERSTEIN, Managing Editors LEXI KADIS, Senior Editor MICHAEL MODEL, Digital Strategy Director MARY HELEN WOOD, CHARLES YORK, Photography Editor LEAH ABRAMS, Editorial Page Editor NINA WILDER, Recess Editor CHRISSY BECK, General Manager CONNER MCLEOD, Sports Managing Editor CARTER FORINASH, University News Editor MATTHEW GRIFFIN, University News Editor PRIYA PARKASH, University News Editor MONA TONG, Local & National News Editor ROSE WONG, Local & National News Editor MARIA MORRISON, Health & Science News Editor EMILY QIN, News Photography Editor ERIC WEI, Sports Photography Editor MICHELLE TAI , Features Photography Editor AARON ZHAO, Features Photography Editor MIHIR BELLAMKONDA, Editorial Page Managing Editor MAX LABATON, Editorial Page Managing Editor SELENA QIAN, Graphics Editor BRE BRADHAM, Video Editor

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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.

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to challenge his ideas. Similarly, last month, President Trump sarcastically “praised” climate change activist Greta Thunberg on Twitter as a “happy young girl.”

In this context, where young people with direct experience of some of the most pressing national issues of our time are ignored and attacked by older generations, one can understand the emergence of Generation Z’s new favorite blanket response: “Ok, Boomer.” Rather than just a reductive swipe at any and everyone born in the postwar era, the phrase contests the values and ideologies of that time that today feel antiquated and oppressive.

Importantly, the ideals inherent in the “boomer mindset” are not exclusively related to age. Even at Duke, in a world of teenagers and twenty-somethings, we preserve and reproduce them.

Many of us have internalized traditional ideas of success born out of a post-war imagining of the “American Dream.” We value our self-worth in terms of money and prestige and subscribe to an unhealthy version of personal responsibility where every problem is solved by merely tugging on our bootstraps. And of course, there is again the persistent call for civility and respectability. Those of us that accept these ideas not only reinforce an antiquated mentality, but are complicit in the maintenance of a status quo that threatens our ability to address the climate crisis, prevent thousands of needless deaths or invest in decent housing for our neighbors.

Over the past few months, “Ok, Boomer,” has shattered the traditional paradigm of our national conversation; older adults are no longer the only ones setting the terms and rules of political debate. To young people, the phrase is an empowering inversion of something that we have been told all of our lives: that we are “just kids,” that our opinions are invalid because of our inexperience. On its own, tying age to wisdom is problematic—young people understand this. However, by appropriating this tactic for our own advantage, we’ve finally claimed a space in the national discourse—a space that, like the Boomers that came before us, we surely plan to hold onto.

How to improve the Chronicle

he Chronicle publishes a lot of dumb stuff. Like mostly dumb stuff. Like case in point, what you’re reading right now. Like for every article of substance there’s like three about Joey Baker slapping the floor or something dumb like that.

Sami Kirkpatrick KINDA KIDDING

Est. 1905

The Chronicle

dukechronicle.com commentary

14 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019

It has been brought to my attention recently that I spend a lot of time criticizing others’ work while offering little in the way of solutions to fix the things I have problems with.

So let’s get into it. Let’s try and fix this thing.

I have to first acknowledge that my desire to provide practical solutions was inspired in large part by Reiss Becker’s recent article “How to improve DSG: Duke’s tinpot democracy.” Reiss could have just listed the issues he had with DSG and left it at that. But he didn’t. Instead he proposed a system straight out of a YA dystopian novel where the DSG senate is comprised of representatives of different Duke social factions, as opposed to the current system where the DSG senate is comprised of tools.

Is Reiss Becker’s solution f***ing crazy? You bet.

Does anyone even care? I just want Liv McKinney to stop sending me emails. But at least he’s putting an original idea out there, and I commend him for it.

My solution to fix The Chronicle is to steal the model of the only publication, in my opinion, doing it right in today’s news climate. The only publication which I read every morning and every night without fail. The only publication giving the people what they want.

The Duke Chronicle should be more like The Daily Mail.

For those unfamiliar with The Daily Mail, 1) how, 2) look it up. There are lots of ways to consume The Daily Mail but my medium of choice is their Snapstory, updated twice a day, every day.

The Daily Mail has their model down to an exact science. They publish articles which fall under one of three categories: sex, violence and humiliation. Their best work often falls at the intersection of two—or even better, all three.

The Daily Mail does not concern itself with cohesiveness.

An article about Emily Ratajkowski sitting on a beach is often directly followed by an article about a gruesome crime

that happened somewhere in the middle of West Virginia.

Part of the fun of scrolling through The Daily Mail Snap-story is that you never know what’s gonna come next.

The Daily Mail also does not concern itself with “facts” or “the truth.” If The New York Times were covering Justin Beiber crying in a park, they might write some cop-out statement like “we can’t say for certain at this point in time why Beiber was crying.” But The Daily Mail doesn’t pussyfoot around like that. Their headline would look something like this, in large bolded lettering and often accompanied by a whimsical background music: Bieber Marriage in SHAMBLES? Justin Cries in Park.

The people don’t want to be informed, they want to be entertained. Here, look. I’m gonna take some existing, boring Chronicle headlines and add some Daily Mail flair.

For example: “Nugget may be a ‘rockstar,’ but don’t forget Keith.” A better headline: “Keith seen buying peanut butter, what’s he using it for?”

Another one: “Class of 2023 survey: All our coverage.”

Alternative: “Duke Class of 2023: Still mostly nerds.”

One last go: “Joey Baker cooks up energy in Duke men’s basketball’s win against Georgia State.” Way better: “Tre Jones Jersey Rides up to Reveal GLISTENING ABS.” The Chronicle homepage could use a complete aesthetic overhaul, and again in this regard should take a page out of The Daily Mail’s book. No more clean and simple. The Chronicle should be loud and all over the f*****g place.

I’m talking lots of color, big text, heavily photoshopped images and animation effects. Lots of animation effects.

Look, I understand that now more than ever we need quality investigative reporting; that a generation is being brainwashed by Mark Zuckerberg and his less-than-factual Facebook articles. So yeah, The Chronicle should probably strive to tell the truth for things that actually matter.

But an article about f*****g Keith? Who needs that to begin with, and you’re gonna make it mind-numbingly dull? Maybe don’t lie, that was probably bad advice, I’ll give you that, but make that sh*t more interesting or don’t write it. The Chronicle actually has some really great stuff, important stuff… it just gets buried by a sea of useless information.

So I guess what I’m saying is, Leah and Mihir, please stop letting me write this column.

Sami Kirkpatrick is a Trinity senior. His column, kinda kidding, runs on alternate Wednesdays.

The Chronicle

dukechronicle.com commentary

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019 | 15

Cultural appropriation as neo-imperialism

J

uju, the Asian tapas restaurant off Ninth Street, sucks.

I hate its overly pretentious atmosphere, its ability to convince Duke students to shell over $13 for fried rice, and the subtle hint of bigotry and inauthenticity that permeates the whole operation.

However, it’s substantially harder to grapple with the question of whether society’s infatuation with Asian “fusion” restaurants, calligraphy tattoos, traditional Asian attire, and Crazy Rich Asians still improves our material conditions and social standing.

I contend that oftentimes our criticisms of cultural appropriation

admires, but authentic engagement requires respectful listening and truly attempting to understand the history and experiences of another; cultural appropriation lacks these features.

However, this analysis fails to respond to the question I’m posing.

I grew up bullied and embarrassed about bringing my mom’s

begin from both a privileged position and internal insecurity of our own identity, particularly for Asian-Americans like me.

The common response to this question about cultural appropriation is straightforward: there is nothing inherently wrong in paying homage to a culture one

cooking to school and attending Chinese school on Sundays.

Those same bullies now listen to 88rising and say that their favorite food is sushi. My parents traded stability and comfort in the hope that my brother and I could succeed and were met in America with hostility and disrespect. Now our racist neighbors ask my parents about dim sum recommendations and pick their brains about traveling to Asia.

Their engagements with Asians are indeed misled and inauthentic, but so what? Yes, I wish their appreciation of my culture was legitimate. But I also don’t believe that we can possibly expect that any time soon.

I’m willing to let authenticity take a backseat—as bad as that sounds—when my entire existence has been predicated on finding a survival strategy to exist in this world; for the first time in our lives, we’ve found ourselves at the focal point of Western society’s attention in positive ways. While I’m aware that the West’s underlying assumptions about Asians have hardly changed, this newest fad certainly makes it easier to live. It’s impossible to simply ignore our material conditions. Even if these initial engagements appropriate or rely upon cultural falsehoods, they oftentimes beget more authentic experiences later on and positively alter preconceptions about a particular group.

My argument is not that we should sweep Asian-American oppression under the rug in an attempt to seem more friendly to the West but to think more critically about instances of cultural appropriation and whether they may be natural consequences of cultural pluralism or even the few surviving remnants of Asian culture in Western public life. False allegations of cultural appropriation often do more harm to “the culture” than we think; they obfuscate larger, more legitimate forms of Asian-American violence and reduce a complicated history of fetishization and stereotyping into a simple yet unpalatable phrase. Moreover, misapplications of the term may dissuade well-intentioned individuals from even interact with the culture in the first place.

The notion of authenticity itself is a matter of degree, particularly because culture and tradition are mutable and historically contingent phenomena.

The most troubling observation here is that the people who are most offended by instances of cultural appropriation are often those who are furthest from the culture itself. Younger generations, particularly the children of immigrants, tend to be more passionate about acts of appropriation because of internal insecurity about their own identities and because they too are often in the process of engaging with and learning more about their backgrounds.

Older generations are certainly more jaded, but I think that they also recognize the importance of survival in the West through means of adaptation and modification; America was not a friendly place to them and as artifacts of the “authentic” culture itself, they find the dissemination of Asian fashion, trends, and cuisine to the West particularly appealing, or at worst neutral. These generational differences suggest that it may even be problematic and neo-imperialist for younger Asian-Americans to impose Western social standards upon actual immigrants and dictate what they must conceptualize about their own identities.

I think it’s also important to draw a distinction between cultural appropriation for Asians and other identity groups for a variety of reasons. Not only are there relevant historical and contextual specificities to consider, but appropriation also occurs in significantly different ways that in turn have tremendous consequences on scale and magnitude.

Generalizing my analysis to all other identity groups is both imprecise and problematic.

Please don’t reduce my argument into a monolithic bashing of cultural appropriation as a whole. Colorblind cultural exchange is impossible; great disparities in power dynamics imply that cultural exchanges occur in unethical, harmful, and neo-colonial ways. However, while it may be hard to provide a bright-line, I do believe that there are certain unavoidable instances of cultural exchange that nevertheless precipitate into more genuine interactions while simultaneously improving our day-to-day material conditions.

David Min MILK BEFORE CEREAL

For this generation of Asians and Asian-Americans it’s easy to see something like Juju and then feel annoyed, mark it off as just another instance of cultural appropriation, and then move on in our never-ending search for more authentic cultural engagements.

I

Not home for the holidays

haven’t been home for Thanksgiving in four years.

This isn’t a sob story: I am privileged to have a loving family that would welcome me home at any time, and I don’t take that for granted. Vermont is just really far from North Carolina.

That said, anyone who has been absent from home on a holiday like Thanksgiving can corroborate my experience that no matter how prepared and well-adjusted I think I am, I can’t restrain the homesickness that creeps into the day.

I want my grandma’s apple pie, with fruit and spices bursting out of a perfect pie crust. I want my mom’s sweet potato casserole, recreated from her mom’s old recipe book.

I want the clumsy turkey placemarkers my sisters and I made

my program presented a Thanksgiving feast like no other, tables groaning under platters of turkey and bottles of strong Italian wine.

We dressed up and made toasts and filled our plates with both pumpkin pie and panettone. At the end of the night, we traipsed over cobblestone streets to an American bar across the Tiber with the hope that there would be football on the television.

I can’t even recall now if they were showing the game. I was too caught up in laughing with these beautiful friends that I never expected I would meet. When I remember that night, the thankfulness to have been in that place, with those people, swells through my body and pools in my eyes. It is no small thing to find a home in a faraway place, with people

Gretchen Wright CAMERON CRAVINGS when we were little. I want to be home.

I think back to my last Thanksgiving there and marvel at how much has changed, and how much remains the same.

In November of 2015, I had no idea where I would be living, who I would be friends with or what I would be doing a year from then. I had dreams and grand visions, but I didn’t know anything. Despite the hopes buried deep inside, if asked, I never would have predicted that two weeks later, I would open an email from Duke Undergraduate Admissions that began, “Congratulations!”

Maybe it’s this gloomy weather or my Snapchat memories or listening to Taylor Swift’s Red on repeat, but I have been caught up in remembering my previous Duke Thanksgivings.

They have always just felt like a comma, a brief pause in the long stretch of the fall semester that strikes just before the end.

The Thanksgiving story is complicated and problematic.

It is deeply rooted in colonialism and racism, and has grown intertwined with and sustained by the imperialist values of white, Christian America. But at its best, Thanksgiving is meant to be about giving thanks for what we have and welcoming those who need a home or a meal.

On a stuffy Amtrak to my aunt’s house in Maryland in 2016, I remember wondering what I would say I was thankful for when we went around the table before dinner. How could we celebrate this holiday, meant to be the epitome of inclusion and gratitude, when we had just elected someone who ran a campaign on promises of walls and travel bans?

The next year, Thanksgiving was filled with writing papers, studying for tests and making plans that felt random and surprising, even then. Religious tensions between Protestantism and Catholicism as seen in Bram Stoker’s Dracula? The role strategic voting may have played in Justin Trudeau’s election as prime minister? A study abroad program at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome? Am I getting any of this right?

At the time, it felt like I had no idea what I was doing.

Retrospectively, I can appreciate how I was already reading, writing and applying for things that just a couple years earlier, I never could have imagined attempting.

In 2018, I was in Rome for Thanksgiving—the first time I had been out of the country for a major holiday.

My family never felt so far away, and all I wanted was to be home. This was dramatic, of course, brought on by end-of-semester stress and strong FOMO. That evening,

who were strangers not long before, and I am still grateful.

And here I am: senior year. I will be spending Thanksgiving with a beloved friend in South Carolina, where I will see her home, meet her cat and spend time with her family. I know it will be humbling and wonderful to be welcomed into their home, and I am already filled with gratitude for this person and the people who love her.

In some ways, I feel so far from my nervous, angsty high school self. So much has happened in the years since I read that email from Duke Admissions. I have been challenged and shaped by classes I never thought I would take. I have fallen in love with a school and a place where I knew no one, a thousand miles from home. I have traveled and written and wept and loved in so many different ways.

But for all of these changes, I still have no idea what I’m doing. Once again, I don’t know where I’ll be living in a year, or what I’ll be doing or who I’ll be with. For the first time since then, I am faced with a blank canvas that stretches before me in every direction.

That emptiness is daunting. Depending on the day, it either sits like a hangnail or paper cut, more irritating than painful, or it balloons to fill every crevice of my mind, pressing against my understanding of reality and crowding out my shrinking voice of reason.

It is scary to not know what will happen next, and “next” is getting closer every day.

And yet, when I think about my last Thanksgiving at home and compare my life now to how it was then, I want to laugh; I have been here before. In a snowy November four years ago, the same doubts and fears were rattling around in my brain as now, like dice in a game of Yahtzee. And look what has happened since.

This Thanksgiving, I am trying not to be afraid. I am trying to take comfort in the knowledge that all the unknowns worked out last time. I am trying to give thanks for the tangible blessings of my life: warm hugs, starry nights, good food.

All I know is gratitude, for the place and people who have given me so much.

Gretchen Wright is a Trinity senior whose favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner is suppressing her existential dread with mashed potatoes and gravy. (That’s healthy, right?) Her column, Cameron Cravings, runs on alternate Thursdays.

David Min is a Trinity sophomore. His column, milk before cereal, runs on alternate Thursdays.

The Chronicle

dukechronicle.com

16 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2019

CAN’T MISS EVENTS NOVEMBER 21-23

DANCE

NOVEMBER DANCES 2019 November Dances 2019 November 22 and 23 7:30pm Reynolds Industries Theater

This year, the Duke Dance Program’s annual fall concert celebrates and honors Vice Provost for the Arts Scott Lindroth, who will step down in June 2020 to return to fulltime teaching with the Department of Music. November Dances 2019 features ballet, modern, jazz, and African dance works by Duke faculty Tyler Walters, Ava LaVonne Vinesett, Nina Wheeler, and Andrea E. Woods Valdés, plus work by student SarahAnne Perel.

ART, ART HISTORY AND VISUAL STUDIES

SPACES OF TRANSLATION ARPEGGIO Friday, November 22 | 2 pm Smith Warehouse Bay 10, 2nd floor

MFA

NASHER

SOUTHBOUND: PHOTOGRAPHS OF AND ABOUT THE NEW SOUTH Through Saturday, December 21 All Day Power Plant Gallery

ARTIST TALK: JEFFREY GIBSON Thursday, November 21 7 pm Nasher Museum of Art

CENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES

EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE: NORTH CAROLINA TO ME Thursday, November 21 7 pm American Tobacco Campus —Power Plant: Full Frame Theater

Arpeggio is an annual graduate-student organized interdisciplinary conference of AAHVS department. This year, with the overarching theme of “Spaces of Translation,” Arpeggio invites scholars and students to explore the relationship between the original and reinterpreted, the authors and translators, and the artists and art historians from diverse regions such as China, France, Mexico, and the United States.

AMI/SCREEN SOCIETY

MEKKO (2015) | STERLIN HARJO | NATIVE VOICES Friday, November 22 7 pm Rubenstein Arts Center, Film Theater

MUSIC

DUKE PERFORMANCES

RUBENSTEIN ARTS CENTER

THEATER STUDIES

DUKE OPERA THEATER DAVID HEID, DIRECTOR; DANIEL SEYFRIED, PIANIST Saturday, November 23 3 pm Nelson Music Room, East Duke Building

ISABELLE FAUST, VIOLIN & ALEXANDER MELNIKOV, PIANO Saturday, November 23, 2019 8 pm Baldwin Auditorium

RUBY FRIDAYS— ALL SEMESTER LONG! (Most) Fridays at Noon Ruby Lounge Rubenstein Arts Center

MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION: “FEFU AND HER FRIENDS” COMING 2020

Brought to you by Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, Center for Documentary Studies, Dance Program, Music Department, Master of Fine Arts in Experimental & Documentary Studies, Nasher Museum of Art, Program in the Arts of the Moving Image’s Screen/Society, Theater Studies and Duke Performances.