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Duke’s early plans..........Pg. 3 No internet access.........Pg. 5 Assistance fund.............Pg. 6 CARES funding............Pg. 7 COVID-19 Timeline....Pg. 8 Admin response............Pg. 9 Contract workers........Pg. 10 COVID-19 Tracker.....Pg. 11

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 3

Duke’s early plans for upcoming academic year

By Matthew Griffin Editor-in-Chief

Duke is planning changes to the academic calendar, multiple course-delivery methods and new living guidelines as it prepares for the upcoming academic year.

President Vincent Price updated the Duke community on planning for the upcoming academic year in a May 29 message to students and families. Current plans include starting the Fall semester early and the Spring semester late; offering in-person, hybrid and remote courses; and implementing new guidelines for on-campus living.

“Our goal is to enable as many of our students who are able and who choose to participate in an on-campus experience for the fall semester to do so, but only if it can be done safely,” Price wrote.

All the information in the message is subject to change, based on public health guidance and other variables. Price wrote that Duke is still on track to decide on “many” details about the academic year by the end of June, and he noted that future updates will include information about course registration and re-registration as well as housing assignments and new student orientation.

Duke will accommodate students who choose not to come to campus, return home or are quarantined, Price wrote. Those students will still be able to “engage in a full curriculum of courses.”

There will be several changes to the academic year, intended to minimize travel during the semesters.

Fall 2020 classes will begin Aug. 17, a week early, and Price wrote that Duke expects students’ arrival to be staggered

over several days. There will be no fall break, and final exams will end before Thanksgiving. Duke is still planning firstyear orientation, but expects students to arrive during the week of Aug. 10, with orientation including online programming before they come to campus.

Spring 2021 classes will begin a week later than normal, on Jan. 19. There will be no spring break, and exams will take place the

Aug. 17 Proposed start date for Fall 2020 classes, a week early week of April 26. Commencement for the Class of 2021will be held May 9.

Graduate schools will operate on calendars “specific to their needs” and notify their students directly about schedules, Price wrote.

Students will need to re-register for the Fall semester because of the calendar changes and changes to classroom spaces, and faculty and schools will need to revise course schedules, Price and Provost Sally Kornbluth wrote in a May 29 email to faculty about Duke’s current plans. The email, a copy of which was obtained by The Chronicle, contained similar information to Price’s message but provided more details on planned changes to courses and teaching.

It similarly specified that all information is subject to change based on medical advice and other factors.

Duke plans for classes to take place in venues like “theaters, conference and commons rooms, studios, and tents,” Price and Kornbluth wrote, to allow for distancing and other safety measures. The University will provide a “calendar framework” with new classroom spaces and course timeslots

by June 4 and will ask schools to submit new schedules by June 19.

If students are on campus, courses will be offered in one of three ways: in-person instruction, online courses and “hybrid courses” that combine in-person and remote learning, Price wrote in his message to students and parents. Price and Kornbluth’s email noted that all in-person classes will have online versions to accommodate students who aren’t on campus or need to quarantine.

Price and Kornbluth wrote that large lecture classes will be organized into smaller sections

Jan. 19 Proposed start date for Spring 2021 classes, a week late or made into “flipped or hybrid courses.”

Courses that include requirements like labs, performances or travel will be revised to allow for physical distancing and online access, Price wrote, though he acknowledged that may not be possible in all cases. He wrote that Duke is looking to create “‘immersion’ periods” for students to come to campus to complete course components like labs.

Price and Kornbluth specified in their email that “no faculty will be required to

teach on campus if they have concerns about their health and safety,” and faculty will not have to disclose personal health concerns.

In his message to students and families, Price also outlined new set of guidelines for on-campus living called the “Duke Compact.”

Before starting classes, all students living on campus will be tested for COVID-19. All Duke community members will then be required to practice physical distancing, and wear masks in classrooms and public settings. Students will also have to self-monitor their health and report daily through a “monitoring app,” Price wrote. Faculty and staff will also have to complete those health checks, according to the email from Price and Kornbluth.

Those who have reported symptoms and become ill or exposed to COVID-19 will have to follow “testing, contract tracing, and quarantine protocols” established

by Duke, Durham County and the state, according to the message. Students will also be expected to remain in the Durham area during the semester.

While many extracurricular activities will shift online, Price wrote that there will still be chances for “in-person gatherings that meet university and public health guidelines.”

Access to campus facilities will be restricted, with new guidelines for “space configuration, capacity, traffic flow, cleaning, and sanitation protocols.”

Dining locations will have expanded takeout options and limited in-person service with reservation systems.

“Success will only be achieved if all members of the Duke community do their part—which will call upon extraordinary mutual support, clearly articulated behavioral norms, and an unshakable personal commitment,” Price wrote.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 5

‘Food or internet’: Students struggle without reliable internet access

By Rose Wong

After exploring promotions offered by internet service providers and realizing that none When Duke announced that most students of them would work for Tarin’s location and had to leave campus because of the coronavirus timeline, Ford told Tarin that Duke would mail pandemic, Josie Tarin’s first thought was that students without Wi-Fi a 4G LTE wireless router. she did not have Wi-Fi at home.

The director completed the application form for “We can [apply] to stay at Duke… but I don’t Tarin, who was informed that the University was think anyone should have to choose between backlogged with hotspot requests but that she good service at Duke or being with your family would receive the router soon. during a global pandemic,” said Tarin, who was As of May 3, 86 of the 106 undergraduate a senior at the time and graduated this spring. students who had applied for a hotspot had Tarin’s mom wanted her home, and she been approved. Six of those students were still agreed. But continuing school without good waiting on their hotspots to arrive in the mail, internet access “absolutely sucked,” the political Ford said. science major said.

Ford also said that she does not have the As of May 3, 106 undergraduate students data to approximate the percentage of Duke had applied to have Duke send them internet students who do not have broadband internet hotspots, according to Sachelle Ford, director at home, but the Federal Communications of Duke Low-Income, First-Generation Commission’s 2019 Broadband Deployment Engagement and the David M. Rubenstein Report states that 21.3 million Americans do Scholars Program. For students who don’t not have high-speed internet. However, a study have reliable internet access at home, by the company BroadbandNow shows that the taking classes on Zoom, FCC underestimated the or simply connecting problem, judging that I think it’s important Duke with friends, can be an 42 million Americans, or overwhelming challenge. students consider... how the 12% of the country, do not have the ability to purchase other half lives.

Searching for broadband internet.

Senior Editor

solutions

After Tarin returned to Siloam Springs, Ark., a GroupMe chat of 245 Latinx students, including Tarin, discussed potential solutions for students who do not have reliable internet at home. Someone mentioned that Comcast was providing temporary free Wi-Fi during the pandemic, but Tarin was disappointed to learn that the company does not serve her area.

She then explained her situation to her financial aid advisor, who connected her with Ford.

Josie Tarin

In limbo

Tarin received the router on the Tuesday evening after spring break, which was extended by a week because of the pandemic.

She used data on her cell phone during break and the two class days that followed.

She didn’t know when the hotspot would arrive, but she knew that after she used a certain amount of data on her phone, the internet connection would slow down to the point where “participating in classes live would be Trinity ‘20

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basically impossible,” she said.

As a result, Tarin “rationed” her LTE usage.

She limited video calls with friends, which she said made her feel even more disconnected from others while social distancing. In group chats, she felt left out when friends referenced gatherings on Zoom that she could not be a part of.

Tarin also found it almost impossible, on a cell phone, to look at readings while remaining active on Zoom. So before receiving the Duke hotspot, she merely listened on Zoom during class, letting others answer questions and hoping that her participation grade would not be affected.

Looking forward

The hotspot allowed Tarin to comfortably do work on her laptop again. Sometimes the connection became unstable, so she would try moving the router to different parts of the house, which seemed to do the trick. She also needed to ensure that the machine was regularly charged and turned off when she was not using it.

Students were told that they would need to return the hotspots at the end of the semester, so Duke could lend them to other students in the case of a similar future scenario. However, Tarin planned to study for the LSAT and apply for jobs this summer, both of which require internet access. She hopes to extend her hotspot loan, but in the worst-case scenario, she said that she just might “bite the bullet and get Wi-Fi.” Ford said that the hotspot loans are intended for the Spring 2020 semester only, but students who have trouble affording WiFi can apply to the Duke Student Assistance Fund to alleviate the cost.

Through Duke, Tarin received a refund of her unused food points, and salary for the hours that she would’ve worked as a research assistant at the Kenan Institute of Ethics. Tarin

42 million Americans do not have broadband internet, study by BroadbandNow shows

said that these funds may be enough for her to purchase a home Wi-Fi plan.

Junior Evelyn Cupil-Garcia, whose home Wi-Fi is so poor that sometimes it disconnects for days to a month at a time, also worries about how unstable internewt access will affect her summer.

Originally, Cupil-Garcia planned to work for a startup in Seattle and live in housing funded by Duke Technology Scholars. However, because Duke is no longer sponsoring summer activities, she has no choice but to work from home in Morehead City, N.C. The computer science major noted that some of her friends who also had Seattle-based internships have decided to pay for their own housing, which she cannot afford.

‘Vicious cycle’

Until her senior year of high school, Cupil-Garcia used an Ethernet cord to connect to the internet.

Around the time she was accepted to Duke, Cupil-Garcia asked her mom to consider installing Wi-Fi for the home, See INTERNET on PAGE 15

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6 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

Duke Student Assistance Fund alleviates unexpected expenses during pandemic

By Mona Tong Assistant News Editor

As the Duke Student Assistance Fund begins its second round of funding, students who have received assistance are grateful for the support.

Duke opened the fund April 6 to support “undergraduate, graduate and professional students with unexpected and extraordinary expenses related to the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to an April 6 email from Gary Bennett, vice provost for undergraduate education, to members of the Duke community. It is one of three relief funds related to the pandemic.

The first window of applications—which opened April 6 and covers funds from May through July—closed May 11. The second round, which will cover unexpected financial hardship related to COVID-19 through the end of August, opened Monday.

The University initially committed $4 million to the fund. In her April 6 email to all students, Provost Sally Kornbluth wrote that the University is also receiving contributions from “generous alumni and donors” for the fund.

Duke turned down $6.7 million in funding from the CARES act, at least half of which would have been earmarked for emergency financial aid to students. Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, told The Chronicle in May that “legal and regulatory” issues were the principal reason the University rejected the money, and he noted that Duke had already spent its own money to support students.

Executive Vice Provost Jennifer Francis wrote in an email to The Chronicle that as of May 13—after the end of the first application window—the DSAF had distributed $2.4 million in grants, which averaged $1,317 each.

Out of the 2045 applications submitted, 1888 were approved, 74 were denied and 83 were still under review.

Francis wrote that the fund has been “very successful” in alleviating the unexpected constraints of students during this time, and the team of people reviewing the applications are “doing an amazing job in carefully and compassionately reading each application, often multiple times.”

Senior Erin Regan wrote in an email that, as she is a first-generation, low-income single mother with no other sources of financial assistance, the assistance fund is her “saving grace” right now, helping her avoid potential eviction and food insecurity. Before receiving assistance, she wrote that the generosity of several professors helped her and her son eat, providing them with groceries “as a bridge to get to this point.”

She wrote that had she not received assistance, she would have had to potentially disrupt her Duke enrollment over the summer or fall, and take a low-wage, high-risk “essential worker” job to feed her son and pay her rent.

“I cannot speak highly enough of their quick choice to support me,” she wrote.

She added that on campus, she works parttime at the Devil’s Krafthouse to support both her family and her education, and as she works there part time, the University has not covered her regular salary. While she is still waiting for her North Carolina state unemployment claim to process, she wrote that the assistance fund greatly helped her financial situation. However, she worries about workers whose salaries also weren’t covered, but who—unlike her—are not eligible to receive assistance from the fund.

Junior James Mbuthia reported a similar positive experience with the fund. When he received news that students weren’t able to go back to residence halls to retrieve their belongings, he was staying with another family not on

campus. As the situation kept “getting worse and worse,” he said he was increasingly worried about housing because he couldn’t continue staying at his friend’s house or go home.

After emailing Duke about his housing situation and asking for housing assistance, he said that he was directed to the assistance fund. In his application, he wrote that he was planning on returning to Durham and needed a sublease as soon as he arrived. Duke sent him the money he needed in about a week.

Jeffrey Letourneau, a third-year doctoral candidate in molecular genetics and microbiology, had an application for cash assistance denied, but he wrote in an email that he isn’t upset about it. According to Letourneau, his request was relatively minor and he expects to find an alternative solution.

He wrote that he requested some money for a new laptop since his current one has been gradually deteriorating and the audio is “almost entirely gone,” which made it inconvenient to attend his synchronous classes, house course and group lab meetings. Hearing about the assistance fund from a friend, Letourneau applied because he met the eligibility criteria for “technology for online learning.”

He received an initial email from the DSAF task force April 17 that awarded him $0.

“After careful review of your application and accompanying materials, we are able to provide you with $0.00,” the email read.

Around 30 minutes later, Letourneau received another email from the task force apologizing for the “awkwardly worded language” in his letter—the result of an effort to get the notifications out quickly. The email added that though he would not be granted a cash award, he would be issued a loaner laptop.

Letourneau wrote that he thought it was a “hilarious mistake” and understands that the task force was trying to get responses out

as soon as possible. Regarding the laptop, he wrote that he hadn’t expected to have the cost of a new laptop fully covered, but he had hoped they could cover at least some of it.

“Part of me appreciates that they only want to cover short-term costs right now, so why buy me a new laptop when they can just loan me one?” he wrote. “But in practice, for me personally, this just isn’t useful because it only pushes the cost further down the road.”

Letourneau added, however, that he wished Duke could guarantee certain funds for students in “really precarious positions, ”such as 12-month funding for all graduate students, summer funding for graduate students, emergency travel and medical expenses, and pay for all contract workers—instead of having students “jump through hoops” and apply for assistance. (The Graduate School will switch to a 12-month pay schedule for all Ph.D. students in Fall 2022.)

To apply, students can submit the application through DukeHub, uploading supporting documentation for requests greater than $500, according to the DSAF website.

Each application is reviewed independently by the DSAF team, who will respond within two weeks, the website estimates.

Examples of eligible expenses for the application include—but are not limited to—emergency travel expenses, temporary housing and utilities expenses, food, technology for online learning and emergency medical expenses, according to the website. Examples of expenses not covered include tuitions and fees, any expenses beyond the summer, nonemergency travel, non-essential personal expenses and legal fines or fees.

Payments may come through direct deposit, which can be set up through DukeHub or by mail.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 7

Why did Duke reject $6.7 million in CARES funding?

By Cameron Oglesby Staff Reporter

Duke was going to receive $6.7 million in federal aid money—and then it said no.

The CARES Act, intended to address the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic, allocated around $14 billion directly to higher education. Duke joined several other top private universities in rejecting the $6.7 million it would have received.

Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, said that “a lot of ” factors went into Duke’s decision, but that the principal issue was “legal and regulatory” problems with taking the money.

“In reviewing what the funds would be used for and also what the requirements were from the government in terms of reporting and ambiguity, we determined that there were some fairly significant legal and regulatory issues that were unclear to us and could have had a significant impact,” Schoenfeld said.

Schoenfeld said the CARES Act’s language “appeared to require all the recipients, even if the money was just going straight through the university directly to students, to make what would have been legally binding commitments about employment.” He added that making these commitments would be “very difficult for any employer to do at this point.”

“It’s unfortunate that funds that were appropriated by the Congress specifically to help students who are in distress could not go to those students simply because of these factors, and some of the political fallout that came from it,” he said.

He also said that one of the factors in Duke’s decision was Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ ruling that undocumented students are ineligible for emergency student grants from CARES Act funding.

At least half of Duke’s funding would have been earmarked for emergency financial aid to students. Schoenfeld noted that the University has spend its own money to support students during the pandemic, including starting the Duke Student Assistance Fund.

The fund, to which Duke initially committed $4 million, aims to help undergraduate and graduate students with unexpected expenses they face as a result of the virus.

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Other universities reject funding

Harvard University announced April 22 that it would not “seek or accept” $8.6 million in stimulus funding, a move that followed criticism from President Donald Trump and members of Congress. Trump thanked Harvard and other universities for deciding not to accept funding, according to Politico, and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke out against certain institutions receiving funding.

“Wealthy institutions that do not primarily serve low-income students do not need or deserve additional taxpayer funds. This is common sense,”DeVos said.

Other universities with multi-billion-dollar endowments made similar decisions, according to Politico, including Princeton University and Stanford University.

In a statement to The Harvard Crimson about the decision not to take CARES Act funding, Harvard spokesperson Jonathan Swain wrote that “Harvard, like other institutions, will face significant financial challenges due to the pandemic and economic crisis it has caused.”

“We are also concerned however, that the intense focus by politicians and others on Harvard in connection with this program may undermine participation in a relief effort that Congress created and the President signed into law for the purpose of helping students and institutions whose financial challenges in the coming months may be most severe,” Swain added.

When it comes to Duke, junior Jamal Burns argued that other universities’ decisions to reject funding played a role in the University’s decision.

“I think the decision comes from pressures of other peer institutions. So you know, once Harvard did it and then Princeton did it, and then people with similar sized endowments started to do it, we felt the need to kind of jump on that bandwagon,” said Burns, who helped found the Duke Mutual Aid Facebook group that provides assistance to members of the Duke community.

When asked whether public pressure played a role in Duke’s decision, Schoenfeld referred The Chronicle to his original statement: that a number of factors were at play but that legal and regulatory concerns were the principal issue.

He declined to comment further.

Matthew Griffin contributed reporting.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 9

Inside administrators’ scramble to prepare for COVID-19

By Nathan Luzum

with their colleagues in China.

DKU’s weeklong spring festival break, in observance of the Chinese New Year, began Jan. On the first day of spring break, Duke’s 24. One day later, administrators announced that classes would be postponed until Feb. 17 campus was mobbed.

The warm afternoon sun beat down on and mandated that only essential personnel a crowd of rowdy students pouring into be allowed on campus. International students Krzyzewskiville, eager to inaugurate another were allotted $1,000 for a flight home.

By the end of January, DKU had extended game day with a bit of revelry. Soon, they entered Cameron Indoor Stadium and packed its hiatus and announced that courses would tightly into Section 17, facing down the shift online starting Feb. 24. This provided University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. a trial run of sorts for Duke’s Learning Thousands of other fans, equally unaware they Innovation team, which tackled the logistical were witnessing Duke’s final game of the season, challenges of turning a university designed for meandered through crowded concourses and face-to-face learning into an entirely remote enterprise. squeezed into their seats.

The team largely relied on existing technologies, Around two hours later, the Blue Devils had defeated the Tar Heels. Students and visitors such as Sakai, to communicate information, and rushed the quad to continue the longstanding adopted Zoom, previously unlicensed in China, for tradition of burning campus benches. remote course delivery.

Ithaka S+R, a Hundreds pressed close nonprofit organization to the fire, eager to I don’t think it was clear focusing on academics mark the moment by and technology, snapping a memorable on the Friday before spring described the difficulties photo.

No masks break that we were going to of implementing the were in sight. “Social be where we were on that technology in a case distancing” had not yet study of DKU’s response. entered mainstream Tuesday.

“While Zoom allows vocabulary. One last for synchronous video hurrah of normalcy in a conferencing, there were college experience torn asunder by the threat of Mary Pat McMahon concerns about relying COVID-19.

VICE PRESIDENT AND VICE PROVOST FOR excessively or exclusively STUDENT AFFAIRS on synchronous The next morning, meetings, particularly campus was bathed in because of the various quiet, the quads emptied time zones where faculty and students were of students. It has stayed that way ever since.

Within a matter of days, as students were located,” the report states. “Coordinating scattered across the globe on spring break, synchronous meetings was going to be President Vincent Price announced that extremely difficult and make everyone’s classes would transition online. Students were participation more challenging.”

Equity was a driving ideal in mounting discouraged from returning to campus, and dorms were shuttered except for those granted DKU’s shift online, and there were concerns permission to stay. The jarring message was that synchronous classes would disadvantage the product of a long series of hastily drafted students in inconvenient time zones. Although emails, midnight meetings and pandemic there were drawbacks to asynchronous classes— protocols that would permanently alter the faculty were worried that they might be more “isolating” due to the lack of connection remainder of the semester.

In the aftermath of Duke’s response, The with peers—DKU encouraged professors to Chronicle spoke with key administrators to discuss implement an asynchronous teaching style.

“This is a tradeoff, and other institutions the decisions that shaped the University’s actions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. They described a might have made a different decision, for hectic, ever-changing environment that involved instance if their students are less geographically communication with not only other institutions dispersed and had more consistent access to the internet,” the report says. but also various levels of government.

As a relatively new institution, DKU had a Mary Pat McMahon, vice president and vice provost for student affairs, had been a standardized syllabus framework that eased part of Duke’s COVID-19 response standing the transition process. The Center for Learning committee since January. And as she surveyed and Teaching at DKU coordinated webinars the UNC postgame festivities March 7, for students and faculty, incorporating McMahon had an inkling she was witnessing 24/7 support from both the Durham and Kunshan campuses. Because many students something special.

“When I was standing among all those were away from campus on break when the celebrating students at the bonfire on the announcement was made, some laptops had to West quad after the UNC-Duke game, I recall be mailed, and faculty worked to move reading thinking that it might really be a possibility— materials online.

Although implementing online classes at and how strange it would be—if that moment was our last gathering for the term,” she told Duke would be more complex and occur on a larger scale, Bennett explained that the work The Chronicle.

On that night, benches went up in at DKU informed the Durham campus’s flames. Days later, Spring semester would eventual transition. suffer the same fate.

V.115 Managing Editor

DKU: A model for Duke’s response

Before the coronavirus threatened Durham, administrators were mainly focused on the implications for Duke Kunshan University.

DKU’s campus is located around 400 miles from Wuhan, China, placing it relatively close to the virus’s initial epicenter.

In January, several administrators visited DKU to meet with students and discuss plans for the semester when they would come study in Durham. Gary Bennett, vice provost for undergraduate education; John Blackshear, interim dean for academic affairs in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences; and McMahon surveyed the scene as the outbreak began its spread. After returning to Durham, they would maintain close contact—virtually, of course—

A growing threat

Duke’s initial response to COVID-19 was largely focused on overseas interests, such as DKU and study abroad programs. However, it became increasingly clear that the virus would soon threaten the University’s main campus.

Vice President of Administration Kyle Cavanaugh is Duke’s emergency coordinator, charged with responding to weather threats, fires and pandemics. He led the COVID-19 emergency standing committee, which as of mid-May had been holding daily meetings since the end of January.

The group began relatively small, Cavanaugh explained, consisting of a few infectious disease physicians, but eventually expanded to nearly 30 members encompassing a wide swath of constituencies at Duke.

“As it moved from being a global, international focus to one that was really impacting our campus, we then have continued to add individuals on to that group,” Cavanaugh said. “That included groups from Student Affairs, from the provost’s office, from all of our facilities operations—it’s grown to be a very large group that’s been working intensely during the last couple of months.”

Initial efforts were focused on developing protocols to account for travelers who may have brought the virus back with them. For example, an individual showing COVID-19 symptoms who had recently passed through Wuhan was admitted to Duke Hospital Jan. 24. Although the test was negative, the hospital began developing protocols for patients with the virus.

By the end of January, Duke had banned University-funded travel to China. As the situation worsened, McMahon sent an email mid-February addressing international students’ concerns about potential spring break travel plans, noting that guidance would continue to shift in the coming weeks.

Throughout February, as the outbreak burgeoned in China and spread to other areas such as Italy and the state of Washington, Duke’s emergency team continued monitoring the landscape and discussing potential contingency plans.

“Because of DKU’s trajectory, the concept of not having students return [to campus] was always somewhere in our frame of consideration,” McMahon explained.

Matthew Rascoff, associate vice provost for digital education and innovation, and Learning Innovation Director Shawn Miller spearheaded the eventual effort to move learning online.

They noted that preparations for emergency remote teaching for the Durham campus began in late February, a time when administrators were continuing to evaluate multiple options in a rapidly shifting landscape.

In the week leading up to spring break, administrators’ warnings and preparations grew more serious.

Preparations also included installing washers and dryers, setting up vending machines, providing medical supplies, and furnishing rooms with bedding and linens.

Gonzalez explained that because the University’s response shifted in favor of sending students home, East House was used to house only a “handful” of students— around five.

Courtesy of Duke Today

Mary Pat McMahon, vice president and vice provost for student affairs, said that she worked from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. during the busiest period.

“You tried to plan and prepare, but then the circumstances changed, so you just had to start over and plan again—keep elements from what you’ve done before that still make sense, but develop completely new elements with the new circumstances,” Gonzalez said.

It was under these auspices that students celebrated a Duke victory March 7 and embarked on their spring breaks. When asked whether administrators considered alerting students before break that they might be unable to return to campus, McMahon explained that the situation was shifting too rapidly for such a warning to be practical.

“I don’t think it was clear on the Friday before spring break that we were going to be where we were on that Tuesday,” she said.

Gonzalez agreed, explaining that shifting classes online while the majority of students were off campus—and the majority of their items were on campus—made logistics much more complicated. Ultimately, however, it wasn’t a statement administrators felt comfortable making given the circumstances.

“In retrospect, it would’ve been great if we could have encouraged students to take everything with them,” Gonzalez explained.

“But at the time, people were expecting to come back, so it wouldn’t have made sense to tell them to do that.”

‘A cruise ship that you can’t keep from docking’

Courtesy of Chris Hildreth

President Vincent Price announced class would transition online on March 10.

“AT THIS POINT, WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO RECONSIDER ANY INTERNATION AL TRAVEL OVER SPRING BREAK,” McMahon wrote in capitalized boldface to students Feb. 29, highlighting COVID-19’s spread to South Korea, Italy, Iran, Japan and Hong Kong. Students traveling outside the country were encouraged to use the Duke Travel Registry to ease tracking of potential troubling situations.

On March 6, the Friday before spring break and last day of in-person classes for the semester, McMahon announced new selfisolation policies. Students visiting a Level 2 or Level 3 country, as designated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would be required to self-isolate off campus for two weeks before returning to Duke.

Additionally, East House underwent preparations to house students who might have COVID-19, according to Joe Gonzalez, assistant vice president of student affairs and dean for residential life.

Crews installed equipment to establish a negative air pressure in the dorm, designed to prevent pathogens from escaping the building.

The dominoes began falling March 6, when the University of Washington—embroiled in Seattle’s snowballing number of COVID-19 cases—announced its shift to remote learning.

On March 8, Columbia University suspended classes for two days in preparation for online course delivery, and two days later, even bigger dominoes tumbled as Harvard University announced that its courses would resume online after spring break.

In Durham, McMahon described a flurry of meetings and conference calls each day as colleges took drastic action to curb the potential of cases spreading on campus.

Duke administrators were in constant contact with their colleagues at other universities, alongside local, state and federal government regarding the latest advisories, Cavanaugh and Bennett added.

“As we watched the CDC and the global picture shift rapidly in those next couple of days [following the Duke-UNC game], we realized that action was needed,” McMahon noted.

On the afternoon of March 10, she said, administrators agreed to transition to online courses and extend spring break by a week to accommodate the shift. Provost Sally Kornbluth explained that the decision was See ADMINISTRATORS on Page 12

10 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

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The Chronicle

Union, then known as “The Great Hall,” were still technically Duke employees, though they worked for private management companies, Victoria Pinter Gooch said. So, according to Gooch, they got Contributing Reporter benefits. Now contract workers make and serve Editor’s Note: This story was published online the food at Brodhead Center dining locations, May 18. Rerefences to dates have been left unchanged. and some don’t receive benefits like health Until Duke canceled in-person classes insurance or even sick time because they have because of the coronavirus pandemic, one bosses other than Duke. food service worker clocked in for up to Contract workers who don’t work “full 40 hours a week at one on-campus dining time” aren’t guaranteed pay under Duke’s location and 20 hours at another, both on COVID-19 response, said Executive Vice West Campus.

President Tallman Trask. Even before Now, after being laid off from both the pandemic, they weren’t guaranteed locations following the closure of campus, any benefits, even if they were full-time she said she gets no pay and no benefits workers, said Kaneisha Alston, a Duke because she is considered a “part-time” human resources representative. contract worker, not a Duke employee. She To the laid-off contract worker, that doesn’t has struggled to pay her bills and has had to seem right. move in with her family to get by. She asked “There’s an unfair disadvantage for contract to remain anonymous in this article for fear workers who come to work every day at Duke,” of retribution. she said. “Knowing that this is a billion-dollar But this worker and other contract school… it hurts knowing that they could be workers—the vast majority of Duke’s food doing more for contract workers.” service workers—would still be getting paid Overall, Trask thinks the contract worker time contract workers get “all the normal health if they worked on East Campus, just over a system has been overwhelmingly positive, with benefits, or a version thereof.” mile away. There, food service workers at no significant downside, because it allows for But that’s really up to the individual vendor Marketplace, officially Duke employees, more than a dozen different food options and or restaurant owner. The Chronicle reached will be fully paid and receive their usual supports local vendors. out multiple times to the owners of more than benefits through May 31 despite being off “There really haven’t been any [negatives],” 10 on-campus eateries with contract workers work for many weeks, according to Charles he said. to ask what benefits they gave their workers.

Gooch, former president of Local 77, the None responded. Coffey declined to list what union representing housekeeping and ‘Really unfair’ benefits they get, saying Duke can’t “publicly Marketplace employees.

About 375 of Duke’s food service workers share confidential independent vendor human The coronavirus pandemic has are contract workers employed by outside resource or financial information.” illuminated a dual system of rights for companies, according to Robert Coffey, executive Only Duke employees and full-time food service workers doing similar work director of dining services. By contrast, Coffey contract workers—200 of the 375—are on Duke’s campus, a system that has grown said, Duke employs 70 food service workers who covered by Duke’s $15 minimum wage, more unequal over the last decade, as the belong to the Local 77 union. which went into effect in 2019, according Brodhead Center replaced Duke’s dining hall Trask said that Duke encourages the to a news release. Duke “struggled” to in 2016 with various restaurant offerings. contracting employers to provide similar benefits push employers to pay all their workers at For many years, workers in the old West to those offered by the University, and that full- least $15 per hour, Trask said, but a $15

By Ben Leonard

V.115 Investigations Editor

Selena Selena Qian | V. 115| Graphics Qian Graphics Editor Editor

Part-time contract workers not guaranteed pay during pandemic

minimum wage for contract workers is “essentially in effect.”

Initially, it was unclear whether food service workers would get paid at all after Duke moved spring semester classes online March 13.

After some pushback from activists, Trask wrote in a March 18 letter to students that all “full-time” contract workers would be guaranteed pay through May 31.

“We had to close down pretty quickly, and we wanted to protect employees,” Trask told The Chronicle. “A lot of those contractors look to everyone as if they were full employees, so it seemed like the admirable thing to do.”

But Trask’s letter did not protect the remaining 175 “part-time” contract workers See WORKERS on Page 14

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 11

Coronavirus tracking effort unites Duke students, alum volunteers

By Anna Zolotor Local and National News Editor

When Duke students learned that classes were moving online, many were on spring break trips with friends or lounging in their childhood homes. But senior Peter Sun was spending nine-hour days working on the largest volunteer-run COVID-19 case tracker in the United States.

The tracker was started by five software engineers through 1Point3Acres, an online community for Chinese international students and professionals in North America.

According to Sun, the tracker is run by a team of volunteers that includes between 50 and

75 people and distributes real-time state and international data about COVID-19 cases, deaths and recoveries.

The 1Point3Acres tracker uses data provided by county-level public health authorities, which means that their dashboard is usually updated more quickly than state government data, according to Sun. Data from the tracker has been used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Global Cases Tracker, the United Nations and numerous other emergency relief organizations and research institutions, according to the tracker’s website.

Courtesy of 1Point3Acres The 1Point3Acres coronavirus tracker

“We found our jobs through Duke List!”

When Sun, an international student who was born in China and grew up in Australia, canceled his spring break trip to Peru, he decided he wanted to do something to contribute to efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19.

“If I was staying at Duke, I wanted to do something about this, rather than just watch Netflix in my dorm all day,” Sun said.

Sun said he started donating to coronavirus relief funds but did not feel completely satisfied.

“You sign a check and it goes somewhere.

It doesn’t feel that tangible,” he said. When Sun discovered the 1Point3Acres database, he sent an email to the leaders of the project offering his full-time services for the week of spring break.

Lin Zuo, Trinity ‘19, got involved in the tracker because she had to cancel post-graduation travel plans because of the pandemic and wanted to put her time to good use.

“In late February, I was looking for volunteering opportunities to help raise awareness of COVID-19 in North America.

That’s when [1Point3Acres’] tracker came to my attention. I wanted to help expand the tracker and bring data transparency to the public,” Zuo wrote in an email.

Both Sun and Zuo started out working full-time on the data team, collecting and cross-checking real-time case confirmation, death and recovery updates and manually entering those numbers into the tracker.

However, as the 1Point3Acres team worked to automate and optimize data collection, both were released from their full-time duties.

Zuo, who recently started a full-time job, now works on weekends, and Sun works two or three hours per day.

Now, Zuo’s responsibilities revolve around

maximizing the tracker’s efficiency. This has included starting a document with advice for how to log data for each state, creating tutorials for new volunteers, working with developers to simplify the process of logging data and streamlining the quality-control process, she wrote.

“Now, with more automation tools deployed, our job has transitioned to focusing on quality control of data and improving automation tools with the developer team,” she wrote.

Sun’s current roles in the project include running the Twitter account and helping to input international data.

Sun, who is majoring in economics with a minor in art history, said that one of his first challenges was developing proficiency in the technological skills necessary to contribute to the tracker. Although he did have some coding experience, Sun said that “the learning curve was definitely pretty steep” as he reviewed GitHub and Python. He was encouraged by a sense of urgency unlike anything he’d ever felt at school.

“COVID-19 wasn’t going to wait for me to learn GitHub,” Sun said. “It’s definitely an even stronger urgency that registers in me than when going for grades.”

Sun said that he also had to learn how to run social media. He doesn’t have a personal Twitter account, but he has grown the 1Point3Acres tracker’s account from 200 to more than 11,000 followers.

Both Sun and Zuo expressed that working on the tracker was emotionally challenging, especially at first.

“I still remember my first time logging in death details for older adults who passed away See TRACKING on Page 14

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ADMINISTRATORS FROM PAGE 9 not made by a single person but was instead “based on intense ongoing discussions with the senior leadership team as a whole.” Later that evening, at around 7:30 p.m., Price announced that classes would shift online indefinitely via an email to the Duke community.

“President Price and I were in complete agreement that this was the best option to both keep the campus safe and sustain our critical educational mission,” Kornbluth wrote in an email to The Chronicle.

Jack Bovender, chair of Duke’s Board of Trustees, wrote that none of the actions taken in that period required explicit Board approval. Nonetheless, Price and other senior administrators regularly consulted trustees during the process.

Cavanaugh and McMahon cited the importance of maintaining student, staff and faculty safety, in addition to the health system’s capacity, as influences behind the decision.

Director of Student Health John Vaughn, who advised administrators in the discussions surrounding Duke’s COVID-19

response, explained that colleges face a number of unique challenges when considering how to operate amid a pandemic.

“Anyone in Durham can be affected by COVID, but if you’re working at the mall and you get sick and you go to the [emergency room], that’s managed one way. You’re told to go home and isolate,” he said. “Well, students are on a college campus. A college campus is like a cruise ship that you can’t keep from docking. Our students live together, study together, work together.”

If Duke decided to bring employees back and an outbreak erupted, Vaughn explained, workers could simply be sent back to their homes in the area. But the calculus is different for students, most of whom live a significant distance from campus.

“We can’t tell you to fly in from Texas or California or New Jersey for class and then go home a week later, so we have to think about those kind of things,” he said. “If we bring students back on campus, how do we manage them? Because we’re going to have them here.”

Vaughn also cited compliance concerns, questioning how well students would follow safety recommendations if they were to return to campus.

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But he stressed that administrators also considered potential impacts on Durham when they chose to cancel in-person classes and encourage students to stay away from campus. Although most students don’t fall in the most vulnerable groups for COVID-19, he said, they had to account for the possibility of spread as students came into contact with residents of the city.

“We have an obligation, as a member of the community, to think about the elderly people and the poor people in the community who don’t have access to health care,” Vaughn explained. “And that’s why a lot of what we did was certainly to keep our students safe, but also to keep our community safe.”

As the University elected to implement remote learning, administrators’ work was just getting started—the apparent finality of that decision-making process only opened up more logistical challenges.

The aftermath

In the time leading up to and following the March 10 announcement, administrators recalled working long days to shepherd the University through an uncertain stretch.

Cavanaugh noted that he’d been working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for some time, and McMahon said her work schedule stretched from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. during the busiest period.

The timing of Duke’s decision added to the burden administrators had to carry while negotiating the complex logistics of moving a university online. Because students were on spring break, no one knew how many on-campus residents were still in their dorms. And moreover, students who had left campus were now separated from the items they had left behind in their rooms.

McMahon and Bennett sent an email to students March 11 encouraging out-of-town students not to return to campus.

Later in the message, they noted that students would be allowed to move their items out of dorms by March 22, provided that they register to do so within the next two days.

However, they soon grew worried that such a policy could have grave public health implications and would go against their goal of de-densifying Duke’s campus, so they revoked the option March 12.

“It became more clear that some people were thinking ‘OK, I’m going to come back and get my stuff,’ and if that volume of people all came back, then we risked people getting ill,” McMahon said.

On March 13, Gonzalez unveiled a plan for University volunteers to enter students’ rooms and ship essential items, such as technology and academic materials. The list of essential items was designed to be as comprehensive as possible, he explained, while accounting for the limited number of volunteers.

The Keep Learning team also triaged forms submitted by on-campus students who wanted to remain in their dorms.

McMahon noted that in a four-day period, the team pored over 4,000 requests from students asking to remain in the dorms or return to claim their items.

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Courtesy of Duke University Kyle Cavanaugh, vice president of administration, serves as Duke’s emergency coordinator.

Many applications were initially denied to maintain adequate social distancing on campus, including requests from some students whose countries were already deeply ensnared in the pandemic.

“Then we realized that wasn’t the right thing, so we walked that back,” McMahon later explained.

McMahon and Gonzalez described the mid-March stretch as rife with challenge after challenge, from logistical minutiae to big-picture dilemmas.

For example, as key hubs of student life such as the Bryan Center and Brodhead Center were modified to comply with social distancing requirements, administrators faced questions about where the extra furniture should be stored. And with student groups on domestic trips scattered across the country, McMahon explained that tracking their See ADMINISTRATORS on Page 13

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ADMINISTRATORS FROM PAGE 12 schedules also became important.

Challenges also abounded for the Learning Innovation team, tasked with shifting the University online in only a matter of weeks.

Rascoff and Miller, who oversee the team, explained that a major focus was harnessing expertise gained from DKU’s transition while avoiding “burnout” for employees who had long been laboring to assist students and faculty with the move.

“Given our recent experience with DKU, we knew Duke faculty and students would be able to weather this situation - but the lift would be larger,” they wrote in an email. “Our small team had already worked around the clock to help with DKU’s remote teaching efforts, and now we would be doing it again for Duke, without a break.”

Team members whose responsibilities typically lay elsewhere were pressed into service, responding to faculty questions or organizing workshops and webinars.

As other universities adopted optional or mandatory pass/fail grading schemes, Bennett met with other faculty members and administrators to develop Duke’s policy. He announced March 18 that classes would shift to a default satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading system, with the option for students to opt in to receive a letter grade by April 20, three days before the last day of classes.

In the weeks following the choice, some students circulated petitions asking for universal S/U or universal S policies. After consultation with his team, Bennett reaffirmed the current opt-in policy in an April 8 letter to directors of undergraduate study. He explained that one plan wouldn’t satisfy every student and that approximately 65% of peer colleges had chosen an opt-in plan like Duke’s.

“For every student who advocates for a change to a universal S/U policy, we receive a message indicating strong support for the current approach,”

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 13

postponed for the Class of 2020 and summer Bennett wrote in the letter.

The grading policy would remain the same, classes shifted online.

As uncertainty enshrouds the future of with only a slight deadline extension in response the coronavirus’ spread, Duke is considering to a resolution passed by the Duke Student Government Senate. a number of The resolution called options for the I’m pretty sure to bring students Fall for students to see semester.

Price appointed their final grades back on campus, we’re gonna Team 2021, a before choosing have to have a policy where between letter grades committee chaired and S/U. Although

by Cavanaugh and everybody on campus—staff, Executive Vice administrators said faculty, students, visitors—wears Provost Jennifer that such an extension Francis, to provide was impractical due to masks. logistical constraints, recommendations the deadline was on charting the John Vaughn University’s shortpushed back to the first Director of Student Health day of finals. term course.

In late April, O v e r a l l , administrators praised Cavanaugh explained students’ response to the ongoing challenges that Duke would likely make a decision posed by the pandemic. regarding Fall semester after June 1.

“I’ve seen our students at their very best in “Because there’s such a high level of ambiguity of what the future will look like, this, and I recognize that the variation of stressors are extraordinary,” McMahon said. we’re going to try institutionally to get as far Vaughn acknowledged the impact that ininto the year as we possibly can—certainly person class cancellation had on the traditional understanding all of the anxiety and all of the complications and complexity that college experience. But he emphasized the public health impact of the decision. creates,” he said. “But the longer we have, “It sucks, I think about the seniors who are the better information we’ll have, so the graduating in all this, and so much of the college institution can make as informed and safe a experience students want is being here, and decision as possible.”

In mid-May, Cavanaugh noted that the you felt really bad that’s being disrupted. But at the end of the day, it was about keeping people committee was undertaking an “enormous healthy and safe,” he said. “Because you’re all amount of assessment and scenario working” going to go home to your parents, and maybe to inform a recommendation. grandma has health conditions—there were so Although Duke has announced that many unknowns.” students will return to campus this fall— with details including how many will return and what the calendar will look like to be Playing the long game In a world gripped by COVID-19, canceled announced by the end of June—it won’t and virtualized events would soon lose their be business as usual. Vaughn explained novelty, becoming just another element of an that optimizing the student-to-space ratio upturned way of life. The Last Day of Classes would be a challenging aspect of welcoming concert went virtual, commencement was students back.

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“What would need to be in place is appropriate environmental precautions— that includes sufficient hand sanitizer in public places,” he explained. “We’re gonna have to get more information about spaces too. How many students can share a bathroom? How many students can be on the same floor of a residence hall?”

In addition to simple living space, he added that the University would likely need to have alternate facilities available for students who tested positive for COVID-19.

Reliable and accurate testing would also be a must for the campus to support an inperson learning environment.

“I’m pretty sure to bring students back on campus, we’re gonna have to have a policy where everybody on campus—staff, faculty, students, visitors—wears masks,” he said. “I think that’s gonna be a requirement.”

Extensive contact tracing, where trained professionals identify other individuals an infected person may have come into contact with, would also be vital. Vaughn explained that he and others have been meeting with the county health department, which is responsible for contact tracing, about a potential Fall semester. He floated the idea of training Duke employees whose jobs were disrupted by the pandemic to be campus contact tracers.

Vaughn also set out the need for “clear policies on social gatherings and compliance.” The University would need to find a reliable method of curtailing parties and other events, typical keystones of an inperson college experience that would fall by the wayside.

Confronting an uncertain future, universities are grappling with how to balance financial well-being and traditional classroom education with public safety guidelines—and Duke is no exception.

“We do our best to plan for the worst and hope for the best,” Vaughn said.

14 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

WORKERS

from the job.

With her hours cut in half, her other source of income, a small business, has also who may have had their hours cut or been laid off been slashed almost entirely because of following the shutdown. Trask explained the lack Durham’s stay-at-home order. She hasn’t of protection by saying that the University did not cashed her stimulus check yet, because of cover many other part-time employees. the uncertainty going forward.

Despite the many “If it wasn’t for my hours she worked, savings, I wouldn’t be the anonymous As a contract worker, able to get by right now,” contract worker was you definitely feel like an she said. “I was using my considered a “partsavings to buy a car, but time” worker. She outcast. now I have to use my said this is because savings to buy food.” before she was laid Trask did not respond Anonymous part-time to multiple requests for off, she helped cover some shifts at an contract worker comment when asked if off-campus affiliate workers like the two in while also working on campus, she this story should be deemed full time. said. She said she never got any other Without a union, contract workers don’t benefits from the dining location while know who to turn to for help, Gooch said. she worked there.

Some have organized along with other Some employees are working limited workers demanding pay. hours at an off-campus affiliate of one dining Chris Huebner, a third-year English location, but she isn’t one of them. She used Ph.D. candidate and member of the Duke to be paid $15 per hour, but is now getting Graduate Students Union, has pushed for nothing from her employer or Duke.

Duke to guarantee full pay for all contract Now, she is struggling to keep workers, publishing a list demands in The up on bills. She still hasn’t received Chronicle April 13. unemployment benefits, and she spent her “This is a really unfair way of treating federal stimulus check on rent in April. people,” Huebner said.

She now has no way to pay rent and is Duke Contract Workers United and other struggling with other bills, she said. organizations published a similar set of “As a contract worker, you definitely feel demands March 31. like an outcast,” she said.

Trask said that activists’ pressure in the form Another on-campus contract worker of a list of demands published March 17 in has had a similar experience. She also The Chronicle played no role in his decision to wished to remain anonymous in this article ensure pay for full-time contract workers. for fear of retribution.

“They sent me 100 copies of the [demand This second contract worker used to letter] but it didn’t help,” Trask said. work 40 hours a week at an on-campus Even Duke-employed food service dining location, but now she works just workers face an uncertain future.

20 hours a week at an off-campus affiliate The perks of being a Duke-employed location and struggles to make ends meet. food service worker include health She said she never got any basic benefits insurance with a $20 co-pay, vision and FROM PAGE 10

The Chronicle

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dental insurance, access to a health and wellness program, a retirement plan and sick leave, according to Gooch.

Duke employees also are receiving paid time off with benefits guaranteed from at least March 24 to May 31, Gooch said.

These workers, however, face tremendous uncertainty going forward.

Duke hasn’t said if its food service employees will continue to be paid after May 31, when, according to Trask, hours are traditionally cut because of decreased student traffic in the summer. In addition, Local 77’s contract is set to expire June 30, leaving Gooch fearing Duke could cut back on benefits for union workers, and perhaps lay some off.

Trask told The Chronicle that the University is currently in negotiations with the union and says not to expect “major changes.”

“I hope he keeps his word,” Gooch said.

But like many others during the pandemic, Duke is facing financial issues that could leave it hurting more than it did during the 2008 financial crisis, Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, told The Chronicle in early April. In April, the University began a hiring freeze for nonessential employees, and put most raises on hold starting July 1.

Duke announced last week that it would suspend University-paid contributions to a retirement plan for faculty and staff and cut salaries for highly compensated employees for the next 12 months.

It will be a tough job market for contract workers, Gooch fears. In North Carolina, more than a million people have filed for unemployment since March 15.

“This is worse than the Great Depression.

The poor people will pay for this after all this happens,” Gooch said. “They’re going to cut jobs.”

TRACKING FROM PAGE 11 in the nursing homes of Washington State because of COVID-19, I burst into tears and felt deeply sad for them, their family and friends and everyone whose life has been impacted by the pandemic,” Zuo wrote.

“People on the team never really forgot that each of the numbers we have is an individual. And that was especially strong in the beginning,” Sun said.

Sun explained that as the U.S. caseload increased, county governments no longer had the capability to release detailed patient information, so the tracker’s team had to stop updating the status of each person in their database.

“It was hard to see that go because I feel like being able to look at each of the people who passed away was a sign of humanity for the people on the team.

Does it make sense for data science to be efficient? Probably not. But does it make sense for us as human beings to pay respect in this way? Yes. It was very hard for us to let go of being able to update every person who passed away,” Sun said.

Despite the hard work and emotional challenges, Sun and Zuo expressed that their experiences volunteering for the tracker have been very rewarding.

“Despite the emotional challenges, there were many moments of joy.

From receiv ing appreciation messages from users to gaining more attention on media, from receiv ing more than a million website v isits to shar ing data w ith organizations like CD C and JHU, we have come a long way to become one of the largest independent data sources across Nor th Amer ica and I feel ver y proud of the impact we

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INTERNET FROM PAGE 5

citing that some neighbors had started doing so a few weeks prior. The tipping point came when she received a new laptop through the Rubenstein Scholars Program as an incoming first-year.

The MacBook didn’t have a port for an Ethernet cord.

Cupil-Garcia said that the family purchased the cheapest, most barebones Wi-Fi plan offered by Spectrum, which came with challenges. When using Wi-Fi, Cupil-Garcia has to be in the same room as the modem. As soon as she steps out, “the internet gets really iffy,” she said.

In the second week of school after spring break, the Wi-Fi disconnected for two days. When Cupil-Garcia called Spectrum’s customer service, the representative said that the poor connection was likely due to the plan that she has, and that she should upgrade to the next-most-affordable plan offered, which costs triple the amount her family is paying now.

After Cupil-Garcia said upgrading would not be financially feasible, the representative tried recovering her internet connection by adjusting the channels, which worked for a week until the Wi-Fi disconnected again.

During the initial two days without Wi-Fi, Cupil-Garcia looked for advice from a few of her friends, including senior Jamal Burns, co-president of Duke LIFE. He suggested that she reach out to Ford, who responded with the link to the application form for a hotspot loan from Duke.

Cupil-Garcia’s hotspot request was accepted three hours after her submission. It took a week and a half for the machine to arrive. Even though she was able to receive extensions for most of her work, Cupil-Garcia recalled feeling “stressed to the point where [she] couldn’t work,” noting the difficult transition from attending college with “DukeBlue” Wi-Fi and multiple libraries to doing the same work with a minimal internet connection and her bed as her desk.

“It was kind of like a vicious cycle of when I didn’t have internet I wasn’t able to do work, but sometimes when the internet came back up I would just be so upset that I would just sit and stare at the wall and be like, ‘What has my life come to?’” she said.

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 15

smaller spare bedroom that could barely fit a mattress, which further disrupted her studies.

“I remember not telling my friends because they’re ver y high-income. One of my friends said ‘I just turned my basement into a workspace,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t even have a basement,’” she said. “They wouldn’t really understand.”

On top of COVID-19 and lack of internet access, Tarin also has the added stress of caring for her 18-monthold nephew full time. Her sister, who works at Wendy’s, where her hours were reduced because of the coronavirus, had to stop hiring a babysitter.

Tarin could only study at night, when her sister or one of her parents returned home and could take care of the toddler. During online classes, she would occupy her nephew with her cell phone in the hope that he would stay quiet for an hour.

The pre-law student rejected the notion that COVID-19 is “the great equalizer,” which public figures like Madonna and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have dubbed the virus. In fact, Tarin said, the disease has deepened inequalities, with unequal internet access being one of the many ways in which the gap has widened between socioeconomic statuses.

Tarin recalled that in her first year, she shared with a friend from an upper-class background that she doesn’t have Wi-Fi at home, and he was “very shocked.”

“I think it’s important that other Duke students consider… how the other half lives,” she said.

Cupil-Garcia also recognized that some Duke students may have trouble imagining life without the internet.

“In this day and age, you wouldn’t expect people to not have internet, but internet is expensive,” she said. “Like, what should I have, internet or food on the table?”

Nina Wilder | V. 115 Recess Editor

made,” Zuo w rote.

Both Zuo and Sun said that they plan to remain working for the tracker as long as their services are needed.

“The best scenario I can hope for is that I get fired from the tracker job... because the situation is getting normalized. I have never hoped to get put out of a job so desperately,” Sun said.

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‘They wouldn’t really understand’

Cupil-Garcia said returning home in the midst of classes harshly reminded her of her low-income status.

“At Duke, you’re constantly reminded by social barriers that you’re lowincome, but it doesn’t deter you from doing well in your classes or having basic needs, because you have Wi-Fi and a library to work [in],” she said.

“Coming back home, being low-income really stands out.”

In March, part of Cupil-Garcia’s bedroom ceiling fell because of a termite infestation. While her stepdad, who works in construction, repaired the roof, she had to move into a much

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ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 1

THE PUSH FOR DIVESTMENT

By Margot Armbruster Contributing Reporter

Nathan Iyer Contributing Reporter

Thirty-five years ago, a group of 50 students gathered outside the Allen Building, chanting, “Duke, Duke, we can’t hide. We know we support apartheid. Divest now.”

They demanded that Duke divest its holdings operating in apartheid South Africa. By May 1986, after campouts and class strikes, the Duke Board of Trustees, like those at hundreds of universities across the country, relented.

The combined divestments fueled international pressure, contributing to the racist South African regime’s ultimate collapse. College students, by leveraging their schools’ financial and social power, had helped drive real change.

In 2014, students once again called on Duke to sell holdings, this time in fossil fuel corporations that they condemned for funnelling billions of dollars into killing climate change legislation, polarizing the public and spreading disinformation. Duke declined.

Two years ago, Duke students made another push for fossil fuel divestment.

But after thousands of petition signatures, dozens of events, 11 Chronicle op-eds, 96 pages of memos and a unanimous Duke Student Government Senate resolution, Duke refused to commit to divestment. (Both authors of this piece attended meetings of the Duke Climate Coalition, a prodivestment group, during this time period, and one wrote an op-ed in The Chronicle supporting divestment.)

We spoke to student divestment leaders and administrators to learn from their experience.

Students told us a story about bureaucratic inertia, delay and what they consider a battle for the future of our fragile planet. Administrators, however, argue that divestment would accomplish nothing because Duke’s fossil fuel holdings are very small.

What follows is the history of the push for fossil fuel divestment at Duke, and of the clashing perspectives that have prevented it from happening.

2012: Doing the math

It was November 2012. Author and environmentalist Bill McKibben had booked a talk at Duke. His mission: convince the campus and the world to “do the math” on climate change, then mobilize to avert global catastrophe.

The math in question first appeared that summer in a viral front-page Rolling Stone article, where McKibben broke down the climate crisis in three numbers: two, 565 and 2,795. Two degrees Celsius, the conservative consensus for the rise in global temperatures beyond which consequences like extreme weather, rising seas and food shortages threaten civilization itself; 565 billion tons, the carbon dioxide we can burn and stay within that two-degree limit; 2,795 billion tons, the weight of known fossil fuel reserves. If you do the math, you will realize we have to keep 80% of known reserves in the ground.

Oil companies are betting against this goal, and they possess staggering geopolitical power.

In 2011, oil producers spent $150 million lobbying American legislators against climate action and received $20 billion in direct federal subsidies from the United States alone. So McKibben, who has covered the ecological crisis since the 1980s, set out to take on Goliath with a new strategy—divestment.

In theory, divestment is simple: You sell any stock you or your company holds in the top 200 fossil fuel producers, then make a public commitment never to reinvest. A 2013 Carbon Tracker study showed that over the next decade, producers will spend up to $6.74 trillion tapping fossil fuel reserves that would be “unburnable” under the two-degree goal. By halting money flows from banks, governments and institutions like universities, divestment sends a market signal for clean energy transition.

Divestment may also make financial sense, with the energy sector underperforming the general market. Expensive fossil infrastructure risks becoming “stranded” as climate policies worldwide reduce demand and prioritize

cleaner alternatives. And divestment proponents argue it helps fight the far-ranging consequences of climate collapse, which include novel diseases, climate migration and food insecurity, among many others.

2012 and 2013: A Fringe Cause

Corrie Hannah, Nicholas School ‘18, got on board. In 2012, she was a first-semester Ph.D. candidate, researching Tajikistan’s water governance and trying to get involved on campus. McKibben, after wrapping up his speaking tour, dispatched a representative to recruit student divestment leaders. Hannah attended an interest meeting on campus, and Divest Duke was born.

In the beginning, it was slow going. The 10-to-15-person team relied heavily on the playbook (both figurative and literal—after we spoke on the phone, Hannah sent us a 34page Duke Partnership for Service handbook

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A HISTORY

on “How to Advocate for Investment Responsibility at Duke”) of previous divestment movements, which included the South Africa protests of the 1980s, a successful push to divest from Sudan in 2007 and Duke’s 2012 commitment to shareholder advocacy against conflict minerals.

Divest Duke collected around 100 petition signatures, put flyers on cars during basketball games and worked for the revival of the Advisory Council on Investment Responsibility, which then-President Richard Brodhead eventually reinstated in December 2013.

In Spring 2013, Divest Duke drew up a proposal informed by the University’s broader environmental policy—since 2007, Duke has claimed to be on track for carbon neutrality by 2024, though this plan has notable caveats— and marched into Brodhead’s office hours.

See DIVESTMENT on Page 11

Chronicle File Photo Students held a rally in front of the Allen Building in 2014 to promote divestment

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Table of Contents Divestment History....................Pg. 1 Common Experience pick.......Pg. 3 Student spending.......................Pg. 4 Best photos 2019-20..................Pg. 5 DukeALERT recap....................Pg. 6 Academic freedom at DKU.....Pg. 7

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‘Know My Name’ chosen for Common Experience

By Carter Forinash News Editor

This year’s Duke Common Experience summer reading book will give members of the Class of 2024 a chance to grapple with themes of sexual assault and self-empowerment before starting their first year at Duke.

“Know My Name: A Memoir,” by Chanel Miller, was announced in a May 5 news release as this year’s Common Experience pick. Miller wrote the memoir to give her own perspective on having been a victim of sexual assault, the trial of perpetrator Brock Turner—then a student at Stanford University—and her path to cope with the aftermath.

Miller will speak to the incoming class in person or virtually, according to the news release.

“Know My Name” was picked by a 14-person committee. The committee brings in input from Duke faculty and staff, but also includes rising seniors.

The group doesn’t come to the table with a specific topic in mind, but instead tries to choose a book that will generate meaningful conversations. There are no set criteria, but “Know My Name” was an easy choice, Kevin Erixson, DukeCreate director and a member of the selection committee, wrote in an email. Erixson wrote that the memoir was at or near the top of everyone’s list.

Although the committee makes the final call, nominations for the Common Experience summer reading book can come from anywhere. The committee sends out a link to the Duke community, and often ends up with suggestions from

faculty, students and alumni, according to Jordan Hale, director of New Student Programs and associate dean of housing and residence life.

This year, “Know My Name” was picked from a list of more than 75 recommendations, just ahead of three other finalists: “The Nickel Boys”

by Colson Whitehead, “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid and “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi.

Hale lauded Miller’s “bravery, honesty, integrity and raw emotions,” but he also recognized that the book may be a challenging read for some students. While the Common Experience summer reading program is run by the Office of New Student Programs, that office is working with the Duke Women’s Center to lead book discussions over the summer.

“Anyone can join those discussions and the team in the Women’s Center will read the book with students starting in mid-June,” Hale wrote in an email. “The group will read two chapters a week then come together to discuss the content from those chapters.”

The First-Year Advisory Counselor program will help take the lead in guiding students through the book. FACs usually help lead student discussions during orientation week, leading up to a visit from the author.

Given their central role in guiding conversations about the Common Experience reading, FACs will get extra training to make sure that they’re equipped for this fall’s discussions.

“We are also making some shifts in FAC training to prepare FACs to cover the content in a way that practices empathy and gives See EXPERIENCE on Page 11

"We can't overestimate the value of a Classics major. Check this out: according to Association of American Medical Colleges, students who major or double-major in Classics have a better success rate getting into medical school than do students who concentrate solely in biology, microbiology, and other branches of science. Crazy, huh? Furthermore, according to Harvard Magazine, Classics majors (and math majors) have the highest success rates of any majors in law school. Believe it or not political science, economics, and pre-law majors lag fairly far behind. Even furthermore, Classics majors consistently have some of the highest scores on GREs of all undergraduates."

—The Princeton Review

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By Mona Tong Assistant News Editor

Irene Park Staff Reporter

$2500 per month, with most falling in the $20$500 range. About 42% of students paid for their spending using personal income, 14% used parent income and 44% used a mix of both personal and parent income. In general, students who spent less often used personal income, whereas those who spent more often used a mix of parent and personal income.

The Chronicle also spoke with some students to dive deeper into their spending habits. Most students indicated that they spend most of their money on basic necessities like toiletries or school supplies, and both the survey and interview responses revealed the most common reasons for personal spending is off-campus meals, ride-booking services like Uber, groceries and toiletries.

Sophomore Maddie Paris, who spends an average of $25 per month, wrote in an email that she typically never buys anything unless she needs it. She never spends money going to Shooters, shopping for clothes online or paying for an Uber on her own.

Most students attributed their spending habits to personal choices. The majority valued frugality, even if their families’ financial backgrounds would have allowed for more generous spending.

Junior Adam Snowden, for example, explained that he has always tended to live under his means. Although he said he is fortunate to come from a financially stable family, he said it is his “personal choice” to be very frugal, spending only on basic necessities, which he was taught from a young age.

Ubers and shopping and Shooters, oh my!

The Chronicle conducted an informal survey of 57 participants, where students answered questions about their monthly personal spending, the source of their spending money and what they spent it on. The answers to these questions varied widely.

Even before considering personal expenses, the total cost of attendance for Duke for the 2020-21 academic year will be $76,270. To compare, the median family income of Duke students is more than $186,000, according to The New York Times.

Although 70% of students come from the top 20% income bracket, 52% of Duke students still receive some form of financial aid. There are also need-based merit scholarships like the David M. Rubenstein Scholars Program, which fully funds a fouryear Duke education for “exceptional, firstgeneration, low-income students,” according to the Rubenstein Scholars website.

When determining the amount of aid to provide, Duke’s financial aid office estimates that students will spend an average of $2,206 per year on personal expenses, such as “spending money and other costs that students may want to consider when arriving on campus,” according to the website.

The survey asked students to state how much they spend, on average, “in disposable expenses during one month at Duke.” This excludes any costs Balancing work and play Students The Chronicle spoke to also made included in tuition, such as food points. The survey may be subject to bias because students elected to sure to budget for fun, many of them working respond and self-reported numbers. one or multiple on-campus jobs to help pay for The survey responses ranged from $0 to activities like off-campus meals, ride-booking

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How do students spend money?

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services, entry to bars and beach week. Students tended to be quite selective and intentional about what type of “fun” they chose to spend on, however.

Snowden noted that he has been able to balance being social and living frugally. He finds that people are often understanding when he asks to do a less-expensive activity or choose a less-expensive restaurant.

He said he also saves money throughout the year for beach week because it’s something he enjoys, and he will allocate money for opportunities unique to Duke. For example, he wouldn’t spend money to see a movie, but he would buy a ticket for a Hoof ‘n’ Horn show because his friends are in it.

Sophomore JJ Jiang, who spends around $125 per month, wrote in an email that since all her spending comes from personal income, she works two jobs on campus and

has a stipend-based fellowship. About threequarters of the money she makes goes toward savings or tuition, which allows her to feel more comfortable spending money.

She noted that she keeps careful track of all her spending through a separate app that categorizes how much she spends and on what.

“I try to prioritize spending on experiences, especially with other people, rather than material items, since having those memories to look back on and moments with friends is important to me,” Jiang wrote in an email.

Even so, students limit off-campus meals to special occasions or once-in-a-while treats for the most part, preferring to rely on their prepaid food points when the option is available.

See MONEY on Page 11

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DukeALERT recap: Less crime, lots of inclement weather

By Nadia Bey University News Editor

Two DukeALERTs were issued for crime and four for inclement weather from June 2019 to May 2020.

The academic year saw a decrease in crime-related DukeALERTs, with the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic years having three each. DukeALERTs are sent at the discretion of the University in emergency situations and are not issued for all oncampus crimes.

There was no DukeALERT issued for the theft that occurred in Gilbert-Addoms residence hall in November 2019.

A DukeALERT reported an armed robbery near 1400 Morreene Road that took place around 9 a.m.. The suspect “approached a vehicle that pulled up to [an] ATM, displayed a knife and demanded money,” according to the alert.

The event was not near Duke’s main campus, but the address is close to the Duke Health and Fitness Center, the Duke Center for Living and other University-affiliated buildings.

Oct. 11, 2019

At 3:55 p.m. a DukeALERT reported a shooting at the BP Station at 2432 Erwin Road.

The victim was sitting in a car in the gas station’s parking lot when shots were fired from another vehicle with at least two people in it, Durham Police Department spokeswoman Kammie Michael told The Chronicle at the time. The victim’s car then rolled onto Erwin Road and collided with two other vehicles. The suspect fled west on Erwin Road in a black Jeep, according to the alert.

The victim, who was not affiliated with the University, was transported to Duke Hospital and treated in the emergency department.

Oct. 31, 2019; Feb. 6, 2020; Apr. 13, 2020

Three DukeALERTs were issued for tornado warnings during the 2019-2020 academic year, occurring Oct. 31, Feb. 6 and Apr. 13.

The Feb. 6 notification stated that there was no threat to campus but that the heavy rainfall that passed through the area had an impact on facilities.

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Oct. 3, 2019

At 2:55 p.m. that day, residents of Pegram and Alspaugh like North Carolina State University and the University of dorms were notified that the power would be shut off for at North Carolina at Chapel Hill. least an hour due to a maintenance issue caused by flooding, “Temperatures will drop below freezing after midnight, which according to emails from East Campus housing staff. could lead to icy patches on roads and walkways,” the DukeALERT read. “Please plan ahead and allow extra time and use caution when Feb. 20, 2020 traveling to and around campus during this time.”

It wasn’t a full snow day, but this DukeALERT notified students Most external stairs and steep inclines were closed for safety, and that the severe weather policy would be activated from 7 to 10 a.m. members of the community were encouraged to take alternate paths. An the next day after the first snowfall of the year. As a result, classes update was sent the morning of Feb. 21 stating that crews had worked in before 10 a.m. Feb. 21 were canceled. the evening and early morning hours to treat surfaces with ice melt and The decision followed suit with other Triangle universities that buses and vans were expected to run as usual by 8 a.m.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 7

FEATURE | The Kunshan Report

A student’s perspective on academic freedom at DKU

By Tanya Torchylo Contributing Writer

Undergraduate students at Duke Kunshan University in China contribute written and multimedia content to The Chronicle.

When I tell somebody I’m studying at Duke Kunshan University in China, a frequent response is, “How does academic freedom work on campus?”

I’m from Ukraine, a post-Soviet country which for years has been trying to eradicate any remains of the USSR. Communism, in the eyes of Ukrainians, was an evil machine destroying our national identity, suppressing the elite and killing those who spoke out— and those who didn’t.

For Ukrainians, embracing the Soviet mentality and political structure means a return to a time of atrocities.

And here I am, studying for four years in a communist country. Although I knew that DKU was designed in the American liberal arts fashion and promised to cultivate students into globally rooted citizens, I still had my doubts. The program is located in China and financed in part by the city of Kunshan. Getting a “red” education was my greatest fear.

I did not want to be forced to blindly follow party propaganda and be taught the values of communism, because that would mean betrayal. A betrayal of my ancestors who starved to death in the 1930s. A betrayal of my great-grandfather, who was sent to a labor

colony in Siberia for his ideas and opinions. A betrayal of my values and national identity.

But I decided to give DKU a chance.

And now, as a rising sophomore, I know for sure that I’ll be graduating with the furthest thing from a “red” education.

Throughout my freshman year, I stood witness to numerous instances of DKU encouraging students to engage in critical discussions about China and China’s politics in and outside of the classroom. My very first semester started with an economics professor debating Mao Zedong’s socialist economic planning and a public policy professor assigning an essay to analyze whether China had mishandled the 2005 Jilin chemical plant explosions. As the year progressed, I saw even more striking examples of the university facilitating these kinds of conversations.

As students adapted to the uncharted waters of academia in a country where controversial subjects are considered taboo, I heard more and more discussion regarding the Hong Kong protests or the mistreatment of Uyghurs. I can think of instances where I slept through microeconomics lectures after midnight conversations with my Chinese roommate and friends about the domestic news media ecosystem.

“I do not think the government is always telling us the truth,” one of my Chinese friends said the other evening, as we were debating news coverage of the Taiwanese elections.

Her remark sounded casual yet so surreal for me. During their lives, Chinese students are

exposed to a propaganda campaign which they are not allowed to vocally disagree. However, the safe zone of DKU’s academic freedom gives them, as well as all international students from more than 40 countries worldwide, the chance to learn without any politically or socially constructed limits.

While DKU obviously wants its students to understand the basics of Chinese language, culture, and history, it clearly deviates from the traditional path of domestic universities regarding academic freedom on campus. My final fears of getting an education influenced by propaganda vanished when I heard Chinese students juxtapose the curriculum for China in the World, a freshman core course, with their prior education about China in primary and secondary schools. The course presents a nuanced view of China’s domestic and international spheres of influence in the last century, focusing on topics pertaining to science, trade and warfare.

Instead of simply toeing the party line, the course asks students to engage amongst themselves to find common ground and ideologies to debate, aided by the diverse backgrounds of the students. Do modern Chinese views on race and eugenics stem from traditional Confucian values of human “quality?” Are China’s efforts to expand its infrastructure network through the Belt and Road Initiative an attempt to return to a tributary trade system? What are the benefits and drawbacks to a multipolar world where the Chinese military maintains a presence to rival that of the United States?

These questions and more form the ethos of the course and encourage us to consider a multitude of perspectives.

Built as a joint Sino-US venture, DKU was not able to develop platforms solely centered on the United States or China. Instead, the University has become an unprecedented mix

Wendy Wen | Contributing Photographer Duke Kunshan University, outside Shanghai

of the best educational and scientific practices.

DKU is a bridge to connect East and West, rather than an establishment serving the political interest of one.

Of course, DKU, as a China-based university, must navigate Chinese law. DKU must require all students from the Chinese mainland to take physical education classes and military training, just as it must require students from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau to take Chinese Society and Culture courses.

Nevertheless, academic freedom at DKU has never been a matter of intervention. Academic freedom is the very essence of the program.

Coming to DKU, I was afraid I would be studying at a university that would force me to pursue an education shaped by communist propaganda, but where I ended up was a completely different place. DKU is a place that constantly forces me to step out of my comfort zone and engage in cross-cultural discussions that are limited only by one’s imagination.

DKU forces me to argue and collaborate. It forces me to challenge what I believe. And above all, it forces me to become a truly globally rooted citizen.

Tanya Torchylo is a first-year in the secondever graduating class of the Duke Kunshan campus’s undergraduate program, located outside Shanghai, China.

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FALL ‘20

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DIVESTMENT FROM PAGE 1 “And they were like, ‘Well, that’s nice, but we can’t do anything,’” Hannah recalled.

They had hoped to secure Brodhead as an early ally, but Hannah said he talked about secret, not-to-be-tampered-with investment algorithms and said he would need more evidence to divest.

“I just felt like he was in this ivory tower that had no connection to the students at all,” she said. Brodhead did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Divestment, in those early days, was sometimes a hard sell even to fellow environmentalists. Laughing, Hannah told us how one meeting with an animal conservation club went rapidly south.

“I mean, we were not popular,” she said.

In Fall 2013, as her doctoral coursework intensified, Hannah took a step back from Divest Duke, but other Blue Devils flocked to the cause.

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“It wasn’t a collaborative effort, though we would have loved for it to be,” she said.

2015 and 2016: Forging ahead

Though discouraged, the Divest Duke leaders forged on, writing administrators “divestment valentines” and hosting faculty panels on climate policy. In the fall of 2015, they merged with organizers pressuring Duke to use corporate shareholder power to push for renewable energy, forming the Duke Climate Coalition.

Rachel Weber, Trinity ‘16, had become involved that spring and led divestment efforts until her graduation.

She remembered coalition-building with organizations like the Black Student Alliance, hosting a staged wedding between Duke and fossil fuels and attracting local reporters to ACIR open forums—but more than anything she recalled how working on divestment felt. “[Administrators] make it purposely really hard to get the information that you need to do your job right, and you spend so much time wading through the bullshit of how that 2013 to 2015: “It wasn’t enough” works just to uncover the information that One of those recruits was then-doctoral you need,” she said. candidate Danica Shaffer-Smith, Nicholas By her senior year, she was burned out.

School ‘18. Like Hannah, Shaffer-Smith joined Divest Duke for its 2012 beginnings. Her 2017 to 2019: A New Hope work centered on a ferocious research and Following Weber’s graduation, divestment awareness campaign spanning several months organizing lay dormant for about a year until in Fall 2013.

Seaver Wang, Nicholas School ‘19, and Ethan Divest Duke scheduled a meeting with ACIR Miller, Trinity ‘19, took up the mantle. for December 2013. In the semester leading up According to Weber and Miller, Cox to the meeting, they held an official campus had staunchly opposed divestment, but launch—expanding their reach beyond the his replacement as ACIR chair, Lawrence Nicholas School of the Environment—and Baxter, David T. Zhang professor of the began building student support with the help practice of law, shared concerns about the of a Green Corps organizer. climate crisis.

They protested the Keystone XL pipeline When we interviewed him, Baxter said that at in front of Perkins Library. They persuaded the time he asked DCC to put together research on alumni to call Brodhead’s office hundreds of divestment because ACIR had “no resources” to times. They tabled for weeks, collecting 3,457 work with. So Wang and Miller jumped through signatures on a divestment petition. the hoops, drafting four research-heavy memos to A scroll through the now-dormant address ACIR’s concerns.

Divest Duke Facebook page reveals dozens ACIR’s 2014 report had argued divestment of striking portraits. One depicts a group would serve a primarily symbolic function, of stone-faced students lined up in front of claiming that divesting Duke’s minimal the Chapel, holding a sign with the phrase direct holdings would have little impact on “it’s time to end this toxic relationship” the global market. In their 2018 response, scrawled in red and black. Other photos DCC highlighted the collective momentum show students standing on Abele Quad, on of divesting universities, pension funds and the Marketplace steps, in the Bryan Center, sovereign wealth funds. The students also signs aloft or arms linked with Durham proposed partial divestment from coal and community members. oil sands, two industries notorious for heavy The divestment campaign earned national pollution and low profit margins. attention, and student leaders, though unable In addition, the 2014 ACIR report to access data proprietary to Duke Management claimed “sufficient discourse on the topic” Company (DUMAC)—the corporation had not occurred, and that Duke should managing Duke’s investments—made real offer companies “reasonable opportunity investigative progress. Shaffer-Smith estimates to alter [their] activities.” In response, DCC the core team devoted 50 hours per week to argued that fossil fuel corporations have drafting a proposal for ACIR. undermined honest discourse for decades by “It was comparable to trying to prepare to funding misinformation. After citing several meet with the Senate,” she recalls. examples of coordinated industry attacks And it wasn’t enough. Divest Duke met with on climate science, the students argued ACIR once in December 2013, again in April 2014 that “such actions suggest that fossil fuel and twice in October 2014 before ACIR, then led corporations are unlikely to debate climate

by James Cox, Brainerd Currie professor of law, policy in good faith, and that any efforts by published its November 2014 Report on Fossil Duke University to promote positive change Fuels, which stated there was “a lack of clarity that via shareholder advocacy will likely fail to divestment will have the desired impact.” produce meaningful results.”

“I feel like we did everything we were In April 2018, DCC met with ACIR, then asked,” Shaffer-Smith said. “And it wasn’t responded to the committee’s concerns and enough, and we didn’t know what would be drafted a formal divestment resolution. They enough for the administration.” won allies across campus: DCC collaborated She described a tantalizing dance between with the Duke Interdisciplinary Social students and administrators. Just when Innovators on a 40-page report summarizing leaders thought they had a handle on ACIR’s the financial case for divestment, the investment criteria, they would be met with DSG Senate voted unanimously to call for a new counterargument, which, given their divestment and a majority of the Graduate limited resources and data access, they couldn’t and Professional Student Council supported always parry. the measure. Students also met with the “It was like jumping for a moving bar without Executive Committee of the Academic having any sense of where it was,” she said.

Council to discuss a faculty resolution Cox did not respond to a request for backing divestment. Expecting support from comment for this story.

ACIR, DCC leaders decided to delay the Throughout, Shaffer-Smith said she and faculty vote so that any Academic Council the rest of the Divest Duke team felt exploited decision could align with a pro-divestment by administrators unwilling to share in the ACIR recommendation. research work.

DCC also nominated three members

to join the Fossil Fuel Investment (FFI) ACIR subcommittee, allowing them to see DUMAC’s proprietary investment data after signing nondisclosure agreements. Wang and Miller’s hope was that by bolstering community support with their hundreds of research hours, they could make divestment an irresistible position.

ACIR rejected the DCC resolution more than a year later, in May 2019. The report both reiterated existing talking points and added new objections. Divestment, ACIR argued, would constitute “polarizing” hypocrisy and set an “ambiguous precedent.” The report stated that “the [FFI] Subcommittee concluded that divestment would not be an effective contribution to the reduction of [greenhouse gas emissions]. Accordingly, the Subcommittee recommended, and the ACIR unanimously agreed, against a mandate to DUMAC to divest.”

After thousands of hours of activist work and support from two generations of students, every ACIR member had voted to oppose divestment. But why did the FFI subcommittee—which included DCC’s leaders—recommend against divestment?

Read the rest of this story, including the reasons divestment didn’t happen and the administrative perspective on the issue, at chron.it/divestment Editor’s Note: Margot Armbruster, one of the authors of this piece, is also an opinion managing editor for The Chronicle.

MONEY FROM PAGE 4 “I would feel guilty going off campus to eat and would much rather use food points on campus,” said sophomore Evelyn Sturrock, who spends about $100 per month. However, she noted that she would like to spend more on the Durham restaurant scene if money were not a concern.

Plenty to do on campus

Junior Samuel Rabinowitz said he spends roughly $7 every two weeks on things like splitting an Uber ride, getting an off-campus meal or paying for entry to a club. Although he is conscious about everything he spends, Rabinowitz said he doesn’t feel limited in his spending because there are always food points and free events to take advantage of on campus.

“There’s nothing really motivating me to spend money when there’s so many options that don’t require it,” he said. “I think that’s very much because I have so much provided by Duke. Here, there’s so many things that are just free for leisure.

They have screenings for movies that are free all the time. There’s so much you can do that doesn’t require much money.”

Even in a friend group that may like to go out a lot, he said that there are still on-campus options that are almost like going out, such as free movie screenings by Duke University Union’s Freewater Presentations and parties held by social groups that don’t require an entry fee.

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 11

spends roughly $30 per month wrote in the survey, “I’m poor. Not supported by my parents.

On full financial aid. Duke provides me with all my basic necessities.”

Budgeting for the future

In terms of budgeting, many students have organized personal financial plans in place.

Sturrock, for example, has a fairly regular work schedule and consistent pay per month that allow her to budget in advance. That usually means putting at least half of her paycheck into savings and the remainder into car insurance, gas and other necessary expenses.

Other students also have the future in mind when it comes to spending. For example, Paris thinks especially of her early post-college years.

“I’m trying to save as much as possible by the time I graduate so I have some place to start,” she wrote in an email. “My parents would help me get settled right out of college, but I’d like to start out on my own.”

Rabinowitz also noted that he spends frugally and works various jobs on campus so he can save up for after college as a “buffer” before getting a job.

Snowden shared that thoughts about his future also play a role in shaping his spending habits today. Regardless of his financial situation, he knows he wants to help provide for his family.

“Now, I want to live as far below by any means possible versus when I’m older and maybe have medical needs, have kids and their needs, and I have to provide for them,” he explained. “I think a large part of that is reflecting on that and trying to prepare myself far for the future.”

This story is part of the wealth gap series, in which The Chronicle explored how wealth disparities affect the student experience at Duke.

You can find the rest of the series online at chron. it/wealthgap

EXPERIENCE FROM PAGE 3

adequate trigger warnings since this can be a triggering topic,” Hale wrote.

The committee tries to make sure that the Common Experience selection is paired with a chance to hear from the author. Once the committee narrows their list to a top 10, they reach out to authors to ensure that they are both available and affordable—which informs the final book choice, Hale wrote.

Along with addressing an important topic for incoming first-years, Erixson wrote that the characters in the memoir are relatable to students, giving the book an extra layer for students to identify with.

The Common Experience program began in 2001 and brings incoming first-years together to read the same book over the summer, usually culminating in orientation week discussions and a chance to hear from the book’s author. Reading the book is a recommendation rather than a requirement, as students aren’t graded on it.

Feeling left out To make it as easy as possible to read the Snowden said that at Duke, it’s easy to be book, copies are mailed to members of the surrounded by people who are more comfortable incoming first-year class—in this case, a special spending money and to feel almost “left out” if printed edition. you don’t want to spend as much.

The books are usually chosen to One thing that he said he feels a little left spark discussion on complicated topics. out from, he said, is the fall break, spring Duke’s recent Class of 2020 graduates break and summer trips that others go on. read “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson, a However, Snowden acknowledged that legal memoir about the fight to free an his spending habits are purely a “personal African American man wrongly convicted decision.” It would be different, and maybe of murder, which was later adapted into a even slightly alienating, had he come popular movie. from a more economically disadvantaged Duke made national news in 2015 after background, he said. assigning “Fun Home,” Alison Bechdel’s Paris echoed similar sentiments that spending graphic-novel memoir, which touches on could be a much more difficult issue for less-affluent sexuality and complicated family dynamics. students, such as the stress and worry of balancing Some students refused to read the book, money with costly social activities. complaining that it was “pornographic” and Although The Chronicle was not able to therefore ran afoul of their religious beliefs. reach any students who identified themselves Others claimed that choosing the book was as low-income, one survey respondent who insensitive to conservatives.

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12 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

Regardless, we’ll be there

a note from our editor-in-chief When Duke announced classes were moving online, I knew it meant an end to impassioned discussions over meals at the Brodhead Center, cheering on the basketball team at watch parties and late nights in The Chronicle’s office at 301 Flowers. But as a student journalist, I knew the most important part of my time at Duke had just begun.

Students were scattered to the winds, forced to adapt to remote learning and make do without many of their belongings.

Administrators had to make quick decisions about who could stay on campus and how classes would be graded.

In a moment like this, it’s been up to The Chronicle to keep the community informed about the evolving situation. We’ve worked to put out fast and accurate information about policy changes and the local situation.

We knew administrators, themselves scrambling to figure out this new reality, would make mistakes or adopt inequitable policies—

“I haven’t written them a check yet, but I consider myself having donated yearly. I’m just deducting it from the total of scam parking fines I got while an undergrad there.”

—Patrick Meeks on alumni donating to Duke, from Facebook

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.

and we’ve held them accountable when they have.

We covered the chaotic process of deciding which international students could stay on campus, and the harrowing situation of part-time contract workers who are no longer being paid.

We’ve also captured the community at its best, as it banded together in a time of need. We covered the University’s commitment of millions of dollars to support students and its effort to reunite them with their belongings. We shone a spotlight on the students who banded together to donate almost $22,000 to community members impacted by the pandemic.

As Duke’s newspaper of record, we’ve documented this unique moment in history.

We recorded administrators’ Herculean efforts to respond to the crisis. We captured the experiences of students without reliable internet access and seniors who had to say painfully abrupt goodbyes.

The coronavirus made the mission of serving the Duke community more immediate than ever, and it’s

Matthew Griffin

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MATTHEW GRIFFIN, Editor EVAN KOLIN, Sports Editor CARTER FORINASH, News Editor MONA TONG, Assistant News Editor MARIA MORRISON, Managing Editor ROSE WONG, Senior Editor JAKE SATISKY, Digital Strategy Director SIMRAN PRAKASH, Photography Editor MIHIR BELLAMKONDA, Opinion Editor SARAH DERRIS, Recess Editor CHRISSY BECK, General Manager REBECCA SCHNEID SCHNEID, Sports Photography Editor SHANE SMITH, Sports Managing Editor JACKSON MURAIKA MURAIKA, Assistant Sports Photography Editor MASON BERGER BERGER, Video Editor AARON ZHAO ZHAO, Features Photography Editor MARY HELEN WOOD WOOD, Audio Editor BELLA BANN, Photography Social Media Editor NADIA BEY BEY, University News Editor MARGOT ARMBRUSTER ARMBRUSTER, Opinion Managing Editor LEAH BOYD BOYD, University News Editor NICHOLAS CHRAPLIWY CHRAPLIWY, Opinion Managing Editor PRIYA PARKASH, University News Editor VICTORIA PRIESTER PRIESTER, Opinion Managing Editor PREETHA RAMACHANDRAN, University News Editor SYDNY LONG, Recess Managing Editor WILLIAM HE HE, Local and National News Editor BEN WALLACE, Community Editorial Board Chair ANNA ZOLOTOR ZOLOTOR, Local and National News Editor ASHWIN KULSHRESTHA KULSHRESTHA, Health and Science News Editor RYAN WILLIAMS, Community Editorial Board Chair SHANNON FANG, Equity and Outreach Coordinator MICHAEL LEE LEE, Health and Science News Editor NADIA BEY BEY, Recruitment Chair STEFANIE POUSOULIDES, Investigations Editor JAKE SATISKY SATISKY, Recruitment Chair JAKE SHERIDAN, Features Editor TREY FOWLER FOWLER, Advertising Director CHRIS KUO KUO, Features Managing Editor JULIE MOORE MOORE, Creative Director JOHN MARKIS, Senior News Reporter 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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JUNE 1, 2020

Duke to climate rallies on the Bryan Center plaza. If you want to dig into the inner workings of the University, meet its important figures or document the events that shape life here, news is the place for you. If you’re interested in longform, narrative work, you should also try your hand at writing features.

Our sports department covers all things Duke basketball, and if you get involved, you just might get to cover a Duke-Carolina game. But it’s not all basketball: We cover all of Duke’s 27 NCAA sports. We were there when Bryan Jarvis pitched the first nineinning perfect game in the baseball program’s history, and when the softball team was ranked in a major poll for the first time.

If you’re into arts and culture, try writing for Recess. In the past year, we’ve covered on-campus art installations and the local nightlife scene.

Writers have reviewed music, movies and television.

Our intrepid food columnist has visited local restaurants and tried upscale cuisine served in a student’s apartment.

The opinion section is a place for students to share ideas, thoughts and hot takes. Columnists and members of the Community Editorial Board shape campus dialogue, starting conversations that echo in the dining halls of Marketplace and the conference rooms of the Allen Building.

Maybe writing just isn’t your thing. In that case, you should get involved with our photography department, where you can document famous speakers, noteworthy events and campus celebrities. (Here’s a secret: You can also get into basketball games by photographing them.) You can also join the graphics team, creating the eye-popping illustrations and data visualizations that keep our content interesting, or become a layout editor to help put the print paper together.

We’re a digital-first news organization, so video, audio and digital strategy are important parts of what we do. Try your hand at making videos or podcasts, or live your dream of being an influencer by joining our social media team. (And if you’re conflicted by all the options, don’t worry—you can write or work for multiple sections.)

If you aren’t interested in joining you should keep up to date with what’s happening at Duke by reading The Chronicle on our website and in print. Subscribe to our newsletters and follow us on Facebook to make sure you don’t miss the important news of the day. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, where we often post updates, photos, polls and interactive content that go beyond what you’ll see on our website. Share your perspective with us in guest columns and letters to the editor.

The next year at Duke will be like no other.

Regardless of what happens, we’ll be there to keep the community informed. We’ll be there to hold administration to account. We’ll be there to tell the story of this moment in Duke’s history. And long after the pandemic is over, we’ll be there to record life at this one-of-a-kind place.

I hope you’ll be along for the ride.

given me meaningful work in a time that can feel pretty bleak. There have been challenges, from covering news remotely to putting together this send-home issue without having laid out a print paper before. But on the whole, I’ve never been more proud to be part of The Chronicle.

Still, you shouldn’t think it’s all coronavirus, all the time. I fell in love with student journalism because it let me learn more about the people, events and ideas that make a research university hum with life. In two years with The Chronicle, I’ve interviewed Duke President Vincent Price and one of the authors of a U.N. climate change report.

I’ve covered a student protest and dozens of Duke Student Government Senate meetings. In the same week, I traveled to Washington, D.C., for a rally outside the Supreme Court and wrote about an opossum living in the ceiling of a dorm.

In the past year, The Chronicle has published features, food reviews, interviews, investigations and more. We’ve published essays from students at Duke Kunshan University in China, which I like to imagine would blow the minds of the students who founded the paper in 1905 (before Duke was even called “Duke”).

When we aren’t hard at work, we find time to gather in the office to watch election returns and episodes of Jeopardy. We go to basketball games together, make Cookout runs and host an annual semiformal and formal (which hopefully won’t be on Zoom next year).

There are countless ways to get involved with The Chronicle. None require prior experience, and with the exception of the opinion section, none require an application.

The news department covers everything from Matthew Griffin is a Trinity junior and editor-inscandals to student life, from lawsuits against chief of The Chronicle’s 116th volume.

Interested in joining The Chronicle?

Fill out this form at

chron.it/interestform20 or email Jake Satisky at

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 13

Keep learning—at any cost

I am in denial.

A month ago, I sat on a park bench in lower Manhattan and watched my screen as New York state officials declared a COVID-19 state of emergency. A day later, I called my Dad when Duke sent the first tentative emails unraveling our semester—I told him not to worry, that there was no crisis, that an extended Spring Break and online classes were probably temporary, that I would return to Durham and life would continue normally.

read—after all, I was supposed to Keep Learning and Keep Working as normal, just online. I still checked the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker twice a day. As the United States overtook China and Italy to become the epicenter for this global pandemic, I found multiple ways to dissociate from reality (some not fit to print).

I was in denial. I still am. Duke is, too.

This pandemic and its consequences will become worse. There is no “normal” to Keep or return to. Best case projections still predict

Gino Nuzzolillo APRIL 8, 2020

A few days later in Denver, while I stayed with my mom’s family, the death toll rose.

More university emails sent me into a panic about my housing and belongings. I coped by raiding my grandfather Boppy’s closet for his vintage sweaters. I tried to help other students and community members with what I naively hoped were only temporary crises. States and cities shut down, Duke canceled graduation, millions lost their jobs, indefinite social distancing and isolation set in.

I still believed I would see my friends. I still woke up telling myself the panic would subside in a few weeks. I still attempted to write my thesis, apply for jobs, set ambitious goals in my classes,

overrun hospitals, hundreds of thousands taken by the virus (not to mention those now denied treatment for their pre-existing medical needs), and months until a vaccine can be produced on a mass scale. Public health officials warn us that the hardest-hit cities, like New York and New Orleans, have not yet reached their peak number of infections—outbreaks and intense waves of the virus are likely to continue for the rest of the year, if not longer. Close to 10 million unemployment claims have been filed. The pain, fear and anxiety that so many of us now confront is unimaginable. Moreover, pervasive social and economic inequality ensures the consequences of COVID-19 are worse for the

poor, for communities of color (by initial data, specifically Black people), and for women. And this is still only the beginning.

We are experiencing something unprecedented. We worry more about immunocompromised family members and friends in the face of an unknown and highly infectious disease. We, or someone we care about, are living in an unhealthy and stressful home, becoming the caretaker for younger siblings or elders, cut off from friends and counselors and stable routines, losing jobs and internships, and shouldering the same rigorous academic load on that godforsaken platform called Zoom. As if this moment is just a temporary inconvenience. We will see members of our communities lose their jobs and perhaps their homes. We will see federal, state, and local governments ignore the unique vulnerabilities of our unhoused, incarcerated and undocumented neighbors. We will probably get sick. We will have to grieve in social isolation. No one knows how long it will last.

Our situation is bleak. I know this pandemic will ultimately fade, but I also know we confront immense suffering in the meantime. Taking care of ourselves, our families and our communities now takes highest priority. Creating space to grieve, to mourn the myriad consequences of this pandemic in our lives, in our community’s lives, takes highest priority.

Yet, Duke has asked us to Keep Learning, Keep Teaching and Keep Working, to keep

being productive “despite the unprecedented challenges,” to pretend that we could replicate Duke virtually. This messaging does not put our community’s well-being first. Instead, Duke’s notion of productivity is rooted in denial about what will happen as this pandemic grows worse. It is symptomatic of a campus stuck in a toxic, individualist, hyper-competitive mindset.

We aren’t taught to question the underlying assumption that academic accomplishment and career ambition still come first.

We don’t need business-as-usual Duke— we need more flexibility, more grace, more reminders that our academic productivity isn’t more important than our ability to survive.

We need policies like universal pass, the only equitable option, and canceled final exams.

We need more faculty members who recognize that their expectations must change, that their way of teaching must change.

We need robust and sustainable resources to help meet our basic needs, unexpected costs, and lost incomes—beyond Summer 2020.

The idea that we can “Keep” on gets in the way of making these necessary changes now, and makes us less flexible to deal with the more serious challenges we have yet to face. Faculty, deans, administrators: please read the room.

Keep Learning, Keep Teaching, Keep Working keeps us in denial. Make the rest of the semester optional. Reimagine how we can put people first, rather than cling to an undesirable status quo.

Gino Nuzzolillo is a Trinity ‘20 graduate.

Now more than ever, we love Duke On March 6, students departed campus for spring break, anticipating a week of rest and a reprieve from academics and extracurriculars.

Four days later, the semester as they knew it was over. In a dramatic institutional response to the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic, Duke turned on a dime, shutting down campus, extending spring break and digitizing the entire university experience. That transition has not been seamless.

Yet we have never loved Duke more.

The abrupt upheaval of our campus life has come at great cost. In the wake of Duke’s closure,

Reiss Becker APRIL 3, 2020 many students feel isolated and adrift, suddenly severed from the friends and engagements that make college so meaningful. Seniors have had their waning days of college unceremoniously ripped away. International and low-income students are ensnared in a logistical nightmare, with many facing legal and financial hurdles that impede their efforts to return home. Even the indomitable basketball team has been brought low, unable to be the uniting force that Duke so desperately needs.

But students are not the only ones struggling.

As the pandemic spreads, Duke’s faculty, staff and administration are facing unprecedented challenges. Yet despite bewildering, rapid, and unpredictable change, this loyal cohort

has been charged with upholding the same mission as always: ensuring the wellbeing and edification of thousands of students.

During the best of times, this is a difficult, often thankless, endeavor. These are not the best of times. As we speak, thousands of students are scattered to the four corners of the earth, across various time zones and sundry states, countries, and continents. Amidst these daunting logistical hurdles, employees must support and educate these students all while the looming spectre of a deadly virus wreaks havoc on their own lives.

At this time, it is imperative that we students display understanding and compassion for Duke and its employees. We are accustomed to the University having all the answers, all the resources, all the contingency plans to match and surmount every conceivable problem.

This is not a normal moment. Just like the rest of us, Duke has had to improvise, adapt and overcome, to make the best of what’s possible.

Despite such difficulties, we are thankful for and impressed by what Duke has been able to do, for the services and support it has provided us despite the tremendous difficulties imposed by the moment.

Globally, Duke has made vital contributions to the fight against novel coronavirus. In the face of a global shortage of masks, Duke has developed a process to decontaminate used N95 respirators, prolonging the lifetime of a critical healthcare resource. Duke scientists have also made vital contributions to ongoing COVID-19 vaccine research, expediting the end of the global pandemic. In doing so,

Duke will help save many lives and prevent further social disruption, exemplifying its commitment “to help those who suffer, cure disease, and promote health…”

Within the local community, Duke has focused on supporting as many people as possible. For employees, the administration has committed to paying full-time faculty and staff indefinitely and to pay full-time contracted employees until May 31st. For students, the university has whipped up an online educational infrastructure in the blink of an eye, creating numerous resources to promote learning and recreation virtually.

Through a collaboration of Duke Student Health, CAPS and TimelyMD, Duke has even launched a virtual mental health service so that students can receive mental health counseling no matter where they are.

Housing and Residential Life devised a plan to reunite students with their essentials, and over 100 employees volunteered to pack and ship these items to 861 students around the world. Are any of these arrangements perfect? Of course not. Nonetheless, they are emblematic of an institution that is undertaking a good faith effort to support the communities that depend on it. For that, we should all be thankful.

It is easy to treat Duke as a brand, as a soulless entity devoid of any personal touch.

But if this crisis has proven anything to us, it is that Duke is made up of individuals–wonderful, supportive, and caring people. In the wake of a friend’s tragic death, the Duke community has emerged with arms spread wide, ready

to comfort us and so many others. We have received condolences and support from professors, staff, administrators, and fellow students alike, revealing that the ties which bind Blue Devils together remain strong.

Duke is a special place and it’s the simple things we miss most: passing under gothic archways on the way to class, greeting familiar faces during the to and fro of the day, and admiring the grandeur of our chapel backlit by the Carolina sunshine. But more than just a place, Duke is a people, a community of scholars and strivers who rely on each other.

In that spirit we want to express our profound appreciation to that very community–– particularly to the faculty, staff, and administrators who have spearheaded Duke’s institutional response to the pandemic.

To President Price, thank you for projecting calm confidence and for providing the steady hand of leadership this moment demands.

To our Deans and faculty, thank you for your commitment to quality scholarship and education, no matter the circumstances. To those still servicing Duke’s facilities; the wellness, recreation, food-service and caretaking staff members, thank you for preserving, physically and spiritually, the university that we all so cherish. To our fellow students, thank you for your commiseration and companionship as we navigate these troubled waters with resolve.

Now more than ever, we love Duke, and we cannot wait to return when the time comes.

Reiss Becker is a Trinity senior. He co-wrote this piece with Trinity junior Joseph Touma.

Want to write a column in Fall 2020? Apply at chron.it/columnistapp20

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14 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

The Chronicle

A contingent campus tour: the Dukes that never were Take a close look at the picture above. A serene lake in the lower right side balances the extended fingers of the one in the upper left, bookending the dominating Duke Chapel tower between them. The Chapel itself seems to stare intensely at the bird through whose eyes we are looking, spreading its stone wings of academic and residential cottages in direct

Nicholas Chrapliwy FEBRUARY 7, 2020

challenge to the feathers of our avian proxy.

While some of this plan materialized into today’s West Campus, a closer look at this early sketch reveals some fascinating differences. The plots of land where Few Quad and the Allen Building are located today are instead grassy fields in the picture (they remained forested fields until 1939 and 1954, respectively). Their absence triples the width of the central axis of the campus plan, and both structures flanking the Chapel correspond to this much wider center, approaching the chapel in rounded elliptical curves rather than ruler-straight parallels.

The left arm of the campus seems to extend three times as far as it does today, past where the football stadium is located. Close your eyes and imagine Duke having seven more residential quads past the existing four, all at the same elevation and in a directed promenade rather than cast off the high ridge of the main campus and clustered behind it, like Keohane, Edens, and Hollows are today.

The right arm provides every spatial counterweight to the left, reaching almost all the way to Erwin Road before stopping.

Imagine if every class you have in Gross, the LSRC, Physics, Biosci, Engineering, and French required you instead to walk just a little farther than SocPsych, with none of the steep descent it takes to get to the front doors of French.

While it looks like the statue of JB Duke still stands in front of the Chapel, it also looks like there is a reflection pool surrounding him, in an even field where, in a marked difference from today’s campus, no stout oaks interrupt sightlines with trunks and branches.

This whole sketch is a remarkable text for a potential Duke University that was never fully realized. Most people’s first reaction when I show them this image in The Campus Guide is shock and interest, and usually a bit of reflective silence when they are thinking about how different everything would have been if that were what West Campus looked like today.

Much of the time, Duke’s campus gives the appearance that it is a perfect, accomplished vision of what Huxley called “the most successful essay in neo-Gothic that I know.”

The main campus seems to boast under a veil of unchanging and inevitable appearance, existing as the only actual outcome of all the potentials that preceded it. I’d like for everyone to see underneath that veil for a moment by exposing the ways in which the architectural expression of the university has been contingent upon historic precedent, contextual friction, and private whim rather than total, transcendent intention and unobstructed accomplishment. You may have sensed this unveiled contingency when you closely examined the image above, but my hope is that if you have not already, some other examples will make the sensation stronger.

East and West. An academic dumbbell, shaped so to separate students by gender when coeducation was still commonly an absurdity.

Inconvenient when you live on one campus and have a class on the other, right? So why are they that way? While there were always going to be two campuses (like Radcliffe and Harvard or Bernard and Columbia), the first intentions of

Few and J.B. Duke were to build what is now West adjacent to East, with the Chapel where Baldwin Auditorium sits today. The style of this adjacent campus was also briefly neo-classical to match the Dorian columns and Parthenon structure of the East and West Duke buildings.

Could you picture a Graeco-Roman Duke, with the iconography of a dome-on-a-square rather than the Chapel spires? Professor Frank Brown’s tour of America’s other universities gave the strong impression that Gothic was the way to go, and the ambitious Durhamites who inflated the price of land next to East provoked the distant campuses. If Few had not been wandering with his sons and come across a wooded ridge a mile from East one day, Duke could have been in any number of other places. Chance, context, and happenstance determined the eventually permanent daily feature of our campuses.

Aquatic installations. You’re all doubtlessly familiar with the giant, circular central quad between Marketplace and Lilly on East. Could you imagine it filled with a raised still water pool for reflecting by when you’re regretting that 5.5 credit overload? And the patch of garden and walkway in front of the bus stop between Allen and Few on West—could you imagine sixteen giant shooting arcs of water that spread mist in the air so much it creates a perpetual rainbow? Both of these were planned and never realized, just like the reflecting pool in the much larger quad of the image at the top of this column. The budgeting of the Depression-era builders restricted many superfluous projects like these, and they will almost certainly never be realized.

The Ackland. We’re all proudly aware of the inspiring collections and dedicated curation at the Nasher Museum, not to mention its top-tier brunches. But long before its opening in 2005, Duke was going

to be home to all of William Ackland’s extensive collections as host to the Ackland Museum of Art. Although he considered a number of schools initially, by his death Ackland had settled firmly on Duke with the full support of Few, who commissioned Julian Abele to design the structure which would have been just behind SocPsych where the parking lots are. 1940 came and both Ackland and Few died, creating room for Duke’s Board of Trustees to have their way and refuse the offer, likely because the Ackland Estate would continue to own the collections and not the university. But what if they hadn’t? What would Duke be like if the Nasher site were still a preserved horticultural area and there was even less parking behind the academic quad? Where would you brunch on Sunday mornings to spend your friends’ food points? (If you want to see what the Abele-designed Ackland looked like, the Building Duke Bass Connections team worked on a stunning virtual reality structure seen here).

These examples are very few among

Jordan Diamond JANUARY 29, 2020 that UMC may split into different factions based on different congregations’ social values.

Student advocates calling for condemnation of “UMC’s discriminatory LGBTQ policies” are important; however, they do not go far enough. It’s time for the Divinity School to come out as gay.

As a Jewish student, I’ll admit that I feel a little out of place commenting on UMC’s internal dynamics. For example, I lack the theological context to fully understand the “connectional polity” that distinguishes Methodism from other branches of Protestantism. Also, who is “Jesus?” Nonetheless, my gaydar is impeccable and I can always spot a closet case.

My intuition that the Divinity School is gay was confirmed when I walked past the chapel to class last week. I felt a pair of eyes on me, turned around, and caught the Divinity School in the act of checking me out before it became flustered and those gray bricks turned red in the face. We’ve all heard the rumors about

Nicholas Chrapliwy is a Trinity senior.

Special to The Chronicle An early sketch of Duke University’s West Campus. Some elements didn’t end up in the final design.

It’s time for the Divinity School to come out as gay The United Methodist Church is embroiled in controversy about its regressive stance against gay marriage. Duke’s Divinity School, a United Methodist Church seminary, has long found itself in the crosshairs of UMC’s tradition and student advocacy for better progress on queer issues. Lately, the school has considered its future given the possibility

very many, but they illustrate the insistent feature of postmodern philosophy that is the recognition of the contingency of our histories, languages, and identities in their arbitrarily selective contexts. While the immaterial examples like funding and faculty acquisitions are in fact far more interesting, the material expression of contingency in the example of Duke’s campus is an effective way to visualize what that notion means.

A single image and some brief sketches of alternative Dukes exposes the fragile reality we often perceive as a secure portrait, and to our benefit. It makes us ask interesting questions of ourselves and the potential for future alternative Dukes. What could Duke have been if any contingent part of its development were different? Who are you if Duke is different?

How do we who influence the institution now use the knowledge of its contingency to shape its potential futures? What are you doing to make the Dukes That Will Be? And which one will survive?

what the Divinity School did with the Allen Building at convocation last year—so this flirtation was all the evidence I needed.

I don’t intend to “out” the Divinity School, but I hope instead that when the Divinity School discloses its sexuality, we students will have already created the necessary support and outreach system—and that this column can start a larger conversation about how our religious institutions feel at Duke. The Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity needs to reach out to the Divinity School, and make it aware of all the resources and organizations that Duke has for queer members of our campus community. Everyone in the Divinity School’s fraternity and social circles should be clear that they support the graduate program regardless of whom it loves. And we should all practice a bit more empathy and understanding when we’re reminded of the secrets that some of our peer buildings hold.

Edgardo Colón-Emeric, a UMC General Conference delegate and a Divinity School professor of reconciliation and theology, claims that he “does not yet know how he will use his vote” at this year’s General Conference in May regarding the proposal to separate UMC. Such indecisiveness on Church policy is reckless, especially after the Divinity School followed me on Instagram the other day and liked my last 20 pictures. The Divinity School’s leaders must immediately decide for the school to come out as gay so it can feel free to slide into my DMs. Of course, coming out is a decision that shouldn’t just be made with regards to flirting with members of the same sex and in the context of social upheaval transferring

expanding expectations of inclusion on religious movements. And seriously, I get it.

Duke Divinity School was founded as the first graduate school at Duke in 1926, a time when gay people in North Carolina faced arrest and ostracization under sodomy and sterilization laws for homosexual behavior. And I don’t doubt that the Divinity School feels some responsibility for the ongoing discussion amongst its parent organization, the United Methodist Church, about splitting up after all the stress of this LGBTQ talk. But I want the Divinity School to know that it gets better— nearly 100 years after the school’s founding, I know tons of gay and lesbian Sunday Schools.

Everyone knows that the Center for Jewish Studies is bicurious. Heck, the Mosque in my hometown is trans!

Just think about the precedent that the Divinity School’s coming out would set. The gay liberation movement of the late 1960s called for coming out and living an openly queer life as a basic form of activism to increase visibility and the organizing potential of queer folks. As such an important seminary, coming out would shine a light on all the other queer, Methodist education centers out there. But more importantly than paving the way for other educational institutions, the Divinity School needs to stand up and make this decision to be true to itself.

In the end, I know that a big part of the outside resistance to the Divinity School talking about its gayness is a fear that it will change and leave us. We’re all scared that our beloved graduate school will be bullied by bigots, or pack up and move out to San Francisco. But we have to support the Divinity School for who it is—a beautiful, bright, gay Methodist seminary. So next year at Durham Pride, I want to see the Divinity School leading the march carrying a big gay pride flag. I hope you’ll march alongside it.

Jordan Diamond is a Trinity senior.

The Chronicle

dukechronicle.com commentary

The English major is Let’s dominated by white men I love being an English major to the point that I paid for a shirt that says “I put the lit in literature.” But the constant focus on white male authorship makes me want to drop the major for good. “Literature and the Pursuit of Happiness” was going to be my favorite class this semester; it fulfilled a core requirement for the English major, and I was taking it with my best friend. And happiness seemed like such a broad topic—what new, emotionally tumultuous, deeply introspective novels would we be studying that would ultimately bring us to a wide and profound meaning of what it means to be happy? Then I read the syllabus.

We wouldn’t be reading works from any authors of color until mid-April—the last two weeks of class. What we were focusing on were Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby. I’ve read all of these pieces a minimum of three times, and so has every other English major. I dropped the class.

Victoria Priester JANUARY 31, 2020 Every spring, around 1,600 Duke sophomores declare a major. In an email response to my inquiry, the English Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies said that around 89 students per year, or roughly 6% of sophomores, declare a major or double-major in English. This is an extremely low proportion of students, especially since more and more Duke students are declaring majors across disciplines. But this low enrollment number for English majors isn’t specific to Duke; across all US colleges, the proportion of English majors is down by 25.5 percent.

One possible reason is the common perception that majoring in English is a oneway trip to unemployment after college. And I empathize with parents—why pay thousands of dollars per year for your kid to read books they could get for free from the public library?

Why spend 20+ years investing in them getting a good education for them to end up living in your house again, still trying to put Tide Pods where the liquid detergent goes in the washing machine and refusing to eat vegetables? This fear has become so widespread that there are actually more studies now defending the English major from this reputation than confirming it.

But English major enrollment numbers aren’t decreasing just because of a rise in “interest” in STEM. Enrollment is decreasing because, in an increasingly multicultural and engaged world society where 35 percent of young people identify more as a global citizen than as a citizen of their home country, English degree programs remain extremely Eurocentric. The requirements for Duke’s English major, according to the department website, are broken up by time period in which the authors lived or the books were written (ex.

Medieval, 18th/19th Century). Students must take a designated number of courses from each time period, but of the 246 courses that could be offered, only 10 courses (four percent) are specifically dedicated to minority groups or authors by course title.

Toni Morrison passed away in August 2019.

There could not have been a more perfect time for Duke to offer an English class in her honor, and we clearly have professors at Duke qualified to teach her work—the Religious Studies department offers a class on her work that is not cross-listed with English. Professor emerita Karla Holloway has studied Morrison’s work in-depth. Instead, we continue to offer a

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 15

talk about faith

Lately I am always coming out.

This past summer, swimming in wildflowers and theory at Oxford, I looked up from my “special topics” course on Bob Dylan that has books to realize I was in love with a close been offered for multiple semesters. While female friend. Since then, I’ve been gradually Dylan’s Nobel Prize for Literature award is telling those close to me that I’m attracted to certainly worth discussion, he won the prize four years ago in 2016.

Meanwhile, these are notable accomplishments of authors of color/women in the past year: director Domee Shi won an Oscar for best animated short for the Pixar FEBRUARY 27, 2020 short, Bao. James Forman Jr. won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black more genders than I once thought. It’s been America. Women of color win American painstaking, and not everyone knows yet Book Awards nearly every year. The lack of (hi, Mom and Dad!), but these conversations variation in special topics courses, to me, ultimately feel liberating.

Talking about faith at Duke feels much seems to reflect a broader trend of studying and honoring notable male directors and the same.

I wasn’t always religious. My childhood writers when there are women and people of color who are of equal or even higher caliber. was etched with a loose Christianity, but I Books and films are an opportunity to see the had no first communion or confirmation, no world from another person’s perspective. They theological initiation besides Vacation Bible are an irreplaceable resource for looking at an School one summer when I was five. I came to event, an era in history, the concept of family Duke wanting vaguely to deepen my faith life or freedom, from the eyes of people of color or and knowing not at all how to do so—and then, people of other marginalized experiences who as will sometimes happen, I joined a Christian choose to share their stories. We cannot expect a cappella group. Last year around this time, I to be an empathetic, globally-minded society found myself sitting in the pews at the Episcopal if all of our required reading was written by Center, a little house on Alexander Avenue which I think has saved my life. white men.

Faith is intensely personal, and experience Duke wants their professors to be on the cutting edge of knowledge in their resists easy narrative’s embrace. I could tell you fields, as demonstrated by the emphasis on about the night I spent floating in an outdoor research done by the new faculty they hired pool, searching the stars for answers, when in 2019. New books, just like new scientific something behind the sky clicked and I saw the discoveries, are published every day. The Big Dipper clearly for the first time. Or I could curriculum and courses offered in the English tell you about the Jazz Vespers where I divulged department do not reflect the breadth of new, how knotted and deep my climate anxiety had award-winning literature and media that become and the minister just held my hands as arguably deserve just as much attention as I cried, because l was finally known and love Shakespeare, and that are extremely relevant could still bind me back up. I could tell you, to social and personal battles people are simply, about dawn glazing the mountains with blue-gold light. fighting in 21st century America.

It’s about community—about my dear I don’t want this piece to seem like a criticism targeted at English professors or faculty—my friends, who unswervingly hold my gaze as we English professors have prompted discussions share Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist— and revelations I never would have arrived and the deepest self, our most vivid anguish at without their nuanced, critical lectures. (“bright sorrow”) made holy.

I fumble for words. On Common Their consistent willingness to talk through ideas with me outside of class, to ponder over Ground last semester, I tried on new labels minute details in the text, or to re-think theses for my sexuality, felt comfortable being have made me a more equipped and confident out for the first time. We talked race and class, gender and its expressions, and it got reader, writer and researcher.

But being an English major shouldn’t just gritty, fast. I grasped trauma I didn’t know mean we know how to read Shakespeare—we still throbbed; I held space for others to should be equipped with a deep understanding do the same. After an almost impossibly of the diverse set of human experiences difficult large-group conversation, a through memoirs, be able to see flaws in Wellness Center liaison led a walking our own communities and thought patterns meditation, but it frothed my nerves through satire and fictional dystopia. The rather than centering me—I retreated, required reading should help us understand in the end, to read a Psalm. When we what it is like to be a child growing up in reconvened, I was almost embarrassed Iran, or a black man on death row--stories to explain where I’d been. I could talk we may not experience or hear on our own. about gender violence and homophobia Within the major requirement, make a new with these people, I realized, without ever requirement called “Perspectives”—classes getting my tongue around the only healing that focus on literature from different regions thing I know.

It’s the same on campus, where most of the world. And I mean the whole world.

Hire more faculty who have expertise in Latin assume a blanket agnosticism. One friend American literature, works in translation and I recently had our first conversation and how social issues are presented about faith after she found my Book of through novels. Clearly, low English major Common Prayer; I’ve known her since enrollment isn’t because of a lack of interest O-week. My classmates in queer and in books—my friends are starting book gender studies courses refer happily to lived clubs, discussion groups and asking for experience, but when my other seminars read book recommendations for summer break. St. Augustine or Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Tech companies are now saying they prefer Hopkins, even peers I know to be religious hiring students with backgrounds in the hold the apologetics at arm’s length, never humanities—breathe easy, parents! The draw granting them personal stakes. Outside of that English could have is being smothered class, “she’s religious” is always an insult—I by an overrepresentation of white authors can’t count the times I’ve shifted in my seat with whom readers are finding it harder and as acquaintances mocked people of faith as gullible, ignorant, naive. harder to connect.

I have to note that all faith is not the same, Victoria Priester is a Trinity senior and a nor all queerness. Duke takes “Eruditio et Religio” for its motto, centers West Campus managing editor of the opinion section.

around a Methodist church (the Chapel once planned to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer but caved to Islamophobic backlash) and houses a Christian Divinity School wracked with debate over queer belonging.

The Catholic Center remains the best-

Margot Armbruster

funded student organization on campus.

As a Christian, then, I get visibility and safety not afforded to Muslims or Buddhists or Sikhs. Unlike many, I’ve also never felt at risk because of my sexuality. Though I haven’t really been out, my friends, chosen communities and family (hi, Mom and Dad, hope you’re still reading!) are unequivocally LGBTQIA+-affirming. Most days I feel both safety and belonging.

Still, there are questions I need to ask, and ways I need to be seen. When I mention my summer internship with the Institute for Christian Socialism, friends struggle to accept this ideological union, though it’s totally natural—the Gospel hates hoarded wealth and teaches a truly revolutionary devotion to social equality. I’m recently thinking about how to push mainstream Christianity past anthropocentrism and ineffectual “creation care” into real climate action, a project shared by Bill McKibben and just about nobody else. And I want to talk about the beauty and power of the queer theology I’m reading, especially with LGBTQIA+ friends who feel alienated from any spiritual life by fundamentalists. But when we tiptoe around faith, these conversations become impossible.

I’m not trying to convince anyone to convert to Christianity, or any religion, especially if a church has harmed you. (I think, actually, that in light of the colonialism and violence its institutionalized forms have enabled, I should be asked to answer for why I am still Christian.) But on this campus whose ethos is effortless perfection and cutesy, consumerist “self-care,” which seethes with anxiety and careerist neoliberalism, I crave the stillness faith life offers.

And I think some of you may crave it too.

Mentioning to friends the weekend retreats I take to escape Duke’s noise, I’ve sensed palpable longing. I know many who are trying to deepen their mindfulness or meditate but who lack the community they need to be successful. We all deserve space to know ourselves and people to support us as we do.

I stumbled toward God by utter chance— by grace—and laying eyes on Their face has transformed me. When I walk toward God, I walk away from the self which craves objects and attention and thinness and control to step, if ever so ephemerally, into the light of justice.

I want this Love for all of you, however it manifests, but more than anything I want us to be able to talk about it.

Recently, I signed up for an interfaith lunch series and was paired with Leah Abrams, who already sees too much of me. As a freshman, I thought about applying for the Chapel’s interfaith LLC but missed the deadline.

There’s no easy cure-all, or none I’ve found, to our reticence, but I think all the parts of our lives should speak to each other. So that starts with me.

I don’t want to atomize myself anymore: here I am.

The Duke Queer and Trans Christians support space meets monthly in the Wellness Center.

Margot Armbruster is a Trinity junior who would love to come to your church or invite you to Lent at the (affirming) Episcopal Center.

The Chronicle

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16 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

Preparing the next generation of national security strategists

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"AGS has provided me with priceless opportunities. Never would I have thought that I would dine with Madeleine Albright or chat with Condoleezza Rice. AGS’s speakers are expansive in their expertise, from terrorism to economics to climate.

This diversity informs on new topics and challenges old views."

LEO MACKAY

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- Phil Ma '21

"Through AGS I was able to go to Gettysburg on a completely immersive weekend experience. It was incredible learning about the battle at its actual location, and I gained knowledge about military strategy. I also had the privilege of visiting FBI Headquarters and listening to FBI expert briefings on counterterrorism. Having access to these trips and other events was so special, especially as a first-year student."

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Participating in AGS events makes you a member of the AGS community. Enthusiastic students may apply to be on the AGS Student Council in late fall. All are welcome!

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Welcome to the Class of 2024! We hope to meet you this August in person or via Zoom at our annual Ice Cream Social!

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june 1, 2020

sportswrap

WAITING GAME MEN’S BASKETBALL: BREAKING DOWN NEXT YEAR’S SQUAD • BASEBALL: LONG-AWAITED TRIP TO OMAHA PUT ON HOLD • SOFTBALL: PROGRAM RISES TO NATIONAL STAGE IN THIRD SEASON

2 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

SPORTSWRAP

from the editor

Interested in writing for The Chronicle’s sports section?

Editor: Evan Kolin Managing Editor: Shane Smith Blog Editor: Jake C. Piazza Assistant Blog Editors: Alex Jackson, Max Rego Photo Editor: Rebecca Schneid Assistant Photo Editor: Jackson Muraika Associate Editors: Em Adler, Jonathan Browning, Ben Chen, Tevyn Fudge, Spencer Levy, Conner McLeod, Glen Morgenstern, Ramona Naseri, Christian Olsen, Cam Polo, Nithin Ragunathan, Derek Saul, Joe Wang Special thanks to Editor-in-Chief Matthew Griffin, Shane Smith, Derek Saul, Photo Editor Simran Prakash and Vol. 115 Photo Editor Charles York Founded in 1983, sportswrap is the weekly sports supplement published by The Chronicle. Its content along with daily coverage of Duke’s 27 varsity sports can be viewed at: www.dukechronicle.com/section/sports Founded in 2007, The Chronicle’s Sports Blog, the Blue Zone, features updates on men’s basketball, women’s basketball, football and more to supplement regular daily coverage. It can be read at: www.dukechronicle.com/blog/blue-zone To contact the sports department with tips or suggestions, please email Evan Kolin at: ebk18@duke.edu

Follw us on Twitter:

• • • • •

The Chronicle

dukechronicle.com

Email Evan at ebk18@duke.edu 3 Although it wasn’t supposed

to be the team’s final game, Duke men’s basketball finishes off the season with a bang against North Carolina with a big boost from former walk-on Justin Robinson.

4

As the coronavirus pandemic puts the world on halt, Duke women’s basketball players Onome Akinbode-James and Jennifer Ezeh set out to help struggling families in their native Nigeria.

5

Former Blue Devil women’s basketball standouts Haley Gorecki and Leaonna Odom see their lifelong dreams become reality in the 2020 WNBA Draft.

7

In just the program’s third year of existence, Duke softball takes a massive leap during its run to national prominence and a top-25 ranking.

8-9 Duke baseball was on its way to

potentially the program’s first College World Series berth in 59 years. Our Jake C. Piazza breaks down the unexpected halt to the team’s magical season as well as its star pitcher, and potential first-round pick, Bryce Jarvis.

10

With a combination of returning talent and yet another elite recruiting class, Duke men’s basketball should be a title contender once again. Shane Smith breaks down the rotation for next year’s squad.

11

Duke’s suspension, and eventual cancellation, of all athletics shifted the lives of all of the school’s athletes.

Our Em Adler talks to women’s golf sophomore Gina Kim, men’s golf junior Evan Katz and women’s lacrosse senior Catherine Cordrey.

13

How David Cutcliffe is preparing Duke football for an unprecedented upcoming season.

These are unprecedented times, both in the world as a whole and as sports editor of The Chronicle. Instead of helping to wrap up coverage of Duke’s winter sports and leading the charge in the spring, I’ve been left to wonder what could have been.

Would Tre Jones and the men’s basketball team have brought back a sixth banner to Cameron Indoor Stadium? Would head coach Chris Pollard and the baseball team have finally broken through and made the College World Series? Would the women’s golf team have repeated as national champions? We will never know the answers to those what-if questions, but we do have one thing to cling onto: hope for the future.

Coach K is set to bring in yet another elite recruiting class, and with a unique amount of returning talent the Blue Devils should be a title contender yet again. Baseball is ready to enter next season hungrier than ever before, its road to Omaha postponed but not dismantled.

Even Duke’s softball team, in just its third year of existence, started making national headlines this past season and is ready for even more.

But that’s not all. A total of 27 varsity sports populate Duke’s campus, each one with ACC and national title aspirations.

Throughout the year, The Chronicle will make sure you get in-depth coverage of each and every one.

Evan Kolin

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The Chronicle

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 3

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MEN’S BASKETBALL

MR. ROBINSON’S NEIGHBORHOOD Justin Robinson leads Duke to win against North Carolina in first career start

By Derek Saul Sports Features Editor

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published March 7, before Duke Athletics suspended, and eventually cancelled, all sports for this academic year due to the spread of coronavirus.

Being the hero in Duke’s highly-anticipated home matchup against North Carolina couldn’t have even been in Justin Robinson’s wildest dreams as of two weeks ago.

Yet, Saturday night, Robinson was just that.

Robinson had played just 227 total minutes in his five years with the Blue Devils coming into Saturday’s matchup against the Tar Heels. But the graduate student saved 76 his best for last in Cameron Indoor UNC DUKE 89 Stadium, invigorating the crowd and his teammates with 13 points and four blocks in his first, and perhaps only, career start. Behind Robinson’s early heroics, No. 12 Duke completed the season sweep against North Carolina with an 89-76 win.

Already having played the best game of his college career, Robinson fell to the ground while taking a contested triple with 4:27 remaining in the contest. The shot fell for Robinson’s fourth 3-pointer of the night, sending the crazed Cameron crowd into a blissful frenzy.

This was everything he could have dreamt of and more.

“I’m ecstatic,” Robinson said. “It’s the best feeling. That’s a storybook ending to my life in Cameron.”

Two minutes into the contest, Robinson hoisted up a 3-pointer, banking in an admittedly ugly shot much to the delight of the crowd.

A few minutes later, Robinson connected on another shot from beyond the arc, causing the arena to quake again.

Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski tabbed Robinson as the only senior to start the second half, and the San Antonio, Texas native would make a near immediate impact. Robinson rejected a Garrison Brooks shot to start a fast break that resulted in a Vernon Carey Jr. dunk to put Duke (25-6, 15-5 in the ACC) up 44-36.

Robinson would benefit from another fortuitous bounce five minutes into the second period, making his third 3-pointer on a shot from the corner that bounced off the side of the rim and in, giving Duke a 47-43 advantage.

“Justin Robinson has been a godsend for us,” Krzyzewski said.

“He had his fingerprints on every aspect of the game tonight. Four blocks, but he helped change some shots, rebounds. We were able to execute down the stretch with him making a few assists.”

With North Carolina (13-18, 6-14) breathing down Duke’s neck midway into the second half, Carey took charge. The freshman center made shots on three consecutive possessions, keeping the energized Tar Heels at arm’s length.

Robinson and Carey collaborated on one of the most pivotal plays of the game with just less than eight minutes left. Holding the ball at the top of the key, Robinson dropped in a teardrop pass to a cutting Carey. The younger Duke big converted on the layup and got fouled, the free throw extending the Blue Devil lead to 69-61.

Robinson’s 24 minutes are a career high, continuing his lateseason breakout. He had played 14 and 15 minutes, respectively, against Wake Forest Feb. 25 and North Carolina State March 2 after not notching double-digit minutes in any prior contest this season.

Joining Robinson in the starting lineup were fellow seniors Javin DeLaurier and Jack White. The three played with an early fire that only somebody playing his last ever home game could.

DeLaurier caused the crowd to erupt with 12:23 remaining in the first half, grabbing an offensive rebound over multiple Tar Heels and making a bucket on a strong finish.

“When [Krzyzewski] told us we were going to start, he said,

‘especially defensively, we’re all veterans, we know what we’re supposed to be doing,’” Robinson said. “We know the gameplan and just to set our tone with the talk and the energy. And then just to play free. Have fun.”

With the win, the Blue Devils finish the regular season in a three-way tie for second place in the ACC. As Duke heads into postseason play, there’s a real possibility Robinson falls out of the Blue Devil rotation again. But what happened Saturday—a former walk-on starring in his last-ever home game—is a moment that will live on in Duke basketball lore.

“It’s almost like a movie,” Krzyzewski said.

W ELCOME TO DUKE!

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WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Onome Akinbode-James and Jennifer Ezeh set up fund for native Nigeria

By Joe Wang Associate Sports Editor

The coronavirus pandemic has put the sporting world on halt indefinitely. Although their seasons were either suspended indefinitely or cancelled, many athletes are “stepping on the court” to fight against the pandemic by contributing to relief efforts. Among them, Duke women’s basketball players Onome Akinbode-James and Jennifer Ezeh are sending much-needed assistance to their homeland on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

On March 6, Duke lost to Boston College in the quarterfinals of the ACC tournament.

Six days later, upon learning of the cancellation of both the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments, the Blue Devils disbanded after a brief team conference.

“It’s kind of surreal for the most part. I didn’t come to terms with what actually happened for the last few months,” Akinbode-James said. “I think it’s just beginning to dawn on me now especially that school’s over. I just realized this was a big thing, and I’m saying there’s a chance that it could go beyond just now. I was upset a little bit at first because we didn’t get a fair shot, but at the same time I understand that humanity is greater than just basketball.”

As the coronavirus quickly spread around the world and the number of reported cases increased exponentially in the United States, Akinbode-James continued to keep a close eye on the situation back home even while staying with her host family in New Jersey.

Nigeria, the most populated country in Africa,

Chronicle File Photo

Onome Akinbode-James was named Duke’s most improved player after averaging 4.6 points and 5.0 rebounds this past season. reported its first case of coronavirus Jan. 28.

Since March 30, the government has mandated a lockdown for major states in the country. When the lockdown was further extended April 13, it became apparent that the livelihoods of many low-income households would be threatened.

Akinbode-James, sensing the gravity and the urgency of the issue, posted a call-to-action video on social media.

Various people responded to her video, including Ezeh, who suggested the idea of starting a fund to help feed the families struggling to make ends meet.

“We’re going to keep talking about it,”

Akinbode-James said. “But at the same time, while we’re speaking, there are people that are going through the circumstances that we’re speaking about, and we need to find a way to reach out to them.

That conversation with Jennifer and the comments I received fueled me to start the fund.”

After navigating through NCAA compliances, the Nigerian teammates set up new social media and Gmail accounts, eventually launching COVID Fund Naija April 21. Initially, they targeted Nigerian basketball players in the United States for a donation of five or 10 dollars. Now, they also accept transfers from the general public through apps

such as Venmo and Cash App. At the other end, Nigerian citizens can send requests for the fund through direct messages. In communities where internet access is not available, they have local volunteers who contact the team on behalf of the whole community.

“Ten dollars is actually quite big in Nigerian currency. That’s all it takes right now and that’s what we’re sending each family [approximately 4000 nairas] to see them through for a week or a few days,” Akinbode-James said. “We messaged our friends in Nigeria, asking them if they know anyone that needs assistance, and if they need assistance. It’s been crazy the amount of response we’ve gotten.

“A lot of times we asked the recipients to send a picture of the alert [of money coming in] so that at least we know the money’s going somewhere. A lot of times you see the account balances and it’s just like, going from zero to basically what we put in. I think that’s sad because it’s not that much money. It’s insane to think that people are literally going about with zero in their accounts. Some of them are super grateful that we were able to help them.”

As of May 2, COVID Fund Naija has provided monetary support to 43 Nigerian families, raising a total of 885 dollars. Now that the hectic academic semester has come to an end, Akinbode-James says she is going to devote even more time to the initiative and respond to many messages that were left behind See NIGERIA on Page 13

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WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Gorecki, Odom see dreams come true in WNBA Draft

By Jake C. Piazza Blue Zone Editor

There has not been much to celebrate globally as of late.

But on April 17, 36 women fulfilled their life-long dreams as they heard their names called in the WNBA draft, providing a muchneeded flash of joy in an otherwise grim situation across the world.

Duke’s Leaonna Odom and Haley Gorecki were selected with the 15th and 31st overall picks by the New York Liberty and Seattle Storm, respectively.

The Liberty are in a rebuilding phase,

Rebecca Schneid | Sports Photography Editor

Haley Gorecki led the Blue Devils in points, assists, rebounds and steals this season.

trading perennial All-Star Tina Charles to the “When our style of play just kind of picked Washington Mystics in exchange for additional up, I think basketball just became fun again,” picks just two days Odom said. “Toward the end prior to the draft. As soon as I saw the of the Clemson game when Sabrina Ionescu, this commissioner opening her we started pressing and doing year’s No. 1 overall stuff like that, basketball was mouth to say my name, I pick, will become the just fun and I realized that I face of New York’s already knew it was me, and don’t want to give this up. I franchise as it looks I just started screaming. remember just feeling that toward the future. feeling where you’re just LEAONNA ODOM constantly running around Odom, however, will BLUE DEVIL FORWARD fight an uphill battle and getting excited and getting for playing time, pumped with your teammates. as she was the third forward drafted by the There’s just no better feeling.”

Liberty this year.

Gorecki will likely have an even tougher time Despite the logjam in the frontcourt, Odom breaking into the rotation in Seattle, as the Storm has serious versatility that should help her find are the 2018 WNBA champions and have a nearly minutes sooner rather than later. complete roster already. But while minutes may “As soon as I saw the commissioner be hard to come by, the 6-foot guard will become opening her mouth to say the name, I already an understudy for one of the greatest WNBA knew it was me, and I just started screaming. players of all-time in Sue Bird.

But I tried to hold back the screams because “[Bird] visited our school and she I was on FaceTime with my parents back talked to us for quite a while about her home and they were a little delayed,” Odom history and experiences. So definitely said. “But they still screamed as well…. After learning a lot and being like a sponge and that it was a blur. I looked up and we were taking in everything she has to say and just on the 24th pick and I was like where did the learning from it,” Gorecki said. “It’s going time go…. I’m just really happy and excited to be really awesome.” and thankful.”

Gorecki was not the only guard selected Although the 6-foot-2 star has an incredible by Seattle, and it is unclear if she will land passion for basketball, she had some doubt a roster spot after training camp. But if we before her final season at Duke toward her future have learned anything about the Palatine, with the game. But that all went away during the Ill., native, it’s that her ability to overcome Blue Devils’ incredible second-half tear. obstacles is paralleled by few. Storm head

Kira Upin | Associate Photography Editor

Leaonna Odom’s 14.3 points and 6.2 boards per game placed second on the team. coach Dan Hughes has expressed that her toughness and productivity caught Seattle’s eye, so it appears that Gorecki will have a fighting chance at snagging a rotation spot.

“It was pretty special,” Gorecki said. “I was with my parents and family...super special. Spent time with them and [saw] my name. [The Seattle Storm] called not too long ago and then I picked up and answered the phone and was just greeted by the GM and the coach so it was really nice.”

Odom and Gorecki’s time at Duke is now in the rearview mirror, as both anxiously await the continuation of the WNBA so they can join the list of Blue Devils who have had professional success.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 7

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SOFTBALL

Blue Devils enter national spotlight in historic 3rd season

By Bre Bradham Staff Writer

It was the Thursday afternoon of spring break and the Blue Devils were planning to play Florida State the next day.

Senior captain Raine Wilson had just finished weightlifting when she got a message on her phone: Duke had suspended all athletic events because of the coronavirus.

So she and another senior went out to the softball stadium and sat in center field, texting the other team members to join if they wanted. Within 15 minutes, the whole team was sitting in a circle on the bright green outfield. They laughed, cried and had an impromptu senior day.

“At that point for me, it was just a matter of enjoying the presence of my best friends,” Wilson said.

For the Blue Devils, the virus cut short their best start to a season in the young program’s history. They played only 27 of their 55 scheduled regular season games, but that didn’t prevent them from having a groundbreaking year thanks to an explosive offense and strong pitching.

“I’m super proud of what we were able to accomplish as a team,” head coach Marissa Young said. “I think we were on the road to what would have been our best season yet.”

Duke shattered many of the program’s records from its inaugural two seasons, finishing 23-4 overall and 1-2 in ACC play. The team was just about to enter the main slate of conference play when the season was cut short.

The Blue Devils set a new scoring record

when they racked up 22 runs against Rutgers Feb. 15 after setting it at 16 just a few hours earlier against Indiana. Meanwhile, sophomore outfielder Caroline Jacobsen set a program record with nine home runs despite the shortened campaign.

The Blue Devils outscored their collective opponents 178-44, and the pitching staff finished with the 10th best ERA in the nation.

The team also took down then-No. 4 Texas on the road Feb. 22, notching the program’s first win against a ranked team and handing the Longhorns their first loss of the season.

“The last second when the umpire called her out and we’d won the game, it was like this rush of emotion that’s hard to describe,” Wilson said of the Texas win. “Just gratitude, just pride wearing the Duke jersey, just grateful to be there with my teammates.”

After closing out the season on a nine-game win streak, the Blue Devils were ranked in a major poll for the first time ever when the last ESPN/USA Softball poll of the season pegged them at No. 25. In the final USA Today/Coaches poll of the season, Duke received the most votes of any team outside the top-25.

Wilson said that during the program’s inaugural two seasons in 2018 and 2019, the Blue Devils were still figuring out who they were. She credited the players from those earlier teams for helping lay the foundation. But after two years of building, the team saw all its hard work finally pay off.

“The standard didn’t really change,” Wilson said. “We were always striving for excellence in all areas, but year three it was a complete, 100 percent

buy-in from every single person in the program.”

Young added that the staff, which included four new faces as assistants, came together well this year and that the players really bought into the team.

“So many great things were on the horizon,” Young said. “For me, that’s the toughest part, not being able to see that through.”

But it’s a young program and a young team, and the future looks bright.

“I’m super excited to have everybody back another year and pick up where we left off,” Young said.

The main difference for next year? Wilson believes it’ll be having the confidence of knowing

what they’re capable of going into the season.

Wilson also said the team hasn’t talked about what this season’s record could have been— they understand it’s over and they’re looking forward to next year.

It remains to be seen which seniors may or may not use the extra eligibility ruling to come back next season, with scholarship funding being a major determinant. But no matter what, Duke has a lot to look forward to.

“We’re just trying to stay where our feet are and do as best as we can knowing that Team Four is coming up, in a long time, but it’ll come soon enough,” Wilson said.

Jackson Muraika | Assistant Sports Photography Editor

Raine Wilson hit .273 this past year with 19 RBIs, third on the team.

8 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

BASEBALL

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The Chronicle

FIELD OF

By Jake C. Piazza Blue Zone Editor

Editor’s Note: This article was originally written before Duke Athletics suspended, and eventually cancelled, all sports for this academic year due to the spread of coronavirus.

On Duke’s campus, everyone instantly knows who is being talked about when someone says “Tre” or “Vernon.” What many are not aware of is that there is another superstar student-athlete who is quietly shining just a few steps up the walkway from Cameron Indoor Stadium.

His name is Bryce Jarvis.

Jarvis may not be a household name just yet, but if he continues to follow his current trend, he is well on his way. The casual fan likely first discovered the Franklin, Tenn., native Feb. 21, when Jarvis had a date with destiny and threw a perfect game against Cornell.

Although that February performance was one of the rare times one gets to actually grasp perfection, the preseason All-American had already delivered multiple outstanding performances throughout his first few years in Durham.

Jarvis first danced with perfection against West Virginia a year ago, orchestrating an eightinning shutout to send Duke to the regional championship game. His next tango with it came a week later in the super regional against Vanderbilt, just down the road from his former high school. In a game that will forever be remembered as the Kumar Rocker no-hitter, Jarvis held the eventual national champions to one run in seven innings of high-stakes baseball.

“He’s putting together one of the best careers maybe in the history of Duke baseball,” head coach Chris Pollard said. “What makes him special is a combination. He’s a tremendous competitor, one of the best I’ve ever coached. He has it in his genes.”

The junior credits a great deal of his will to win to his dad, Kevin. The elder Jarvis had a 13-year major league career of his own, experience he uses to teach his son the mental side of the game.

Bryce’s competitive nature is reminiscent of the late, great Kobe Bryant. Off the field, the preseason Golden Spikes Award watch list selectee describes himself as a laid back, friendly guy.

The script flips once he toes the rubber.

“Once I get between those lines and once I’m in that game setting, it’s all gas no brakes,” Jarvis said. “If you’re standing in that box, you’re my enemy in that moment. So I’m going to do what I can to beat you.”

Cornell’s lineup Feb. 21 can surely attest to Jarvis not being an amicable guy when he is on the bump.

in in th in the he of off ffs fsea fsea easo son so n be betw bet twee twee een n st star tar artts ts, wh ts, when hen peopl ple le do don’ n’t se seee yo youu on TV pi pit itc tchi tchi hing ng,, or don ng on’’t’t see you in the games...is a big part of why I’ve I ve been able to be successful in those big spots.”

Offseason grind There are thousands of high school athletes that choose to focus on baseball in the hopess of playing at the next level but oftentimes lack the discipline and drive to fully utilize the entiree calendar year. Finding a ballplayer as young as Jarvis that understands the importance of grindingg hard in December to see the results in April can be few and far between. According to his highh school pitching coach, Chandler Ganick, Jarvis was one of the few who had the long distancee vision of seeing how working in the present would pay dividends in the future.

Jarvis is not one to take his preparation lightly. He has a strict routine that he follows throughoutt the week and always tries to eclipse his former ceiling. This past summer, the Brentwood Academyy product opted to go to the Driveline Baseball player development program in Washington too polish up an already dangerous arsenal. There was a large emphasis placed on pitch shaping, withh Jarvis aiming to create consistency between all of his pitches.

Not to mention, Jarvis decided to add a fourth pitch, a curveball, to his repertoire,, giving opposing hitters one more thing to mull over in the box. What really sticks outt about his choice to go back into the lab and dissect his pitches is the fact that he hadd such a successful sophomore season. In 75.2 innings pitched, he struck out 94 and didd so with a 3.81 ERA, yet he insisted those numbers were not good enough and put hiss nose back to the grindstone.

If his offseason wasn’t already full enough, Jarvis went through an intense strengthh training regimen and added velocity to an already crisp fastball.

As for Jarvis’ future, no one has a crystal ball and can tell us how he pans out, butt his former high school head coach Buddy Alexander is not worried at all.

“His is a labor of love,” Alexander said. “He will make it in the big leagues— — there’s no doubt in my mind. He’s got electric stuff and he’s got a good head on hiss shoulders. Obviously, he’s very intelligent. He’s a well-rounded person. He’s not justt a baseball junkie. He will be successful in life with whatever he does.”

A true student-athlete Perfection—it’s a funny thing.

Most of us want it. Some of us actively pursue it. In reality, only a few of us are ever able to attain it. It is something that Jarvis incessantly chases on the field and in the classroom, regardless of how elusive it is.

In addition to baseball, Jarvis is a Mechanical Engineering student in Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. The pairing of an engineering major and baseball are about as common as Halley’s Comet—for most, it is simply too difficult to juggle. But for Jarvis, the first part of student-athlete is just as important as the second.

“I grew up in a family that expected just as much excellence in the classroom as they did on the field…. I always like to be doing something and I would rather be too busy doing things and trying to find where the tipping point is for myself than to always be comfortable,” Jarvis said. “Pushing myself to the limits in the classroom helps me on the field.”

His theory has been proven true thus far, as Jarvis has numbers that will grab the attention of any scout while still excelling in the classroom. In his four games pitched this year, he is holding opponents to a minuscule .120 batting average along with a 0.67 ERA. Dominance on the biggest stage Jarvis has grown quite familiar with dominance, but what really catches your eye is that he often does so when the lights shine brightest. During his senior year of high school, the righthander went head-to-head with future Vanderbilt ace Mason Hickman, now the No. 65 prospect for the 2020 MLB Draft according to Baseball America, and bested him to send his high school to the championship game.

In his most recent outing, Jarvis held then-No. 11 Florida State to no runs in seven innings, while whiffing 12 batters in Duke’s first ACC victory of the season.

“You kind of want to walk the line between being cocky and having confidence. It’s kind of like an internal confidence,” Jarvis said. “I think trusting the preparation, all the hard work that’s gone

Charles York | Associate Photography Editor

Highlighted by a perfect game against Cornell, Bryce Jarvis could crack the first round of June’s MLB Draft.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 9

DREAMS

By Jake C. Piazza Blue Zone Editor

Junior pitcher Bryce Jarvis reels in his catch of the day in Boca Raton, Fla. Several of his Duke teammates surround him on their fishing boat.

Sophomore shortstop Ethan Murray rolls the Monopoly dice in hopes of landing on Boardwalk in Crozet, Va. He prides himself on his ability to out-strategize his younger brother and parents.

Life seems perfect in both scenarios, but there is one glaring problem in each of them: it’s spring. In spring, Jarvis and Murray are supposed to be in Durham playing games against ACC foes, only leaving Duke on business trips for weekend series.

Spring is supposed to be the beginning of new life. Flowers blossom. Animals reemerge. Baseball starts.

Only this spring, Duke baseball’s season started and ended in a grand total of 26 days. Its 12-4 record is now meaningless, years of build up to this season now dissipated. Sobbing Blue Devils filled the room when head coach Chris Pollard broke the news to them that their elusive goal of making it to the College World Series would evade them once again.

“We received notification that all activities had been suspended,” Pollard said. “The next three or four hours were probably some of the strangest three or four hours of my lifetime.”

An abrupt ending It was March 12 when Pollard learned of the NBA’s suspension, a date that he remembered with no hesitation. The Blue Devils were heading to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park for their midday practice to polish up before their highly-anticipated matchup with North Carolina. An ominous buzz filled the stadium as the players and coaches feared the looming decision.

A team captain glanced at his phone before leaving the locker room to see that Duke athletics had been suspended by the university, and uncertainty erupted. Pollard had still not directly been given word from any athletic department officials of the suspension, so practice began. He cancelled practice after he was notified, but there was still confusion as to what this meant for college baseball.

Later in the day, Pollard gathered his team and explained an inexplicable situation: there was no longer going to be any NCAA championships for winter and spring sports. Every player needed to pack up and leave campus with the expectation that they would not return for the school year.

The Road to Omaha was closed.

According to Murray, the only way to describe the situation is strange.

After wiping the tears caused by the team meeting, he sat at a Chick-fil-A table with two other teammates and tried to dissect what this decision meant for their baseball future.

This Duke team was the product of years of work by the players and coaching staff. Every returner on the roster still had the sour flavor of at least one super regional loss stuck in their taste buds. Pollard added that Jarvis even “turned down a significant sum of money to come back to school” because he felt that he had “unfinished business.” The righty was drafted in the 37th round of last year's MLB Draft.

Murray stated that it was even harder to have the season cancelled because of the success the team already had, and how even then they still were not playing at their full potential.

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you on the phone that if the season had played out we were going to Omaha,” Pollard said. “I do think we had a unique combination of experience, talent and also a hunger, a burning desire to get there. So I think this team could have been very good in the NCAA postseason.”

The Blue Devils were supposed to go to the College World Series for the first time since 1961, announcing to the nation that they were among the elite programs in the country. Or they were supposed to run out of gas on their way to Omaha, once again heading home after a bitter end to the year.

Anything was supposed to happen except the season being whisked away without a fight.

“You have that feeling [of melancholic goodbyes] every year when the season ends,” Jarvis said. “But it’s a little different because you’re going out

Charles York | Associate Photography Editor

Junior catcher Michael Rothenberg led the Blue Devils with a .349 batting average before the season’s abrupt end. the same way you have every other year, and this time it wasn’t really on our own terms which stung just a little bit more.”

‘Somebody is going to win quarantine’ As painful as the sting may have been, a unique opportunity has presented itself for every college baseball player in the country: an extended offseason for next year.

“In athletics there is no substitute for being out there in your arena, working and training and competing,” Pollard said. “But as I’ve talked with other college coaches around the country, somebody is going to win quarantine...it’s incumbent upon us to really be creative and innovative with how we’re interacting and how we’re promoting training.”

Between its weekly team meetings via Zoom, positional breakouts and high profile guest speakers, the team is trying not to throw a pity party on what could have been.

The trainers constructed specialized workouts for each player depending on the kind of access they have to facilities for baseball activities.

Jarvis is quarantining in Florida along with teammates Michael Rothenberg, Thomas Girard, Joey Loperfido and Matt Mervis at Rothenberg’s parents’ house. The five Blue Devils took a page out of an old boxing movie for their approach to training. The day before the state of Florida shut down, they made an eight-hour round trip drive to find a used squat rack from Craigslist, knowing they would likely lose access to workout facilities in the near future. No fancy technology: just metal plates and high humidity in Rothenberg’s garage.

Though they’re focused on staying in shape right now, all five are eligible to leave Duke via this June’s MLB Draft or signing as an undrafted free agent. As a potential firstround pick, Jarvis appears to be the most likely to go pro.

“The draft is something I’ve been working toward for a long time,” Jarvis said when asked if he would be departing Durham next year. “And nothing’s completely set in stone, but it’s definitely my goal and my hope that things continue to work out the way people are saying that they will and that I’ll be able to continue playing at the next level.”

Pollard commented that Jarvis and Rothenberg will both likely be selected in the MLB’s shortened, five-round draft this year, but the future for the rest of the draft-eligible Blue Devils is more unclear. Whether or not they come back for another season of collegiate play is up in the air, as it heavily weighs upon how this unpredictable and unprecedented draft plays out and the number of undrafted free agency signings.

Passing the time and looking ahead Up in Virginia, Murray has a special dynamic in his home. His younger brother See BASEBALL on Page 14

10 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

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MEN’S BASKETBALL

Breaking down potential rotation for the 2020-21 season

By Shane Smith Sports Managing Editor

The end of the 2019-20 college basketball season will always be accompanied by question marks and hypotheticals. While we can question whether or not Duke would’ve been playing in the national championship game this past Monday had it not been cancelled, it’s time to start asking questions about the future.

At first glance, next year’s crop of Blue Devils seems to be in familiar territory.

Star trio Tre Jones, Vernon Carey Jr. and Cassius Stanley declared for the 2020 NBA Draft, however, Duke looks primed to boast a deep, championship-caliber roster for the 2020-21 campaign.

Blue Devil fans held out hope that Stanley would return for his sophomore season, yet the NBA dream was too large for the Sierra Canyon product to pass on. Duke will still begin the season as a top-10 team in the country and Final Four contender, though Stanley could have pushed the team to another level. Duke will return just 32.8 percent of its scoring from last year.

With a rollercoaster of an offseason for the Blue Devils, let’s take a look at who’s in line to take the court in Cameron Indoor this fall.

Point guard: Jordan Goldwire or Jeremy Roach?

After two years of Jones running the

show, he’ll be leaving the offense in good hands with either senior Jordan Goldwire or freshman Jeremy Roach. Mike Krzyzewski often utilized Jones and Goldwire on the floor simultaneously last season, but expect one point guard to emerge in crunch-time next season. Roach comes in as the No. 4 point guard in his class, and although he isn’t as comparable to Jones and Goldwire on the defensive end, the five-star prospect possesses a great basketball I.Q. and uses his size to wreak havoc inside the arc.

Roach won’t just be handed the keys to the offense right away, though, as Goldwire’s career arc predicts that the Norcross, Ga., native could be in store for something special in his final campaign. The battle for starting point guard could plausibly go either way and Duke can’t go wrong with either option, but if players aren’t back on campus over the summer, expect Krzyzewski to lean toward Goldwire at the start of the season while Roach learns the offense.

A wild card worth mentioning now is five-star combo guard D.J. Steward. The McDonald’s All-American projects as one of the Blue Devils’ best shooters next season, yet at 6-foot-3, it’s unclear how he will match up with more physical college players. Steward has the tools to play point guard if needed, however he will be expected to be a scorer as soon as he steps on campus, something he should have no problem accomplishing. Of course, the last time Duke welcomed a Whitney Young High

Bella Bann | Photography Social Media Editor

Matthew Hurt (left) and Jordan Goldwire (right) will serve as key returning pieces beside six incoming freshmen.

School product, a fifth banner was raised in the north end of Cameron.

Wings: Jalen Johnson and Wendell Moore Jr. round out the perimeter Despite Stanley’s decision, the Blue Devils will showcase plenty of talent on the wings. Duke doesn’t bring in a top-5 prospect like usual, though Jalen Johnson is undoubtedly on that same level. The 6-foot8, 215-pounder has a game reminiscent of former Blue Devil stars like Brandon Ingram and Jayson Tatum, and if I had to pin an All-American for Duke in 2021, it

would be Johnson.

Depth won’t be a problem in this group, as known-entities Wendell Moore Jr. and Joey Baker are back with stout defense and lights-out shooting, respectively. Baker should remain as a spark plug role player for the Blue Devils, while Moore has the ability to blossom into an elite two-way player, similar to Justise Winslow in 2015. The Charlotte native became more confident as a slasher late in the season, but he will need a major improvement in 3-point shooting to See ROTATION on Page 14

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FEATURE

Duke athletes reflect on cancelled seasons, quarantine and more

By Em Adler Associate Sports Editor

When Duke suspended all athletic activities March 12, hundreds had to suddenly quit practicing or playing games and leave their teams.

A couple of women’s golfers were in Augusta, Ga., over spring break, practicing for April’s National Women’s Amateur before the rest of their teammates joined them for a March 14-15 tournament. They never got the chance to meet up.

“I guess I didn’t realize the call would come up so soon, that they were just going to cancel everything,” sophomore women’s golfer Gina Kim, who was in Augusta waiting for her teammates, said. “So, obviously, we had to call some people from the athletic department to see if we would still be able to play [the regularseason tournament in Augusta], and they said, ‘No, unfortunately, you’re going to have to turn around.’ Later on, as things progressed, we realized, ‘Oh, this is getting more serious than we thought.’ You know, I think at first, some of our team was just in shock, before anything else.

We were just kind of in disbelief that our season ended so quickly like that.”

While some, like women’s lacrosse senior Catherine Cordrey, were “on edge” even before spring seasons were cancelled, few players were even given the chance to officially receive the crushing news from their own coaches.

“Things were happening so quickly that we didn’t even have the time to talk about it as a

team,” Cordrey said. “Just finding out about team seasons being cancelled over social media, just like Twitter and announcements online. It was frustrating.”

Junior men’s golfer Evan Katz recalls a similar experience.

To most, it felt like their time with their seniors was over as soon as the call came down.

“Obviously it’s extremely disappointing to let our seniors go off like that with no national A unique situation Losing a season is hard when one of your championship, no postseason, no nothing jobs is competing in a sport at a high level, like that, so we decided to have our usual senior dinner much earlier,” Kim said. “We got together and had dinner and talked together about how crazy the situation has been, and I think it was good that we managed to wrap up whatever we had going on and let our seniors go off on a good note.”

It’s not just the end of the season that made this a unique situation, but the loss of playing their sport altogether. A large portion of Duke athletes, especially those with professional aspirations, play in leagues and tournaments year-round. Given the current pandemic, most opportunities for that are still a month or more away.

For those who went home in March though, quarantine gives them a great opportunity to spend their extra free-time with family.

“It’s been really nice [being home with my Henry Haggart | Associate Photography Editor family].

I can’t imagine having been alone Gina Kim and the women’s golf team, ranked No. 4 in the country, never had the opportunity through this time,” Katz said. “I definitely miss to repeat as national champions. friends and getting to do some of that, but it’s also been really nice to get to spend extra time “We were just practicing, and I checked my especially for the players whose teams were with my mom and dad, especially with the fact phone, and I saw a text from one of my friends poised to make championship runs this spring. that I’m going to be a senior this coming year that said, ‘Hey man, so sorry to hear about But for many, it’s what their teams had off the and probably moving out after that, so I guess the news,’ and I didn’t know what exactly field that’s so hard to be without. it’s nice to just enjoy this last little bit where I’ll While there’s yet to be any official word on that meant,” Katz said. “And then I called get to be living with them.” him and he was like, ‘Yeah, the ACC just Blue Devils exercising their additional eligibility, cancelled the basketball [tournament],’ and all of this went down before the NCAA had See ATHLETES on Page 13 then I’m pretty sure he said Duke cancelled even considered helping the affected athletes. athletics or whatever…. It was a little bit unnerving.”

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 13

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FOOTBALL

David Cutcliffe and staff prepare remotely for 2020 campaign workouts, though it remains to be seen how around the country.

“It’s an unusual time for all of us,” Cutcliffe Duke will handle the return of student-athletes said. “I find myself in new circumstances daily. to campus.

“You have to have a plan Over two months have passed since college I don’t have all of the in place first for preparation,” sports were put on hold throughout the answers. What I would It’s a part of the human Cutcliffe said. “When you country. While many question marks remain say is that the focus part of this thing. It’s not realize what the preparation overall, from eligibility rulings to transfers, for us has been on just rah-rah football. window is upon a return date, there’s a lot of uncertainty focused around the communication. The then you can start speculating biggest money-maker in amateur athletics: best thing we can do DAVID CUTCLIFFE what to do with a season. At college football. is communicate and DUKE FOOTBALL HEAD COACH this point, there is nothing but Duke head coach David Cutcliffe isn’t we’re doing that daily. people’s opinions.” trying to predict what will happen with A lot of good things But for Duke’s head man, he’s quick to put COVID-19 and its ensuing effects, and while come from difficult times.”

Earlier this week, Duke President Vincent more emphasis on the human aspect of the he joins frequent meetings to discuss the future Price announced that the university plans to situation.

From team talks to meetings with of college football in a pandemic, his main recruits and their parents, most of what Cutcliffe is reopen in the fall with more details to come challenge right now is his team. Normally, the focusing on now is not the Xs and Os he normally in June.

However, this doesn’t guarantee Blue Devils would have wrapped up successful talks about in these times. a normal situation for the college football spring practices in April and would return While Cutcliffe is keeping the safety of season.

Last week, the NCAA voted to permit for fall football toward August, but now the his players in the front of his mind, he and his football and basketball athletes to return to coach who heads into his 13th year in Durham staff aren’t wasting any time when it comes campus starting June 1 for voluntary offseason is having to manage over 100 players spread to preparation of the team. The program transitioned team meetings to Zoom, a platform that Cutcliffe said has been working well as he bounces around to check on his players. There are now big screens and a speaking platform set up for him in his office for a more comfortable way to break down film to his players as they all try to make the most of the situation.

“It’s a part of the human part of this thing. It’s not just rah-rah football. Every individual’s case is a little different,” Cutcliffe said. “We’re having to do a great deal of work. It’s not just coaches.

Our entire staff has served our football players extremely well. We’re trying to listen closely and support them every way we can.”

After conference calls though, a major question mark remains with how to keep the Bre Bradham | Associate Photography Editor players active and in shape with limited access to workout materials. Some players returned Head coach David Cutcliffe will have a new quarterback for the second straight year.

to full-sized home gyms, while others may not have enough space to even do home workouts.

Luckily, Cutcliffe and his staff prepared early for these circumstances and put a plan in place for specific situations.

Care packages were sent home to every player with resistance bands, protein powders and snacks to give the players some relief during the quarantine. The trainers also sent out diet plans to each player and specific workout routines that involve some running, as well as strength training based on what is accessible to the player.

“All you can do is the best you can do in that regard,” Cutcliffe said. “We’re not with them. The difficult task is they are in different places in different environments. Different size of dwellings. Different abilities to go maybe run even on the street. That concerns me greatly. There are mechanisms put in place that Duke has done to give some financial relief to all sorts that need it for whatever reason. We’ve encouraged those students in that mode to apply.”

The chaos and uncertainty of these times is a wrinkle to iron out for the Blue Devils, who will look to return to a bowl game for the first time since 2018 after a 5-7 finish last season. With last year’s starting quarterback Quentin Harris out of eligibility, Cutcliffe and his staff missed out on valuable opportunities in the spring to anoint their signal-caller of the future, whether it be Clemson transfer Chase Brice or a current player like redshirt sophomore Gunnar Holmberg or redshirt junior Chris Katrenick.

“My whole thing to our squad is to be compliant,” Cutcliffe said. “Nothing is easy right now. Nothing. But we are doing something of importance right now that will shape the fall— that’s the focus I think we need to have.”

ATHLETES

NIGERIA

By Shane Smith

Sports Managing Editor

FROM PAGE 11 Other athletes, however, are finding that being separated from family is harder than ever before. Cordrey, for example, has family in the Tri-state area, the worst-affected area in the entire country. So she’s stayed in her Durham apartment during quarantine.

Making use of downtime Without a chance to devote energy to their sport, players are also using this time to catch up on some hobbies.

“I’ve been going and running the trails around campus. It’s definitely emotional any time I have to go near campus and think about where we would be with our season at this point,” Cordrey said. “I love to do puzzles, so

I have a puzzle right now that I’ve been working on. I’m also very into arts and crafts, so I love to paint, and I have a bunch of crafts laying around my apartment, kind of like a whole workshoptype-of-thing. So I’m not just watching TV when I stay in my apartment.”

Quarantine can even be a good time to get into cooking.

“I’ve been cooking a lot, kind of experimenting,” Kim said. “I don’t know, I’m trying to find little artistic, creative ways to keep my mind going, keep my brain functioning…. [I’m cooking] a lot of Korean food, stuff that I would watch my mom make, and I would try to cook dinner for the family. So considering no one has fallen victim to my cooking, I will say it’s a success.”

While that added time has its perks, it

Chronicle File Photo

Evan Katz finished the spring campaign as Golfweek’s No. 11 ranked player in the country.

also means that a player’s normally tightlyscheduled day is suddenly much more open. FROM PAGE 4 For a lot of people, this has meant trouble staying focused and motivated, which is while she finished up final exams. why productivity and organization is so “Being able to give back to my community is important. something that is a big part of what I want to do “I’m trying to keep sort of a structure— going forward,” Akinbode-James said. “Though the first couple of weeks, I didn’t really have this is a sad time, it does give me a little bit more a schedule or anything, but now I’m sort time to take a step back and reflect on my life. I of trying to go to bed at the same time and don’t know if I would have started the whole get up at the same time just to keep some thing if Jennifer didn’t reach out to me. For me, normalcy,” Katz said. “On the guitar, I’ve it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and now been working on ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ this is a great time to start taking some action.

That’s sort of what I’ve been working on, and Hopefully, it’s something I can carry on.” then other than that I’ve just been reading some good books, trying to just work on my mind and keep getting better.”

Even after packing up bags, turning around and saying goodbye to Duke’s campus and facilities, it’s not always easy to process such an earth-shattering shift to someone’s life. It’s hard to stay centered and grounded when you have to completely reorganize everything.

“It hit me hard at first, but I hadn’t really fully processed it, if that makes sense,” Katz said. “I understood that the season was over and all that, and we weren’t going to be playing with the seniors ever again, and that sort of all hit me pretty hard at first. But I guess I hadn’t really fully processed the idea that in two days I would be home and transitioning to online school and all that. It was just a lot to handle at first…. I guess when I got home Eric Wei | Associate Photography Editor and kind of stopped moving for a second was A 6-foot-3 forward, Akinbode-James was when it really hit me.” born in Abeokuta, Nigeria.

14 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

ROTATION FROM PAGE 10 become a star. After shooting over 80 percent from the free throw line as a freshman, that kind of uptick in efficiency from deep may be more realistic than some think.

Forwards: Matthew Hurt leads versatile group The Blue Devils will also possess more size at the forward position next season, but that doesn’t mean that those players don’t have comparable skill sets to this past year’s group.

Matthew Hurt will return for his sophomore campaign, giving Duke another lethal deep threat. If the Rochester, Minn., native can bulk up in the offseason, the Blue Devils won’t have to put as much stock into their unproven centers and could run lineups with Hurt at the 5.

Then there are two incoming recruits that seem to be off of many radars. Jaemyn Brakefield and Henry Coleman III aren’t top-10 recruits by any means, but could carve

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out a space in the rotation during their first year on campus.

Coleman figures to fill the roles left by Jack White and Javin DeLaurier as a gritty defender and rebounder. Though there is potential for bigger things in the future, look for the 6-foot-7 forward to gain playing time in his freshman campaign with things that don’t show up in the box score.

Not to compare him to a former All-American out of the gates, but Brakefield possesses tools similar to former Blue Devil Jabari Parker. The Huntington Prep product has the size, ball-handling skills and decent shooting to turn into a college star, though recruiting analysts aren’t quite sure how Brakefield will translate to the college game early on.

The incoming freshman has the potential to blossom like Stanley in his freshman year, in which case you can find him seeing major minutes alongside Johnson.

Center: Mark Williams/Patrick Tape man the middle Perhaps the biggest question for this roster is if the Blue Devils will have a reliable interior presence or if Krzyzewski

will rely on a small-ball lineup. Incoming freshman Mark Williams shares similar shot blocking and rebounding skills to his sister and former Duke women’s basketball star Elizabeth Williams, though his offensive prowess is a major step down from Carey. Then there’s Patrick Tape, a graduate transfer from Columbia, who could become a scoring threat for the Blue Devils after impressive performances against Power 5 schools during his junior campaign.

Williams has developed extremely fast as a prospect over his final two years of high school and should start for the Blue Devils throughout the year. Like the point guard battle, however, Tape has the necessary experience and could surprise with major minutes. No matter who takes the starting role, expect both to see the floor come November.

Krzyzewski rolled out 14 different starting lineups over the course of last season, and Duke’s return to action could look very similar with at least 10 players capable of earning playing time. Lottery-level talent, headlined by Johnson, will inevitably find Cameron Indoor Stadium, but this balanced roster structure in back-to-back years could be a shift in the program’s direction for Krzyzewski’s stretch run.

Charles York | Associate Photography Editor

Wendell Moore Jr. will look to become a formidable scoring threat in his sophomore campaign.

BASEBALL FROM PAGE 9 Noah is a 2023 Duke baseball commit, and the two have set up a workout regimen: wake up at 8 a.m. to get swings in and then lift weights as much as possible.

“To win this quarantine I want to come out of it in the best shape of my life,” Murray said. “I think it is a very unique opportunity where I’m basically just stuck at home with nothing better to do than lift weights, run fast and hit the ball hard.”

Even though the training has continued, several Blue Devils are taking time to look at the silver lining of the situation.

At the Rothenberg residence in Florida, the five of them know the future is murky and are cherishing the days they have left as a unit. Loperido and Mervis have even flexed some of their non-baseball skills in quarantine. Loperfido defies the stereotype of college students only cooking cup-o-noodles, flashing some culinary talent. The 6-foot-4 frame of Mervis is not only helpful on the baseball diamond, but also allows him to be a menace in pool basketball.

Murray has realized how lucky he is to be able to spend extra time with his family, even if less than ideal circumstances caused it. He noted the importance of incorporating relaxing family time into his daily life to complement his workout program. Competing on the baseball field may have been put on pause, but Murray plays family board games like the rubber match of a rivalry series.

Winning and losing between the lines for any sport may still be a long way away. But for athletes, you win and lose everyday with the decisions you make. It is very easy to slide out of a workout routine cooped up at home.

Whatever teams shred workouts and are relentless in its preparation will have a massive leg up next season.

There may not have been a College World Series winner this year. But spring will come again, and when it does, Duke is going to do its best to make sure we know who the champion of the 2020 season was.

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VOLUME 116, ISSUE 1 | JUNE 2020

best of summer session II Expanded online humanities courses to take this summer, page 5

what to watch in quarantine Optimistic movies for uncertain times, page 12

local businesses adapt How a local tattoo parlor is coping during the pandemic, page 6

2 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

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How are you coping during quarantine?

Sarah Derris .......................i’m not

Stephen Atkinson ............ playlists

Sydny Long ....................... fashion

Skyler Graham .....binge-watching

Eva Hong ................... reminiscing

Jonathan Pertile ............ tweeting

Kerry Rork .............. retail therapy

Derek Chen ............................kota

Tessa Delgo ......................reading On the cover: Rapper Mamoudou walks around Durham.

Photo by Rebekah Alvarenga as part of the Small Town USA course project.

staff note On May 24, The New York Times printed on its front page the names of 1,000 victims, just 1% of the more than 100,000 people who have lost their lives to COVID-19. Among them, a newlywed, a jazz pianist, an educator and a portraitist — all members of a greater community. With any disaster, the mind takes time to adjust to the loss of mentors, friends and loved ones, especially when they are not our own. For some, myself included, it is difficult to feel anything at all, save for a numb listlessness, while others are feeling intense despair and hopelessness. Both emotional states can be considered symptoms of grief in the wake of such staggering loss.

For those grieving in isolation, personal loss becomes heightened with the weight of

communal loss. Grieving is a natural response to loss, an emotional process that requires upwards of a year to heal, but not everyone is afforded the necessary space and time to grieve. The most vulnerable communities continue to face the greatest devastation, yet they are the very communities urged to rush back work for the economy’s sake, even while conditions remain unsafe. And a great deal have, because in most cases, there is no choice: Grieving or not, rent is still due on the first of the month and families must be fed.

In America, the pandemic has brought about prolonged suffering in poor, workingclass communities, people of color and vulnerable populations. Black communities are disproportionately devastated by the pandemic, and the government’s bungled response left millions of high-risk individuals without proper medical coverage, PPE, testing infrastructure and food supply to fend

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for themselves. Because of this, hundreds of thousands have perished, and this rate, the frightening reality is that thousands more may follow in the approaching fall and winter months as states continue forward with plans to reopen.

Yet here we are in a state of moral deadlock. Most people are concerned for public health and their own personal safety as the virus continues its spread, yet there remains a demand for reopening and a return to normalcy. The question of normalcy itself is a puzzling one. How can, after everything, returning to normal still be on the cards? It was our previous “normal” that left us vulnerable to our current horrifying reality: Greed and the neoliberal appetite for seizing land and destroying the very ecosystems that function to contain deadly pathogens like COVID-19 for development and industrial agriculture have been identified as the root of disease emergence. Now, inadequate health coverage, wealth disparity and a crippling lack of testing infrastructure has left us unequipped to contain the spread.

It is not as if the epidemiological risks were unknown to those in charge of running mass industries, but they have reckoned with the risks and decided that they are worth the reward.

Similarly, elite universities have declared that reopening in the fall is “worth the risk.” Of course, in an ideal world, most students would prefer to return to campus in the fall, but there remains a concern for whether our health and the health of university workers can be fully ensured — for the moment, it does not seem to be the case. What will happen when members of our own community become infected? How can the university cope with the reality of possibly losing students and staff if university spaces reopen?

The sheer scale of COVID’s impact

The Chronicle means that we can now use the same metric to measure both lost lives and lost money, but inevitably, the larger number outweighs the other in the end. Dollars over lives. One thousand names on the front page of the Times doesn’t seem to be enough. It’s jarring, but in truth, it is the “normal” we have endured for so long.

What gives me hope now is the solidarity I’ve witnessed within our communities at Duke, in Durham and across the country.

Early on, people realized that institutions of power (the federal government, the university) would not provide adequate support and quickly took it upon themselves to create mutual aid networks, establish food and supply delivery services, participate in rent strikes, push the need for Medicare for All and assist the undocumented and unemployed.

For many of us at Duke dealing with grief, depression and trauma related to COVID-19, we seek support from friends, family and community members while institutional mental health resources remain insufficient. Responsibility never should have been entirely in our hands, but when systems of power refuse to stand for their people, it gives me hope that communities will come together and stand for each other.

I began this staff note almost a week ago, but this week, communities continue to grieve the senseless murder of George Floyd, another action of racism and systemic, state-sanctioned violence against black people by the police under an irreparable criminal justice system. In this moment, as the systems that have defined our “normal” reveal themselves as broken by design, it is now our communities that are coming together to dismantle and reimagine our systems of power and justice, systems that will one day secure the health, safety and livelihoods of all.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 3

campus arts

Story+ summer program to continue telling stories from a distance

By Sydny Long Managing Editor

The coronavirus outbreak has shuttered many summer projects and programs, but the interdisciplinary narratives of Duke’s Story+ will continue to be told in spite of — and even because of — the current circumstances.

“What the pandemic has made possible for all of our student researchers is a very recent, direct experience of their own digital and interface processes,” Jules Odendahl-James, wrote.

Odendahl-James, along with Amanda Starling Gould, is Co-Director of Story+, a six-week summer program through the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute that offers students the opportunity to develop and execute humanities research projects under a sponsor and a graduate student mentor. While the acquisition and honing of research skills are an obvious focus of the intensive summer program, Story+ sets itself apart from similar initiatives by emphasizing storytelling as a crucial tool in the creation and presentation of these projects.

Many past Story+ projects have utilized digital archives and mediums to assemble and share their efforts, which OdendahlJames believes will provide this year’s cohort with a slight advantage as technology has become unprecedentedly efficient, flexible and sophisticated in the wake of the outbreak.

“As students (having completed coursework online for eight weeks or so) and as users (engaging streaming services, websites, podcasts, newsletters, Zoom), I think they will bring some wonderful insights to their work from these circumstances.”

This year, instead of taking place on-

campus or in specified project sites, Story+ will instead be delivered remotely. Although the program has been trimmed from a full-time to a part-time commitment to accommodate students’ diverse living conditions, OdendahlJames emphasized in an article for the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute website that the themes and objectives of Story+ will remain unaltered.

“The goal is to maintain, as much as possible, a focus on process, depth and taking one’s time to let research evolve. These are values at the core of Story+.”

However, this dedication to maintaining the program’s integrity does not preclude it from accepting and, in some cases, embracing the impact of the coronavirus on society. In addition to the anticipated slate of projects — ranging in topic from policy responses to coal-mining disasters to documentary sculpture — two new ventures have been added in response to the pandemic. The first is a digital ethnomusicology project that promises to investigate the DJ community and how they have adapted to cancelled performances and closed venues by turning to streaming platforms and fostering a novel environment where music, technology and socialization collide. The second is a comparative study of Durham’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak and the 1918 flu pandemic to assess how much has changed over the course of a century.

Odendahl-James spoke optimistically about these new projects, perceiving them as positive outcomes of the outbreak and its consequences.

“There is one new project [that] came

Courtesy of Franklin Humanities Institute FHI’s Story+ program, traditionally held in Durham each summer, is now taking place remotely.

to us as an entry to replace a team that decided not to shift to the virtual form that looks at DJs globally and how their work, especially live streaming is affected by the pandemic. This very cool digital ethnographic project was introducing its work in our bootcamp, and we found another student who is a DJ (who has had streaming gigs) and might become part of the study!” Odendahl-James wrote.

“Another team, also an adapted project, is comparing Durham’s response to the pandemic today to its response in 1918, and during team leaders’ introductions we found that the team looking at photographs and caregiver stories at a Raleigh early 20th century asylum experienced that 1918

The Duke Djembe Ensemble, directed by Bradley Simmons, offers students the opportunity to develop skill in the art of West African drumming. The Djembe Ensemble memorizes each rhythm, just as the Mandinque people have for hundreds of years. The Afro-Cuban Class introduces students to the many exciting rhythms of the Cuban diaspora.

Ensembles & Performance Opportunities

The Duke Jazz Ensemble, directed by John Brown, has a rich history of excellence. The ensemble performs at least two concerts each semester with guest artists noted for their high level of artistic achievement. Last year’s guests included Ernie Watts, Fred Wesley, and Ulysses Owens, Jr. Small group Jazz Combos provide additional opportunities.

Chamber Music Ensembles, coordinated by Caroline Stinson, explore the repertoire for string quartet, piano trio, saxophone quartet, and other combinations. Groups receive weekly coachings with a member of the performance faculty in preparation for a public performance. The focus is on in-depth study of one or two complete works, allowing students to develop and refine their ensemble skills.

The Chinese Music Ensemble, directed by Jennifer Chang, is designed for students of varying abilities who would like to further their skill and understanding of traditional Chinese instrumental performance.

Students at all levels, including those with no prior experience in Chinese music, but with some background in performance, are encouraged to participate.

The Duke Chorale, directed by Rodney Wynkoop, is a concert and touring choir of 50 singers. Last year’s annual Spring Break tour went to the southeastern U.S. The 2019-2020 season also included a concert on Family Weekend, a holiday concert in Duke Chapel, and a concert with the Choral Society of Durham featuring John Rutter’s Requiem and Louis Vierne’s Mass for 2 Organs and Choir. Rehearsals are 7:309:30 pm Tuesday & Thursday. The 20-voice Chamber Choir rehearses 9:30-10:30 pm Tuesday.

Collegium Musicum, directed by Max Ramage, is Duke's ensemble for early music. We specialize in music composed before 1750, including repertoire from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque.

Collegium Musicum is open to all instrumentalists and singers at Duke who have at least some performing experience.

pandemic. Hopefully there will be a point of connection to explore there.”

While the coronavirus pandemic and its resulting cancellations have been undeniably difficult for many, Story+’s resilience and devotion to delivering a unique program that actively couples conventional research with modern modes of storytelling and digital archivation underscores the necessity of telling and preserving stories during the best and worst of times. As Gould says in her approach to the program — “community over content.” No matter how the redesigned project unfolds or how the research goes over an uncertain summer, the stories to come out of the program will doubtlessly be more than worth sharing.

Open to all Duke students.

Auditions are required for ensembles (0.5 credit) and applied music lessons (o.25 or 0.5 credit).

music.duke.edu

The Duke New Music Ensemble [dnme], directed by Stephen Downing, explores the music of the current moment. Each member of the group is encouraged to contribute and collaborate, speaking with their own creative musical voice. The ensemble performs regularly in the Duke community, often alongside renowned guest artists. No previous experience with contemporary music is required.

The Duke Opera Theater, directed by David Heid, presents operas, opera scenes, and musical theater revues. Last year, we presented a faculty/student joint concert featuring famous operatic ensembles by Bizet, Mozart, Beethoven, Copland, and Gounod.

The Duke Symphony Orchestra is directed by Harry Davidson. The 2019/20 season included major symphonies by Dvorák, Brahms, Hindemith and Shostakovich. A benefit concert in Beaufort, SC takes place each spring.

Applied Music lessons for instruments & voice Students may take one-hour weekly lessons (1/2 course) or half-hour lessons (1/4 course) More info at music.duke.edu/lessons

The Duke Wind Symphony, directed by Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, performs a wide variety of high level wind ensemble music. Highlights of the 2019-20 season included concerts in Baldwin Auditorium, the annual Viennese Ball, a concert with Imani Winds, and a Halloween concert. We performed a variety of exciting works, several selected by Duke Wind Symphony members. Join us!

4 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

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Writer John Evans offers remote expressive writing seminars

By Megan Liu Staff Writer

Courtesy of Franklin Humanities Institute Writing clinician John Evans, pictured above, leads the online expressive writing workshops for students through FHI’s Health Humanities Lab.

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nasher.duke.edu Derek Fordjour, Signing Day (detail), 2019. Acrylic, charcoal, oil pastel, and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas; 74 1/2 × 50 1/2 inches (189.23 × 128.27 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Gift of Blake Byrne, A.B.’57; 2019.25.1. © Derek Fordjour. Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

In a time where the words “Zoom” and “online” have become synonymous with stress, the Franklin Humanities Institute’s Health Humanities Lab aims to fight against the stressors of daily life using these exact platforms.

John Evans is a writing clinician and integrative health coach who hosted one of the Health Humanities Lab’s first online Expressive Writing seminars after the university transitioned to remote learning. Specializing in resilience training and the use of writing to complement traditional healthcare methods, Evans has previously led a Bass Connections team studying expressive writing for adult pediatric cancer survivors.

Having sensed a demand for support networks related to the pandemic, Evans, alongside Health Humanities Lab (HHL) manager Cuquis Robledo, made a quick decision to open up an online space.

“People were asking where they could find resources or workshops related to COVID-19, so we basically created a whole workshop from the ground up. It was a fast, fast, turnaround,” Robledo said.

Usually, these types of workshops are hosted in-person, asynchronously with recorded webinars or over email and Google Hangouts. However, the six-part workshop conducted over the month of April began using Zoom as a way to bring participants together. Striking a balance between preserving the intimacy of the subject with the need for community became surprisingly manageable with the use of Zoom.

“People are in the comfort of their own homes — they don’t have to go anywhere. And yet, there is a sense of community when they can look around the screen and see four or five rows of faces,” Evans said.

Robledo also noted the sense of community building, with a high retention rate across workshops and a broad geographical diversity in attendees. The attendees included undergraduates and employees, but also attracted people from Nova Scotia, Turkey and South Africa.

“By the end, we were getting new participants through word-of-mouth,” Robledo said.

But what exactly is expressive writing? Evans described it as a simple opportunity to express your most significant feelings about what is currently affecting your life.

“There’s not an emphasis on any kind of convention or any type of form — we don’t pay attention to spelling, punctuation or grammar — expressive writing is not academic writing at all. Expressive writing is really meant for the person to be the audience.”

Participants were not expected to share their writings; rather, the synchronous group meetings were designed to maximize outreach and dispel the sense of isolation due to social distancing orders. “I was delighted—we’ve had a wonderful, robust response,” Evans said.

Typically in a workshop, Evans would first relay several prompts related to the topic at hand, offering participants the chance to write about their experiences. After each prompt, a post-writing reflection would help the writers better understand their emotional state. Workshops included unique writing techniques, such as writing an unsent letter to a healthcare provider or a patient with COVD-19. In one exercise, Evans also asked the participants to switch to a third-person point of view.

“People tell us that this helps them be more objective about the experience and provides some cognitive or emotional distance. It gives you a chance to kind of catch your breath on what’s going on,” Evans said.

For many working with the Health Humanities Lab, the pandemic has provided some unexpected insights into working and learning remotely. In addition to the success of the Expressive Writing workshop, Robledo described how the pandemic has opened up spaces to talk about the mental health of students and awareness of community members with disabilities. In the first online workshop of the Disability and Access Initiative hosted by Marion Quirici, who works alongside Robledo at the Health Humanities Lab, educators discussed disability-conscious teaching within the context of remote learning.

“With this pandemic, it’s kind of shown that faculty can make their syllabi more accessible for people with disabilities. They can take the time to extend test periods and deadlines. You can do it, so why not do it for those who need accommodations in the first place?” Robledo explained.

Moving forward, both Evans and Robledo are optimistic about the role of Zoom in the Health Humanities Lab’s projects. “Definitely I foresee future events being online, and I think that’s a good thing,” Robledo said.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 5

Summer Session II provides expanded selection of online arts courses

By Eva Hong Campus Arts Editor

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, many students are scrambling to find new summer plans after their original arrangements, including internships, travel, research, DukeEnage and study-abroad program, were cancelled. To help students in this struggle, Duke has expanded its normal catalogue of summer classes. By partaking in summer classes, students can catch up or get ahead in their academic pursuits while waiting for the pandemic to end so that they can resume other activities.

During Summer Session II, students can choose one or two classes in a traditional sixweek term from June 29 to Aug. 9 or take one class in an intensive four-week term from July 7 to July 30. This year, all summer classes will take place online.

Many arts students may be hesitant to take more virtual classes due to unfavorable experiences with the format this spring.

Compared to STEM and social science courses, arts courses may be less conducive to the remote platform because they are typically smaller and more interactive. They also generally require more participation and engagement from students, who might have conflicts now due to potential time differences and difficult circumstances at home. Although the challenges of remote learning are numerous, so are the potential benefits of this educational experiment.

For instance, Professor Maurizio Forte of the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies noted that the remote teaching format forces students to pay close attention to their screen in order to stay on top of what is happening in the class. In this format, he was also able to incorporate a lot of multimedia learning tools and innovative technology into his Summer Session II

course, Why Art?, which explores the purpose of art and its role in human societies from the time of cavemen all the way to the future of virtual reality.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Forte’s class is the use of a 3D virtual collaborative room, where students become avatars in the cyberspace of a virtual gallery designed by Forte and can interact or communicate with each other.

“This special embodiment is able to recreate the sense of presence in a new environment such as, in this case, a virtual gallery or room. So the interaction in that space is different, and the production of information inside of it is different,” Forte said. “This is another example of the fact that we can use the virtual space in a more sophisticated way.”

Besides such technologically advanced arts classes, there are also other options for students who want to keep up to date with the ongoing crisis and figure out how our society is changing during the pandemic. Jacob Smith, a lecturing fellow in the Thompson Writing Program, is offering a class called Democracy & Crises. The class is cross-listed in both Writing and Political Science and examines how democracies address crises of various forms and how different crises might threaten the very idea of democracy.

More specifically, the course is divided into three units. The first unit focuses on important authors in political philosophy, such as Alexander Hamilton, John Locke and Abraham Lincoln, especially their writing on executive power. The second unit explores various contexts of crises, including pandemics, wars and terrorism, and the third unit takes a look at how film and TV portray the question of democracy in crises with a special analysis of “The West Wing.”

Accompanying the third unit is an interesting assignment that asks the students to write a

short story or a movie/television script based on a course-related scenario.

“There is a question in our country about maintaining the integrity of the election.

There is also another problem: If a democratic country doesn’t handle a crisis well, is it perceived as being effective? How will that affect public opinion? Will people in that country give up on democracy? Will they say it doesn’t do a good job of addressing these crises?” Smith said. “There are definitely threats to [democracy right now].”

That is indeed food for thought. But for students already looking ahead into the postpandemic future, they could also benefit from taking summer classes by pondering and discussing where our society is heading to next.

For example, Maggie McDowell, a fifth-year graduate student in the English department, is teaching a class called I, Robot that provides such an opportunity. This course intends to

analyze human beings’ hopes and fears for an artificial-intelligence-powered future, delving into questions of robotic ethics by studying short stories, television and film, namely “Metropolis,” “Blade Runner” and “Ex Machina.”

“I think we’re in a moment where people are really being called to reevaluate how important human relationships are to them...And one of the questions I’m hoping to explore in this course is whether progress just for the sake of doing the next cool thing is really a meaningful thing for society, or whether there’s some element of basic humanity that’s still important and worth hanging onto,” said McDowell.

Beyond these three highlighted courses, there are plenty of interesting choices offered this summer through various arts departments at Duke. For more COVID-19-related courses, students can also check out Educational Impact of COVID-19, the COVID-19 Infodemic and the History of Global Health.

Photo by Jim Liu | The Chronicle Expanded online summer course offerings allow students to select from a range of humanities courses.

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6 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

local arts

Welcome Tattoo parlor reveals COVID-19’s impact on local businesses

By Skyler Graham Culture Editor

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Welcome Tattoo Parlor voluntarily closed its doors a week ahead of Gov. Roy Cooper’s stay at home orders.

Friday the 13th is consistently anticipated to be an eventful day among horror film fanatics and the subtly superstitious, but it is also a significant day in tattoo shops across the country. Sailors believed that tattooing the traditionally unlucky number 13 on their bodies would deter bad luck from following them, which encouraged others to flaunt the symbol with simple, spooky designs.

Dallas tattoo artist Oliver Peck turned this trend into an event in the ‘90s and tattoo shops have been celebrating the mystic day with special events and mysteriously low prices — typically, $13 — ever since.

Ironically, Friday the 13th was the last time Durham’s Welcome Tattoo shop was operating normally.

The March 13 event was supposed to be a party: the owners booked Wonderpuff to serve gourmet cotton candy and planned giveaways for those who joined the gathering. The festivities,

however, were quickly adapted to address the rising concerns about COVID-19 in the state. The owners modified this notoriously-crowded celebration into a first-come, first-served flash event. Clients could choose a piece of palm-sized flash for $130, and all proceeds went toward the nonprofit of the client’s choice. Welcome Tattoo maintained the artistry and convenient prices of each Friday the 13th, but sacrificed its electric atmosphere to protect the Durham community.

“We already clean a lot, as you can imagine,” owner Morgan Grimm said. “We just became extra aware of cleanliness, wiping down clipboards and door handles after every customer.

We limited the number of people allowed in the shop at one time and only let in people who were actually being tattooed.”

Lively and inviting energy is necessary for a tattoo shop. Even if buzzing needles and bloodstained gloves threaten your bravado, there is

Your guide to the arts across Duke.

Stories, events, opportunities & community.

arts.duke.edu & follow @dukearts Illustration by Nate Beaty

comfort in the echoing post-grunge playlists and muffled admiration for wall-hung collages.

The dying vivacity within the tattoo shop was indicative of the impending shutdown.

The shop voluntarily closed their doors two days later.

“It all happened so fast. We went from not hearing about anything coronavirus-related to being affected by it overnight,” Grimm said. “We felt that closing was the best thing to do for our community at the time.”

A week after Welcome Tattoo closed, Gov. Roy Cooper ordered personal care and grooming services to close by March 25 at 5 p.m. All barber shops, hair, nail, and beauty salons and massage and tattoo parlors were shut down due to their inability to provide service while social distancing.

These businesses are dependent on in-person contact, and, as a result, are desperately struggling through the COVID-19 crisis.

Restaurants and retail shops are undeniably experiencing financial losses, but they can still partially operate under current conditions.

Tattoo artists, on the other hand, cannot deliver their product to your doorstep.

“I feel like [tattoo shops], nail techs, hairdressers, massage therapists, a lot of those inperson services are just in a complete standstill,” Grimm expressed. “There is really not much that can be done until we see a decline in cases.”

In addition to losing a steady source of revenue, many new businesses have not been operating long enough to qualify for small business loans. Oneyear-old Welcome Tattoo, too new to obtain such loans, has utilized creative methods of bringing in money. Grimm explained how one tattooer, Kohen Meyers, has been creating and selling his artwork in an attempt to earn an income as the pandemic prohibits his livelihood. The shop also

hosted a raffle in which the winner would receive a free original flash design — designs that typically cost anywhere from $100 to $500.

Amid selling merchandise and hosting raffles for the shop, Welcome Tattoo’s main focus has been promoting other small businesses in Durham. Their Instagram page kindly pushes followers to donate to the Triangle Restaurant Workers Relief Fund for the chance to win a free flash tattoo.

“Right when we closed, we did a big raffle for the Triangle Restaurant Workers Relief Fund. We realized we’re not the only ones going through this,” Grimm explained. “I think Durham has always been great about supporting local businesses, so it is nice that we can continue to do that.”

Ultimately, small businesses are depending on the support of consumers — their neighbors — to stay afloat. It may seem inconvenient to scope out a local business carrying the products you want instead of visiting your preferred cookiecutter capitalist wonderland, but shopping small benefits the entire community. Not to mention, locally created products — from Pincho Loco’s refreshing ice cream to Heavenly Buffaloes’ latenight greasy satisfaction — allows customers to explore the city through innovative, artistic products crafted by people passionate about their work. They’re working for you. And right now, they need you more than ever.

“Buy from local shops and local restaurants as much as possible. Buy from them instead of Amazon or a major chain store. We’ve been buying groceries from our neighbor Accordion Club,” Grimm said. “What’s really important is that financial support. If you’re not able to financially support, then share what those businesses are doing with your friends and family on social media to help bring in customers.”

“Creating is healing. Taking time to create together or in solitude is an important bridge to healing and happiness in hard times.”

—Ashleigh Smith ‘20 Art History Major Concentration in Museum Theory & Practic Nasher Museum of Art Intern

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 7

Power Company’s former patrons remember the nightclub’s legacy

By Tessa Delgo Local Arts Editor

Decades after closing, the legacy of Durham’s Power Company nightclub lives on.

Months into social distancing, it’s difficult to avoid reminiscing about times we’ve spent surrounded by people we love. For the more than 800 people who belong to the “Power Company Alumni!!” group on Facebook, many of those times were spent at Durham’s Power Company nightclub during the 1980s and 1990s. The Power Company closed in 2000 when the owners transitioned the space into Teasers Men’s Club, but former frequenters regularly share music, photos and memories that ensure its legacy endures.

The Power Company, once referred to as “the best (gay) dance club between D.C. and Atlanta,” opened in 1983 under owners James and Debra Kennedy. The club boasted a multi-level layout including “several bars, a mezzanine lounge overlooking the dance floor flanked by a wall of thumping speakers, dynamic lighting and, of course, its fair share of mirror balls,” according to Lauren Kennedy, the owners’ daughter.

“It set the bar for how I judge clubs that I go to now. It’s unfortunate for those clubs, because they’re never going to compete,” said Chad Smith, a former frequent patron. “And they had this grand, awesome staircase that people used to prance up and down. But that’s beside the point.”

The Power Company was also renowned for its music and entertainment. From 1980 until 1994, production company Pageant Enterprises hosted the Miss NC Pageant for “female illusionists’’ at the club along with weekly drag shows. And, as recalled by several former patrons, the DJ sets were often cutting-edge.

“It wasn’t just top 40, they played house music — which I had never heard of until going to [Power Company] — and freestyle,” said Christopher Locklear, who frequented the club from 1986 to 1989. “I’ve lived in D.C. and New York and have been to some of the best clubs in the country, and the Power Company was just really ahead of its time.”

Beyond its amenities, though, the Power Company is most saliently remembered as a place where its frequenters, predominantly young members of the LGBTQ+ community, felt welcomed— often for the first time in their lives.

“The Power Company was the second gay club I ever went to — the first one was this little hole in the wall … when I was still in high school. I remember being so disappointed. I was like, “Oh my God, is this what my life is going to be like? Lurking in the shadows?’” Locklear said. “And then then I went to the Power Company — it was like a breath of fresh air. I was like, ‘So this is what it’s like to be gay and open and not have to be beat-up or worried.”

For many patrons, the club was a rare safe space. As a student in Chapel Hill, Locklear remembered a conservative group attempting to get UNC’s chapter of the Gay Student Union defunded amid the 1980s HIV outbreak.

“There were so many people telling you ‘You can’t be this’, ‘You’re going to hell’, and then [we had] this space where you could go and be like, ‘No, you’re wrong. This is how the world should be.’”

Locklear said.

For former patron Nick Scorzafava, the feeling of safety the Power Company provided became especially apparent after the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre. When his father asked him why he and his friends hadn’t protected themselves while spending time at the Power Company, Scorzafava remembered telling him that they “didn’t really have to”.

“The different thing about that point in time was that back then if you were gay, you went to a gay bar. If you were straight, you avoided that scene altogether,” Scorzafava said. “Nobody bothered us. I mean, throughout the entire time I went to that club, there was never a time that I felt unsafe. I actually felt like I was going home, that I was hanging out with people just like me.”

For Scorzafava, the impact the Power Company left on him “formed the basis of his identity”, influencing his sense of self, his confidence and his ultimate career path. Now an advocate creating corporate resources for companies’ LGBTQ+ employees, he credited the Power Company for expanding his passion for activism.

“People are drawn to colleges for an experience, and then when they graduate from that college, they have these fond memories of that time. For me... I did not go to college directly after high school. I went to the Power Company,” Scorzafava said. “I don’t think I will ever, in the rest of my life, experience something as significant as that.”

An abbreviated version of this article appears in print. For the full story, visit www.dukechronicle.com/recess.

Courtesy of Lauren Kennedy The former Power Company nightclub, a Durham mainstay for the LGBTQ community in the 1980s, closed its doors two decades ago.

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This course views Religions of Asia through the lens of people, creatures, and pracces thought to be secret, supernatural, This course views Religions of Asia through the lens of people, creatures, occult, or unseemly. The study of such phenomena teaches us and practices thought to be secret, supernatural, occult, or unseemly. about exchange, diversity, authority, and orthodoxy in tradions The study of such phenomena teaches us about exchange, diversity, ausuch as Hinduism, Tantra, Buddhism, Yoga, Daoism, Zen, Islam, thority, and orthodoxy in traditions such as Hinduism, Tantra, Buddhism, Shinto, Shamanism, &c. Seth Ligo

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Music Culture in Modern Korea

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This course surveys the history of modern and contemporary This course the history of modern and contemporary Korea Korea through thesurveys lens of music, invesgang the relaonship through themusical lens ofculture music,and investigating relationship between Korea’s its collecvethe naonal iden- between culture and its collective national ty. InKorea’s addionmusical to various musical styles, we will examine theidentity. In addition to various musical styles, of wemusical will examine the(i.e. establishment and evolution establishment and evoluon instuons music of musical institutions ensembles and schools, radio and TV ensembles and schools, radio(i.e. and music TV staons, recording labels, recording labels, management companies) and Korea’s arts stations, management companies) andarts Korea’s cultural policies. cultural Jung-Min Leepolicies. Jung-Min Lee

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Thisrefugee course introduces students the scholarly literamental health; it to offers a primerand onpolicy best practices in therapeutic turearts on refugee mental health; it offers a primerstudents on best praccinterventions; and brings together and members of Arabic es inspeaking therapeuc arts intervenons; and brings together students newcomer community to collaboratively design an arts therapy and intervention. members of Arabic speaking newcomer community to colSuzanne Shanahan laboravely design an arts therapy intervenon.

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Learning the basic elements of the Arabic language and culture of in Survival Arabic Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine (Shami/Levantine Arabic); developing Learning the basic elements of the Arabic language and culture of listening, speaking, reading, writing and cultural proficiencies of the spoin Jordan, Lebanon, and Palesne (Shami/Levanne Arabic); ken language ofspeaking, this region, memorizing basic survival and communicadeveloping listening, reading, wring and cultural tion language skills, learning how to write and read the Arabic alphabet proficiencies of the spoken language of this region, memorizing Modern Arabic;language Introducing daily basicinsurvival andstandard communicaon skills,aspects learningof how to life, society and culture of the these three countries.

Openstandard to students who have no prior write and read Arabic alphabet in Modern Arabic; exposure to Arabic language instruction before coming to Duke, and to Introducing aspects of daily life, society and culture of these stu-dents who are interested in doing civic engagement three countries. Open to students who have no prior exposure to or study abroad in the Arabic speakingbefore world.coming Maha Arabic language instrucon toHoussami, Duke, and toAmal stu- Boumaaza ARABIC 99 Survival Arabic

dents who are interested in doing civic engagement or study abroad in the Arabic speaking world.

CHINESE 306.01/01D Maha Houssami, Amal Boumaaza

Advanced Chinese II

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Development of wring skills in and cultural issues articles, essays, and other readings concerning social selected formats and genres while connuing to develop correct in contemporary Chinese society. Prerequisite: Chinese 305 or equivause lent. of speech paerns Chi-Ju Hsiehand vocabulary and cross-cultural understanding. Content drawn from newspaper arcles, essays, and other readings concerning social and cultural issues in contempoFor additional information about AMES course offerings, please contact: rary Chinese society. Prerequisite: Chinese 305 or equivalent.

919 668-2603 (https://asianmideast.duke.edu/courses) Chi-Ju Hsieh For addional informaon about AMES course offerings, please contact: 919 668-2603 (hps://asianmideast.duke.edu/courses)

8 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

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playground

Fiona Apple moves forward on ‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters’

By Lily Zhu Contributing Writer

In an interview on National Public Radio, Grammy Award-winning singer Fiona Apple reveals the inspiration behind the name of her latest album. She was watching an episode of “The Fall,” a British television show in which a police detective (played by Gillian Anderson) attempts to rescue a kidnapped girl. Upon encountering a padlock, Anderson mutters to “fetch the bolt cutters.” It is a small, throwaway line, but Apple says she shot up from her couch while watching and decided it would be the name of her album.

Now, eight years after the release of Apple’s last album,“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is on the lips of every music critic. To go eight years without releasing an album is somewhat of an anomaly, especially as more music sensations are born overnight and must vie to stay in the spotlight. But considering Apple’s

decades-long career — she was only 18 when her debut album “Tidal” sold 2.7 million copies and went triple-platinum in the United States — eight years does not seem too long, and the album was well worth the wait.

A lot has changed in those eight years. The 42-year-old singer-songwriter, once a target of the press for her controversial candor, now rarely leaves her house in Venice Beach. In a March 2020 article for The New Yorker, Apple discusses her decision to stop drinking and separate herself from old friends as she worked on “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” which helped her turn her focus inward and rekindle her past pains and experiences into a fiery album of battle cries and ballads. For five years, Apple turned off the radio and collaborated solely with her band, close friends and family to produce her most organic and raw album yet.

Album closer “On I Go” exemplifies the earthy,

almost tribal nature of the record. The song opens with clapping, beating and rattling, and when Apple’s voice breaks through, she is not so much singing as chanting with a steady cadence. She sings of moving onward — not “toward or away” from something, but just to move. Apple is tired of trying to change her reputation and prove herself to other people. In a moment that captures this new mindset, Apple messes up the rhythm halfway through the song and briefly curses, but she continues on.

Throughout the album, Apple uses repetition to emphasize her message without sounding monotonous. From sage metaphors (“Evil is a relay sport / When the one who’s burnt / Turns to pass the torch” from “Relay”) to witty wordplays (“I would beg to disagree / But begging disagrees with me” from “Under the Table”), Apple’s repeated words form an urgent pulse that propels

Photo by Derek Chen | Design Editor Fiona Apple’s latest critically acclaimed album “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is her first in nearly a decade.

the album forward rather than holding it back.

From the start, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is unmistakably Apple’s: the layered percussion, the piano riffs and Apple’s clear, purposeful voice are what have always made her music distinct. Yet “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” tells — and sometimes yells — the story of not just one woman, but all women who have been unjustly restricted in their lives. In the title track, Apple questions the unrealistic expectation for women to act a certain way to please men or the press. After years of trying to fit in with the in-crowd, she realizes doing so only made her feel confined and unhappy. Now that she has found her voice and her perseverance, she will break out of the prison that was built around her and “run up that hill,” inspiring others to run freely with her.

Apple also understands that women supporting women can get messy. In “Newspaper,” the turbulent percussion mirrors Apple’s conflicting feelings towards her emotionally abusive ex’s new girlfriend. She is infatuated with the new girlfriend and feels close to her due to their shared suffering, but she knows that this is not what she is “supposed to do” in a society that constantly, ludicrously pits women against each other.

But if anything, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is an irrefutable sign that Apple does not care what she is “supposed to do,” and she wants other women to free themselves from that pressure too. It is what makes her such an enduring pioneer and iconic artist in the music industry, and it is what has allowed her to overcome trauma and keep moving through life. Now, Apple looks back purposefully — with patience, bravery and sensitivity — to create an album that depicts pain in a way that does it justice. It is what Apple, and all women who have felt this pain, deserve.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 9

May music roundup: Perfume Genius, Charli XCX and more

By Stephen Atkinson Culture Editor

Despite the hit the music industry is taking from the COVID-19 pandemic, many labels are still pushing out new releases. Some artists, faced with canceled tours and festivals, are finding that they have more time than ever to make music. Here are some of the best albums released this month.

Perfume Genius, “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” Mike Hadreas, the man behind the Perfume Genius moniker, has a way of opening his albums with a single phrase drawn out so long it burrows into your soul. In just the first 10 seconds of “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately,” Hadreas lingers on his words with a sorrow-tinged swagger: “Half of my whole life is gone,” he sings. In his first two releases, Hadreas placed his painful history at the center of his lyrics — as a high schooler who was bullied for being gay and later as a young adult who struggled with substance abuse. While his music no longer directly confronts these stories, traces of past traumas mingle with beauty, grit and triumph across the lushly-arranged tracks of Perfume Genius’ latest release. The body that once felt pain both tangible and internal now embraces desire and its transcendence of the physical. “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” expresses inexplicable convergences — of pain and pleasure, solace and sadness — to bring comfort to the outcast.

the band on a Spotify “Night Drive” playlist, and you realize Choir Boy is still weird. After all, frontman Adam Klopp is a romantic obsessed with gothic imagery, and he sings like an angelic Morrissey (however oxymoronic that may be). Choir Boys’ nostalgic sound is not new, for sure, but it drips with something hauntingly fun.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith,“Mosaic of Transformation” Some music makes you dance, some music makes you sing and some music lulls you to sleep as you sit on a bench in a modern art exhibit.

“Mosaic of Transformation” feels tailor-made for this last category. The album cover, featuring the artist herself contorted into a (rather difficult) yoga pose, carries a certain New Age “high art” aesthetic some may find pretentious. “Mosaic of Transformation,” however, is not demanding.

Composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith weaves orchestral strings and flutes with synth pads to recall meditative moments in nature. When her own voice enters the mix, it floats above the arrangements like a Gregorian chant filtered through a synthesizer. Whether or not “Mosaic” warrants more than a single listen, it is still a pretty thirty-seven minutes — perfect to cook to, work to or accidentally fall asleep to.

Charli XCX, “how i’m feeling now” Not even quarantine could curb Charli XCX’s creative energy. She recorded and released all of “how i’m feeling now” in the span of six weeks, enlisting help from fans on Instagram along the way. This could scan as a publicity stunt, but looking at her background as an up-and-comer who once had diva potential but instead opted to pursue a less commercially viable brand of future-pop, this seems unlikely. Rather, “how i’m feeling now” further cements Charli XCX’s status as the vanguard of off-kilter radio pop, alongside artists like SOPHIE and Caroline Polachek.

Whereas 2019’s “Charli” occasionally suffered from grating vocal effects and distortions, this release benefits from its relatively smaller, softer, home-spun soundscape. This is fitting for the earnestness of songs like “forever” and “7 years,” where amid turmoil Charli XCX affirms the certainty of love.

Choir Boy, “Gathering Swans” Recent popular indie rock releases have generally fallen into two camps. One comprises mostly female-fronted groups that plunge into deep themes and push musical boundaries (think Big Thief, Snail Mail or Phoebe Bridgers). The other camp, for which a grabbag of labels such as “dream pop” or “bedroom pop” would fit, looks to Mac DeMarco and Tame Impala as inspirations. These bands settle into familiar, catchy sounds heavy on reverb and light on lyrical complexity (think Dayglow, Wallows or Peach Pit). Choir Boy arose from a small punk scene largely separate from either of these camps. However, the Salt Lake City band’s second studio release, “Gathering Swans,” could NewLook York Times Syndication Corporation find success among fans ofThe either. beyond TheSales 1975, “Notes On A Conditional Form” Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018 the starry synths and earworms620 that placeCall: 1-800-972-3550 As music criticism has developed into Formight Information

both a profession and a pastime, it has generally settled on a few, possibly arbitrary, gauges of an album’s merit — one of which being its sonic and narrative continuity.

Because of this, The 1975’s sprawling, 80-minute-long “Notes On a Conditional Form” is bound to face criticism for its perceived lack of focus. There is truth to this critique: the politics are mostly hazy leftism, and the songs find inspiration across a wide slate of subgenres. But lead singer Matty

Photo by Derek Chen | Design Editor

Charli XCX’s album “how i’m feeling now” was recorded and released in the span of six weeks.

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10 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 11

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ questions traditional ideas of success

By Hannah Miao Contributing Writer

A good education, respectable job, beautiful home and a nuclear family — these metrics have long been the emblems of success in America. Many of us have been taught to reach for these goals, but what do we lose in the process?

“Little Fires Everywhere” considers this question by examining two contrasting women in an elite Midwest suburb. Based on Celeste Ng’s bestselling novel, the star-powered Hulu mini-series takes place in the author’s hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio during the late ‘90s. Shaker was the country’s first planned community, designed to be a utopian respite for Cleveland’s well-to-do residents. However, the city’s stability and prestige bring their own complications.

When I first found out about the television adaptation, I was ecstatic. I had devoured Ng’s novel, hooked by its nuanced exploration of class and conformity in a setting I knew well. I grew up in a vastly different Cleveland suburb but transferred to a private school in ninth grade where many of my classmates lived in Shaker. There, I was thrown into a foreign world of beautiful Tudor homes with manicured lawns and picture-perfect families not unlike those in “Little Fires Everywhere.”

Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon) is the quintessential Shaker resident: mother of four, wife to a successful lawyer and part-time journalist for the local paper.

She prides herself on making respectable choices for herself, her family and others around her. Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) is a free-spirited artist and single mother to her daughter, Pearl (Lexi Underwood).

After constantly moving from city to city,

she arrives in Shaker to settle down and give Pearl a more stable home.

When Elena rents out her family’s second property to Mia and Pearl, the two families soon become inextricable. As Pearl quickly befriends the Richardson children, Mia and Elena clash due to their differing life experiences and approaches to motherhood.

Drama and betrayal ensue as secrets unravel in shocking ways.

Witherspoon plays a similar version of her “Big Little Lies” persona, but her portrayal of Elena reveals a much more damning critique of upper-class white womanhood. The Hulu series, spearheaded by showrunner Liz Tigelaar, diverges from Ng’s source material to more explicitly probe issues of identity and privilege. Most notably, Washington’s casting as Mia rewrites the character as a black woman, bringing race to the forefront of the show.

In Ng’s version, commentary about race simmers in the subtext; on TV, it erupts in heated arguments between Witherspoon and Washington. During a showdown in episode four, for example, Mia tells Elena, “You didn’t make good choices; you had good choices, options that being rich and white and entitled gave you.” This approach can come across as heavy-handed but proves effective in illustrating key points without the aid of Ng’s meticulous narration.

“Little Fires Everywhere” shines because it tackles white racial identity head-on.

Most efforts to deconstruct race focus on non-white groups, while whiteness largely remains invisible and thus inculpable. But the neutralization of whiteness only upholds white supremacy, as it allows racial inequity to seep into every facet of American life without a clear perpetrator. Through Elena and Mia’s ongoing conflict, the show reveals aspects of the white

Courtesy of Hulu

The Netflix series “Little Fires Everywhere” stars Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon. experience ranging from white privilege to white feminism to the white savior complex.

However, the series’ straightforward approach to dissecting race sidelines some of Ng’s more intriguing analyses. In both the book and miniseries, Mia and Elena become entangled on opposing sides of a legal battle over a Chinese baby: the biological mother, an undocumented immigrant, fights to regain custody from the white couple that adopted her child.

The case takes place in a time when hysteria over “crack mothers” removed babies from black women and placed them into primarily white foster care and adoption networks. By putting a different face on the phenomenon, Ng shines a new light on how racialized notions of motherhood and family create an unjust child welfare system. In the TV version, the

case is mostly reduced to fodder for Mia and Elena’s ongoing personal feud.

The show certainly favors melodrama, exemplified by the finale’s unrealistic climax which significantly differs from the book’s ending. As such, some critics have found fault with what they view as overblown caricatures, particularly Witherspoon’s performance. But as someone familiar with Shaker and other elite, white-dominant spaces — including Duke — I found the characters to be empathetic portraits grounded in truth, as ugly as that truth may be.

Ultimately, “Little Fires Everywhere” offers a compelling breakdown of the white upper-class ethos while delivering electrifying, high-stakes television. Though, if you ask me, I prefer the quiet brilliance of the novel’s slow burn.

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Staff selections: Movies to check off your quarantine watchlist

By Jack Rubenstein Staff Writer

Any email you have been sent in the last month probably mentions how we are living in either “disturbing”, “turbulent” or “unprecedented” times.

As clichéd as this has become, it is still true, and as the public health and economic situation in the United States and around the globe deteriorates, it is quite understandable that many of us are feeling particularly anxious during this precarious moment.

People smarter and more qualified than me have discussed the pandemic at length, so I am going to do just the opposite. Here are items from my own quarantine binging that I think can serve as a temporary distraction from the current moment, either due to their enticing worldbuilding, consistent laughs or streak of warmth, optimism and hope for the future.

“What’s Up, Doc?” (1972) Burned down hotel rooms, musical prehistoric rocks and endless plaid overnight case swaps: “What’s Up, Doc?” is a consistently hilarious, often ridiculous homage to 1930’s screwball comedies.

Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand play off

each other brilliantly, with Streisand’s sharp and endearing performance leading the way, as the story races toward a supremely entertaining 15-minute chase sequence throughout San Francisco. Pair this with another brilliant modern screwball comedy, “Mistress America,” for an imminently likeable and engaging double-feature rooted in farce.

“The Way He Looks” (2014) “The Way He Looks” is just so easy to like.

The Brazilian film follows Leo, a blind, shy highschool student whose life changes when a new student named Gabriel joins his class. The two have incredible chemistry, and the slow-burning love story is told with such tenderness and warmth without ever feeling overly sappy or derivative, despite hitting some similar beats as other comingof-age films.

“Y Tu Mamá También” (2001) Perhaps my favorite film from quarantine (alongside Alfonso Cuarón’s next film, “Children of Men”), “Y Tu Mamá También” follows Julio and Tenoch, two 17-year-old boys who convince an older woman named Luisa to come with them

Courtesy of Sundance Institute Of the culture to consume during quarantine, “Honey Boy” is based on Shia LaBeouf’s childhood memories.

on a cross-country adventure across Mexico. This is one of the best shot and most quotable movies I have ever seen, with a stunning performance from Maribel Verdú as Luisa. It seamlessly weaves together themes of class conflict, political conflict, mortality, sexuality and maturity while still being just as fun as any other road trip or coming-of-age film. The ending may be a little downbeat, but the world Cuarón creates is the perfect distraction from our current times, a world you wish you could live in far after the end credits roll.

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) The ultimate David and Goliath story, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is the political equivalent of warm chicken noodle soup.

Following the death of a sitting senator, former Boy Scout leader Jefferson Smith is appointed to a U.S. Senate seat in an unnamed Western state.

He is chosen due to his naivety and inexperience, with the assumption that he will not disrupt a dam-building graft scheme hatched by Jim Taylor, the leader of the state’s political machine. Smith stumbles upon the scheme while proposing a plan for a nationalsummer program, and he launches a one-man assault on the corrupt politicians and the machine with a phenomenal filibuster sequence — a sequence that excuses the film’s inconsistent pacing and underwritten romantic side-plot. It may be difficult to see a story like Mr. Smith’s as realistic in our current politics, but at its core, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is political idealism at its finest, and a reminder that strong, virtuous leadership can defeat the fiercest of opposition.

Escapism usually does not really work when you trade one nightmare for another. That being said, these films are incredibly vivid portraits of their own horrific scenarios, which could help distract from the real-life crisis. For those uninterested in anxiety-inducing viewing at this moment, it might be worth revisiting these three great pieces of culture at a later date.

“Dogtooth” (2009) The second feature film from Yorgos Lanthimos, “Dogtooth” is a compelling but deeply unnerving story of three nameless adult children who have been isolated in a secluded estate their whole lives by their controlling and manipulative parents. Their parents have changed the meaning of words, convinced them that airplanes fall from the sky and land in the backyard, told them cats are the most dangerous animals alive and even invented a brother who they banished due to bad behavior and insubordination. Some scenes are legitimately hard to watch, as Lanthimos turns up the heat on this harrowing nightmare.

It plays as a black comedy, with the deadpan dialogue and absurd situations creating hilarious moments. Yet, these moments of reprieve still remain couched in a tragic and disturbing story of power, deception and submission.

“Honey Boy” (2019) “Honey Boy”was written by Shia LaBeouf during his court-ordered rehab as a coping mechanism to deal with a lifetime of trauma. The product of this bizarre situation is as heart-wrenching as one could expect, with the story focusing on both LaBeouf’s time in rehab and his upbringing in a grimy L.A. motel under the care of an abusive, alcoholic father.

LaBeouf plays his father in the film, to spectacular results, capturing the nuances of a broken man who wants the best for his child but is incapable of providing it. That failure, and the fractured, yet still loving father-son relationship at the heart of the story, leads Otis (the character representing a young LaBeouf) down a similar path as his father, showing how family is often inescapable and trauma can be intergenerational.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 13

Netflix’s ‘Hollywood’ is not as progressive as it wants to be

By Courtney Dantzler Staff Writer

As each day of the coronavirus pandemic passes by, I find myself gravitating toward classic Hollywood movies, imagining what life would be like on the silver screen rather than behind my computer screen. For the past few months, I’ve been conditioned to seek comfort in the escapist fantasies of the post-war media I consume instead of confronting the realities around me, especially since my plans for the near future are completely up in the air.

However, it’s difficult to feel nostalgia for a time when my interracial family would have been ostracized, a time when many of my close friends and relatives would have been denied opportunities because of their race, sexual orientation or gender identity. The new Netflix series “Hollywood” addresses this tension. The show is a reimagining of the 1940s film industry if it were open to underrepresented minorities, but it misses the opportunity to be an effective critique of institutionalized discriminatory practices in Hollywood that still exist to this day.

“Hollywood” transports us to its golden age, where we witness a crew of young actors, writers and directors navigate their way through show business. They work together to create “Meg,” a movie about an African-American woman who jumps from the Hollywood sign after realizing she can never attain her dream of becoming an actress. “Hollywood” introduces “diverse” fictional characters such as World War II veteran and aspiring actor Jack Costello, black gay screenwriter Archie Coleman and half-Filipino director Raymond Ainsley.

The show also features fictionalized

representations of real-life Hollywood residents like closeted gay movie star Rock Hudson, Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong and notorious talent agent Henry Willson.

The show weaves truth and fiction in a way that glamorizes the Hollywood lifestyle while glossing over the struggles faced by newcomers in the entertainment industry. In “Hollywood,” the enemy to progress is everyone but Hollywood itself.

Ahead of their times and steadfastly moral, the studio executives in the show agree to finance “Meg” despite protests from the media in various parts of the country. This shift in blame for underrepresentation in film paints Hollywood in a sympathetic light and fails to accurately portray the industry’s cutthroat nature for outsiders.

For a series that supposedly criticizes systemic discrimination, it fails to acknowledge how these practices continue to run Hollywood.

The series hones in on the message that movies can change the attitude of the country for the better. “Hollywood” argues that if we change the way we make movies, we can change the world. When “Meg” receives its wide release in theaters across America, the film miraculously becomes universally beloved, which seems way too outlandish, even for this version of a progressive Hollywood. Representation in the film industry has come a long way, but animosity across sociopolitical lines still runs rampant, as it did decades ago. Yet, “Meg” manages to do what no other movie has ever done and solves racism overnight.

It wins several Oscars, most notably a Best Actress award for Camille Washington, who becomes the first black woman to receive the honor.

Photo Courtesy of Netflix Netflix’s television series “Hollywood” reimagines the film industry’s golden age as a time of inclusion and diversity.

This is emblematic of another issue with “Hollywood” — a hypocritically poor characterization of its main players. Camille remains underdeveloped throughout the series even though she plays the lead role in “Meg.” We never learn where she comes from, what her motivations are or how much she is willing to go through to achieve her dreams of making it in Hollywood.

The show merely treats her as a symbol of rebellion rather than a human character that an audience can root for.

In many ways, “Hollywood” attempts to comment on the injustices of discrimination, but its creative liberties are too unrealistic to draw us into its world. The show tries to make a statement with its existence rather than its storytelling. After we are intrigued by the acting performances and dazzled by the grandiose set production, what remains is merely a tribute to a false Hollywood created by the people who already sit at the top.

Duke University Hospital is conducting two studies of the emergency treatment of patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).

The study, Brain Oxygen Optimization in Severe Traumatic Brain Injury (BOOST3), will compare two strategies standardly used for monitoring and treating children and adults with severe TBI. The Hyperbaric Oxygen Brain Injury Treatment (HOBIT) trial will compare multiple strategies involving hyperbaric oxygen for treatment of children and adults with severe TBI. These studies are sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Patients eligible for these studies will be comatose and unable to say whether or not they wish to participate. A special set of government rules allow studies to include patients with an “exception from informed consent” under these circumstances. We welcome your thoughts or concerns about this process.

Learn more: Boost3Trial.org or HOBITtrial.org What if I do not want to be included in the study?

If you decide you don’t want to be included in the event you suffer a future TBI, contact us to request an “Opt Out” medical alert bracelet.

BOOST3 opt out: https://tinyurl.com/y7nk4sgu HOBIT opt out: https://tinyurl.com/y8n5nf8e Contact us 919-681-0907 ed_research@dm.duke.edu

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14 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

TikTok’s popularity is forming a new generation of influencers

By Kerry Rork Layout Editor

As much as I can claim to dislike TikTok or attempt to avoid the app entirely, I still find myself singing TikTok hits like “Roxanne” by Arizona Zervas or “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa. From grocery stores to the radio, these songs are becoming ingrained into my mind in a seemingly permanent way.

TikTok is an overhaul of the influential social media app, Musical.ly, created by Chineseowned company ByteDance. Clearly, it has been effective in its rebranding goals, boasting over 800 million active users worldwide. Unlike Musical.ly, which limited creators to lip syncing videos, TikTok users are able to create unique and personal videos, ranging from fashion designs to the infamous viral dance trends. With its simplified means of content creation, overall accessibility and likelihood of success, TikTok seems to pose a unique threat to rival apps like YouTube and Snapchat.

With or without downloading the app, TikTok videos can be found on YouTube or Instagram explore pages, making the viral trends and catchy songs nearly inescapable. Hits like “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd, “Death Bed” by Powfu or “Say So” by Doja Cat seem to be playing on repeat in almost every video.

TikTok music is, in a sense, becoming its own category of music. Try looking up “TikTok music” on Spotify or YouTube, and you’re met with hundreds of playlists, filled with many of the same songs and thousands upon thousands of listeners.

While on the app, users have the option to add songs they particularly enjoy to internal playlists, beyond those found on Spotify or YouTube, thus further bolstering these musicians’ success. They can then add those clips to videos in the future, furthering specific trends and challenges on the app.

What does this mean for the music industry? How has TikTok taken the reins in determining musical success? Take Lil Nas X. Many people know him from his top hit, “Old Town Road.” The song, in fact, gained much of its popularity from a TikTok challenge to quickly change into country clothes by the time the song reaches the beat drop. A few months later, Lil Nas X signed with Columbia Records, bolstered by his newfound viral success.

Another obvious example of TikTok’s influential power is with musician BENEE. A few months ago, not many had heard of artist BENEE outside of New Zealand and Australia.

Now, since the March 2020 dance challenge, it’s hard to go through TikTok without coming across a video using her song, “Supalonely” and more recently, “Glitter.” Even Lizzo’s claim to fame can be attributed in part to her success on the app. Through the online #DNAtest challenge, her own 2017 song, “Truth Hurts,” became a chart-topping hit.

There’s something to be said about songs released a few years or even decades ago now finding a second life. Songs ranging from Lorde’s “Team” to Patience and Prudence’s 1956 rendition of “Tonight You Belong to Me” are suddenly gaining relevance within the TikTok generation.

This trend has been done before with the classic Running Man Challenge on Vine that saw the revival of 1996 song, “My Boo,” by Ghost Town DJs. Thanks to this challenge, many of us can now sing the intro of this song by heart.

This isn’t to say that all TikTok songs follow a similar path from obscurity to fame.

Many of the songs were radio hits prior to their use in viral dance trends or other TikTok videos, like Billie Eilish’s “bad guy.” But the app helps musicians maintain and perhaps, to

a degree, solidify their precarious place in the music world.

TikTok videos are transforming the meaning of one-hit wonders. Previously obscure musicians like Aunty Hammy and K Camp are rising to fame with single songs thanks to viral trends. It grants unique power

to users and fans worldwide in determining the pop music scene.

The question that remains is how musicians will use this system to their advantage in the coming years. Can this permanently transform which songs become popular in the mainstream media?

Courtesy of Flickr Since the end of Vine, social media app TikTok has surged in popularity as a platform for short-form viral content.

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MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020 | 15

‘Never Have I Ever’ explores the complexity of being first-gen

By Preetha Ramachandran Contributing Writer

If you’re wondering, I did watch all of “Never Have I Ever” in one sitting.

The show — narrated by tennis legend John McEnroe — follows high school sophomore Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) in the wake of her father’s death, as she attempts to climb the popularity totem pole with her ensemble of diverse friends, intellectually competes with her arch-nemesis Ben (Jaren Lewison) and vies for the attention of the hottest guy at school, Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet).

Maybe not in that order.

The first five minutes of the show are absolute chaos: Devi’s father goes into cardiac arrest during a school orchestra performance, and Devi loses feeling in her legs from sheer grief, but instantly recovers from paralysis when she stands up to get a better view of Paxton’s bone structure.

But this chaos points to a fundamental element of the show.

“Never Have I Ever” explores the chaotic complexity that surrounds the lives of firstgeneration Indian immigrants — the tugof-war between traditional and modern that characterizes the everyday. Devi’s cousin, Kamala, chooses between a love marriage or an arranged marriage, the merits and repercussions of each decision fully fleshed out by the show. Devi’s mother chooses between staying in the states or moving back to India, her reasons for each articulated completely. Devi herself must choose between embracing her heritage or abandoning it in favor of assimilation, made clear during the Ganesh Puja in episode four.

I’m a first-gen kid, too. I’ve had to grapple with my two identities as an Indian and an American in plenty of ways. It’s not a matter of shame; instead, it’s a struggle to fit in both

spheres, a struggle that is all too common for many immigrant kids. “Never Have I Ever” presents them in a powerfully relatable yet comical way.

Of course, the show is not without flaws. The dialogue between Paxton and Devi is, at times, plainly unnatural. The way Devi curses out her mother caught me off guard. What bothers me most is that in attempting to show Devi as more than a stereotypical, smart South Asian kid, the show portrays her as someone obsessed with sex. It seems a trite and overused cliché, that this is the only way in which to add dimension to the “smart girl.”

Otherwise, Devi is a bold character and acts accordingly. I’ve heard complaints of the rather unrealistic elements of the show (a notable one being Devi’s attempt to converse with a literal coyote at a party), but they strike me as marks of someone struggling to process the trauma of losing a parent, of a character who has yet to heal, of a plot impeccably building itself to an ultimate resolution that had me in tears.

The ending of “Never Have I Ever” even hints at a second season, deliberately leaving strings untied and leaving me, at least, hooked for new episodes. I want to see how things shake out. I want to know what happens next. The show is, in that way, simply entertaining and the characters wholly endearing. You cry out when Devi makes poor choices. You root for Devi’s friends, Fabiola and Eleanor. You empathize with Devi’s pain.

So, did I binge-watch “Never Have I Ever” to see the plot resolve? Did I watch it for the nuanced, complicated characters? Did I watch it because I empathize with Devi’s struggles? Yes, yes and yes. But I also watched it because it’s a soapy teen show about a girl who looks like me.

And sometimes, that’s enough to keep me hooked.

got jazz?

Courtesy of Netflix Netflix’s “Never Have I Ever” follows its characters as they navigate the everyday Indian-American experience.

Wanna PLAY jazz?

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Intro to Jazz (MUS/AAAS 140) Jazz Guitar (MUS 104-6) Jazz Ensemble (MUS 210-4) Private lessons are also available!

For info on courses and auditions check us out at music.duke.edu/ensembles/jazzprogram or contact Professor John V. Brown, Director jbrown@duke.edu 919-660-3385

16 | MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020

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