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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
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2016
WWW.DUKECHRONICLE.COM
ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH YEAR, ISSUE 21
New website ‘Not catastrophic’: Duke endowment dips provides data for factcheckers Claire Xiao The Chronicle As presidential and congressional candidates sling attacks and claims at each other, fact-checking is becoming more important than ever. iCheck—a new website created by Jun Yang, professor of computer science, and Brett Walenz, a Ph.D. student in computer science—aims to make it easier to check the context and validity of those claims. Using congressional voting records dating back to 2009, iCheck allows users to search a legislator’s name and compare his or her voting record with that of the president or other legislators. Users can also examine voting patterns See FACT-CHECKERS on Page 5
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons iCheck provides users with information on legislators’ voting records.
Ben Yang | The Chronicle
Rick Mortenson The Chronicle Although GPAs may have gone through the ringer this semester, students may take solace in the fact that the Duke endowment has experienced some of its own tribulations recently as well, posting a 2.6 percent loss on its investments during the 2016 fiscal year. Overseen by DUMAC, Inc.— the professional organization that manages the University’s investments, including employees’ retirement pool and its health system’s investments— the endowment’s value was $4.4 billion in 2009, $7.3 billion in 2015 and $6.8 billion in the fiscal year that ended this June. Although the recent drop may seem insignificant compared to gains during the past several years, it was the largest decrease since the 2008 financial crisis and represented a net
loss of $500 million, an approximately seven percent decrease in the endowment’s value. Despite this news, John Burness, visiting professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy and former senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, said that he does not think people need to be worried. “It’s serious on one level because you always want to be positive, and it means we’re paying out a little over four percent,” Burness said. “But I don’t think that people should overreact to it at all; it’s one year. We have had really quite a remarkable record of positive years and this is one of the things that happens with investing in the market.” Burness added that this loss was small compared to the financial crisis in 2008. “This is not like 2008 where the University had to find a hundred million dollars,” he said. “It’s a much
smaller amount of money.” Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, said he anticipates little impact for students and faculty as a result of this loss, citing DUMAC’s long-term outlook. “In 2009, during the financial crisis, the value of the Duke University endowment declined by 25 percent, but because we used an average [disbursement amount from the endowment] over the previous three years—rather than annually—the difference from year to year of what was going to impact student life was significant, but not catastrophic,” Schoenfeld said. Duke was not the only University whose endowment experienced a loss, as more than 430 endowments reported an average of 2.7 percent loss in the 2016 fiscal year. Strikingly, the value of See ENDOWMENT on Page 5
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