Towerview april 2016

TOWERVIEW

PLUS: X’s, O’s AND HASHTAGS - ATHLETIC RECRUITING AND SOCIAL MEDIA

> APRIL 2016 | VOL. 17 | ISSUE 6

LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD

“ Undergraduate Study Abroad in China The Duke Kunshan semester features dynamic courses in Global Health, the Environment, and China Studies.

International students engage in co-curricular activities that deepen the experience of Chinese culture, develop camaraderie, and build confidence.

Students make a difference – both inside and outside of the classroom.

For Program details visit www.dukekunshan.edu.cn or email to: dkuadmissions@dku.edu

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It changes perspective to be able to see things through the eyes of others who have grown up in different cultures, with different sets of attitudes and beliefs.”

TOWERVIEW CONTENTS

VOL. 17 - ISSUE 6 | APRIL 2016

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RYAN HOERGER

Xs, Os AND HASHTAGS Recruiting Duke athletics in the age of social media

CARLEIGH STIEHM

TO GIVE OR NOT TO GIVE? The senior gift as a personal statement

MATTHEW ROCK

EXISTENTIALIST

Photography and musings on meaning in art

WILL CARROLL

BUILDING BEYOND BUILDINGS

The philosophy behind Duke’s lastest wave of construction

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TOWERVIEW STAFF

LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD

As the magazine moves forward, a look at Towerview through the years

ON THE COVER TOWERVIEW APRIL COVERS 2011-2015

TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE

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letter

FROM THE EDITORS

towerview ’

the chronicle s news and culture magazine

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF emma baccellieri and nick martin

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR MATTHEW ROCK CREATIVE DIRECTOR THU VP NGUYEN EXECUTIVE EDITOR AMRITH RAMKUMAR

CONTRIBUTING STAFF

Carleigh Stiehm, Ryan Hoerger, Will Carroll, and Jessica Williams

GENERAL MANAGER ADVERTISING DIRECTOR AD CREATIVE DIRECTOR BUSINESS MANAGER

Chrissy Beck Megan Haven Julie Moore Mary Weaver

@TowerviewMag

dukechronicle.com/ towerview

Towerview Magazine

towerviewletters@ gmail.com

Dear readers: The idea of April as the cruelest month has always been difficult for us to grasp (even after spending weeks analyzing “The Wasteland” in a literature seminar sophomore year, as Emma did). Yes, the rebirth and joy of spring can make the emptiness of winter more pronounced—but with such a glorious season to enjoy in the present, why bother to dwell on the season that just passed?

But now, as seniors, we get it. April is a very cruel month, showing us Duke in all its springtime glory—gardens in full bloom, students lazing on the quad, the Gothic backdrop beautiful and sun-drenched—right before it is taken away from us for good.

Oh, of course, we have seen the alumni association’s Forever Duke brochures and we know that the campus does not disappear when we leave Durham, but never again will we be able to experience it quite like this. No matter how or why or when we come back in the future, it will always be just that—coming back. These are our last days to experience Duke wholly as a present, instead of as a past, and that feels very cruel indeed.

This is not to say that our Duke experiences have been idyllic, or anything close to it.

Like those of most students, they have been fractured by stress and frustration, failure and confusion. The longer we have spent here, the more intimately acquainted we have become with the institution’s flaws, and at times, graduation feels not just appealing but necessary.

It is difficult to think in strictly rational terms about graduation and all that comes with it—difficult to view it as anything other than a sudden break that changes everything irrevocably, and whether that change seems good or bad depends simply on the day.

But it is probably better to view it not as this sort of break, but instead as an evolution, a natural progression that takes us somewhere different. And just as our own lives undergo this sort of change, so will Towerview. We elaborate on this at the back of the issue, but this is in all likelihood the magazine’s last full print issue, after 17 years on the stands. But don’t fret, it isn’t the end of Towerview—just an evolution to a better form, more suited to the current times. So enjoy this issue, readers, and try to think of April’s change not as cruel but as exciting.

All the best, always, Emma and Nick

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

To reach The Chronicle’s editorial office at 301 Flowers Building, call (919) 684-2663 or fax (919) 684-4696. To reach The Chronicle’s business office at 103 West Union Building, call (919) 684-3811. To reach The Chronicle’s advertising office at 2022 Campus Drive, call (919) 684-3811 or fax (919) 684-8295. Contact the advertising office for information on subscriptions. Visit The Chronicle and Towerview online at dukechronicle. com ©2014 The Chronicle, Box 90858, Durham, N.C. 27708. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior, written permission of the business office. Each individual is entitled to one free copy.

NICK MARTIN 4

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EMMA BACCELLIERI

X’s, O’s and

HASHTAGS

STORY BY RYAN HOERGER David Cutcliffe is rarely cryptic—he’ll give an honest, thoughtful response to nearly any question you throw at him. But when it comes to recruiting, Duke’s head football coach has to be intentionally vague, so as to avoid the wrath of the NCAA. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t leave clues. If you were to scroll through Cutcliffe’s Twitter page, you’d see some inspirational quotes, photos of former players returning to Durham and yes, a video snippet of Pharrell’s concert during the build-up to Super Bowl 50.

But keep scrolling, and you’re bound to come across the same phrase several times: Bang Bang.

And whenever you see that, Cutcliffe has told you all you need to know: Duke just secured another commitment.

“We can’t make reference to that specific recruit, but it’s a way to let our fan base know, and a way to let other recruits that we’re recruiting that ‘Bang Bang’, we just added another member to Duke Gang,” cornerbacks coach Derek Jones said.

“Duke Gang” has become the rallying cry for the Blue Devil football program, embraced by players, coaches and fans alike as Cutcliffe and Co. have slowly but surely turned the program around.

And for a 61-year-old who claims to be “not that good at tweeting,” Cutcliffe has turned “Bang Bang” into something of a personal trademark.

“Marketing and branding can either have substance or not have substance, so we’re all drawn to things that are marketed and branded well,” Cutcliffe said at his signing day press conference in February.

For Blue Devils across all sports and athletic TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE

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programs across the country, that brand is increasingly being built on social media, the tool that is shaping the constantly evolving world of college recruiting, 140 characters at a time.

The rise of ‘Duke Gang’

“Duke Gang” got its start thanks to wide receiver Donovan Varner, a freshman on the 2008 squad that ushered in the Cutcliffe era. The Blue Devils struggled in those early years on the field, but they held fast to that nickname, which has subsequently turned into a unifying hashtag.

“It was a brotherhood, it was a family and it was during that time when we weren’t very talented on the field but we were building into what we’ve been able to build now,” said Jones, who joined Cutcliffe’s staff when it was first assembled back in 2008. “We want every young man that’s been a part of this program in the past [to know that] everything that we’re doing now is because of the foundation that they laid when we got here.”

On-field success is a self-fulfilling cycle—the best players go to the best programs—and “everything we’re doing now” undoubtedly helped Cutcliffe ink

we’re going after the top players and coaches are glad to see us coming.”

— Derek Jones his best class ever at Duke in February.

Four straight bowl game appearances and the program’s first bowl victory since 1961 have changed the culture—and image—of football at Duke. The program has transformed itself physically as well, with hundreds of millions of dollars poured into upgrades to Wallace Wade Stadium and the surrounding facilities as Cutcliffe strives to make Duke perennially competitive in the ACC. Add to that multiple successful NFL draft picks in the last few years, and Duke is no longer the afterthought it once was on the recruiting trail.

“When we first got here, you would go in to see a really good player and the high school coach would look at you like you were crazy, like you had no chance at him,” Jones said. “And now, we’re going after the top players and coaches are glad to see us coming. They open the doors when we come in—it’s just the perception.

Most of the guys that we’re recruiting right now, the only thing they know about Duke University football is that we win.”

Back in 2008, the Blue Devils deployed a “national” recruiting strategy, eager to lure talent to Durham wherever they could find it. But as the wins have mounted for Cutcliffe, Duke has carved out a spot for

itself in the state of North Carolina and has expanded its recruiting footprint in other hotbeds like Georgia and Florida.

Cutcliffe said he likes to recruit the high schools and high school coaches, building up relationships as talented players flow through the same program.

That strategy paid off last month—Class of 2017 linebacker Ellis Brooks from Benedictine College Prep committed to the Blue Devils, following in the footsteps of former Benedictine wide receiver Scott Bracey, the prized wide receiver in Cutcliffe’s Class of 2016.

Brooks posted news of his commitment on Twitter at 12:43 p.m. March 24. Four minutes later, Cutcliffe spread the news as only he could: “Bell’s Ringing Loud!!! BANG BANG DUKEGANG17”

‘The culture has changed’ It’s been awhile since Mike Krzyzewski’s program needed a platform to subtly trumpet his latest commit—the nonstop media coverage of Duke men’s basketball tends to take care of that for him.

Krzyzewski does not have an official public presence on Twitter, placing him in the minority among ACC head coaches, TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE

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but all the members of his coaching staff are regular users. The program itself boasts multiple Twitter accounts—the straight-laced @Duke_MBB handle and the more off-the-cuff @dukeblueplanet— and last month became the first college basketball program to eclipse 1 million social media followers.

Of course, when it comes to recruiting, Duke doesn’t necessarily need the world’s best Twitter brand, even though its online presence is very strong. It has Krzyzewski, the winningest head coach in Division I men’s basketball history.

The 69-year-old has reeled in a class ranked in the top two in the nation each of the last three seasons, and the top two freshmen in the incoming class—Harry Giles and Jayson Tatum—will be taking the floor in Durham next fall.

Like their peers adorned with stars from recruiting services and laden with prep awards, Giles and Tatum were quick to post the latest update on their status— another offer, a trimmed list of schools under consideration and, ultimately, their commitment announcement.

“Everything happens quicker now— there are no secrets. Whatever interest a kid is getting from a school, they

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put it out on Twitter, they put it out on Instagram—immediately. Good or bad news, it’s out there,” Duke’s Jon Scheyer said in October 2014 before the start of his first season as an assistant coach. “That’s one of the things that surprised me getting back into it, how much everyone puts out there for public knowledge.”

Implied in the seemingly constant flow of high school stars to Durham is the reality that most of them will not be sticking around for the long-term— any other arrangement would result in possibly the most awe-inspiring, lethal lineup of all time.

Former Blue Devils Kyrie Irving, Jabari Parker, Jahlil Okafor and others have joined the list of college players heading to the NBA after their freshman seasons, igniting debate that Krzyzewski has embraced the one-and-done phenomenon after early NBA entrants from the Duke program were sparse for most of his career on the sidelines.

“We haven’t changed course—the culture has changed course. We still recruit the same guys we did 20 years ago,” Krzyzewski said in mid-February..

“Everyone says ‘You’ve gone to one and

done’ or whatever. Grant Hill could have been one and done, [Christian] Laettner or all those guys.”

But the calculus for college coaches is starting to get a little more complicated.

A new NCAA rule approved in January pushed back the deadline for players to withdraw their name from the NBA draft until 10 days after the NBA draft combine. The change gives players more time to gather feedback as they decide whether or not to remain in the draft pool and forfeit their remaining NCAA eligibility, and a flurry of underclassmen have already submitted their names.

This year’s draft combine runs through May 15—after the national letter of intent signing period has begun— meaning head coaches now have to go through the recruiting process while not fully assured of the group of returning players their new signees will be joining.

Kentucky head coach John Calipari— no stranger to churning out top draft picks—tweeted that his entire team would be exploring the NBA waters, walk-ons included. Duke figures to have several sure-fire NBA lottery picks in the next few years, but how it affects Krzyzewski—who typically does not fill all

13 of his available scholarships and would thus have some measure of flexibility— remains to be seen.

‘The Pied Piper’ of social media Cutcliffe says he runs his own Twitter account and has an Instagram, though he does not make frequent use of it.

For Jones—one of the most active Duke coaches on social media—having Cutcliffe’s voice online is a big part of defining the program, no matter how often he posts.

“He is the CEO of the company so to speak—he’s the head coach of this football program, so people want to hear what he has to say,” Jones said. “When people hear him saying something and hear me echoing that or saying or doing things that are very similar, they know that that’s a characteristic of our program.”

Jones populates his Twitter with motivational thoughts, or photos or videos of his secondary—a unit that has developed its own brand as both ‘The Cheetahs’ and #TheCoalition—doing drills.

But he also uses it as a platform to

educate high school players about the constant scrutiny they face because of the magnifying lens of social media. It’s one of the first things he says Duke coaches look at when taking a first glance a prospective recruit.

“If you’re a 2017 or 2018 recruit after signing day the attention will shift totally to you. Make sure your social media pages are clean,” warns one tweet.

“Don’t say, do or post things to make people question your character when it can be the difference [between] getting or not getting an opportunity,” cautions another.

Jones got turned on to Twitter by his former graduate assistant and current safeties coach Matt Guerrieri, and has simply adopted his style from Facebook (“It turned into parents being on Facebook pages”) to Twitter.

“A lot of the things I say on social media are things that people need to hear in general,” Jones said. “It generally comes from within—I sit down in the morning, think of a couple of things that I want to put up, post and then get on with my day.”

Jones has more than 16,000 followers on Twitter—including Cutcliffe.

“Derek Jones is a guru—he has a

following now. He’s the Pied Piper— he’s really good with it, and he has great messages,” Cutcliffe said. “I follow Derek Jones because I’m going to learn something from him. He takes that role seriously.”

The social media funnel Social media’s biggest advantage—and its most obvious—is the mass audience suddenly reachable with the click of a button.

Once upon a time, recruiting wasn’t always so easy. As he announced his 21-player class in early February, Cutcliffe mentioned that he’d already spoken with about 20 Class of 2017 recruits that same day, already sowing the seeds for next year’s group. But he also reminisced about a trip he once made through a snowstorm to visit a high-school-aged Randy Moss.

Although those in-person visits are still commonplace and critical to the process, so much of the communication between coach and recruit has moved online.

“When I first started coaching…you tried to get kids to call you by calling their coach to tell them to call you, and you wrote them letters. You wrote a lot

Admission is always free for Duke students.

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of handwritten letters and you tried to be different from the competition by not sending things out of the office, and that was it. Now, in the age of social media, that’s all kids do,” Jones said.

“You read an article that one of these kids may put up and he’s like ‘I talked to Coach Derek Jones last night.’ Well actually, I haven’t talked to the kid verbally in three weeks, but we talk every night because that’s how they communicate.”

Cutcliffe says he prefers Twitter’s direct message feature to texting with recruits, because direct messaging requires that both parties follow each other’s accounts, rather than a free-for-all with text messages.

That extra hoop to jump through also serves as a funnel, helping the Blue Devil staff hone in on recruits who have a genuine interest in Duke.

“If a guy won’t follow you back after you’ve followed him, guess what he’s just told you? He’s not interested,” Cutcliffe said. “That saves me a lot of time and money in travel.”

Sometimes, though, it works the other way around. Jones said several recruits have found his Twitter page, liked what they saw and reached out to him. One of them, defensive lineman Terrell Lucas, signed as part of the most recent class and will be a freshman in the fall.

“Physically with nine coaches, with restrictions on the days you can get on the road, you can only get to so many places and evaluate X amount of kids,” Jones said. “But social media opens up a door.”

‘Our pool has shrunk’ In theory, social media should increase the number of potential recruits on a coach’s radar. But Duke women’s basketball head coach Joanne P. McCallie is finding the opposite may in fact be true.

“I don’t know what causes what, but I can tell you on the women’s side, there are [fewer] kids prepared for Duke. I’m talking grades, test scores, AP classes. Our pool has shrunk,” McCallie said. “There have been some players where I was surprised when I saw their grades, saw they had Bs and Cs and a few more Cs than Bs that put us in the ridiculous position because we can’t get those kids in.”

On paper, those limitations have not kept McCallie from delivering top class after top class to rival those at national powers Connecticut and Notre Dame. But she acknowledged that player rankings—a near-maniacal obsession for football and basketball recruiting services—don’t mean as much in today’s recruiting world. Injuries and the youthfulness of Duke’s five contributing freshmen did not add up to a winning formula last season. The Blue Devils missed the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1994 and have not made a Final Four during McCallie’s tenure.

Led by Geno Auriemma, the Huskies continue to dominate the sport, but there are signs that the rest of the game is exhibiting more parity. Syracuse, Washington and Oregon State joined Connecticut at this year’s Final Four—the first-ever national semifinal appearance for all three of those programs—and Washington and Oregon State combined to give the Pac-12 its first-ever Final Four with two representatives, a big step forward for a league long dominated by Stanford.

The top schools of yesteryear used to always have a surefire superstar—Tennessee had Candace Parker, Baylor had Brittany Griner, Stanford had both Ogwumike sisters and Connecticut ran the gamut from Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi to Maya Moore and current star Breanna Stewart. But as McCallie surveys the landscape, those program-changing

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players are fewer and farther between.

“Once upon a time, if you signed a Maya Moore, you had hit the lotto with her ability, or even [former Duke center] Elizabeth Williams,” McCallie said. “I don’t see an Elizabeth Williams, I don’t see a Maya Moore…. You have to really do your homework and figure out which kid is going to really develop. Which kid is going to be better in college than they were in high school? Which kid is really dedicated? Who’s a gym rat, who’s not?”

On the move: Recruiting 2.0 More than ever before, though, the recruiting process does not stop with a player’s high school commitment— players are opting to transfer from one program to another at a rapidly growing pace.

ESPN’s Jeff Goodman and Jeff Borzello have tracked the number of men’s basketball players seeking transfers for much of the past decade. Their initial list had around 200 players—in 2015, there were more than 700.

The phenomenon has carried over to the women’s game as well. McCallie has watched four players depart her program. Sierra Moore left for Penn State after her freshman season, point guards Kianna “IF A GUY WON’T FOLLOW YOU Holland and Sierra Calhoun both departed BACK AFTER YOU’VE FOLLOWED for Ohio State during H I M , G U E S S W H AT H E ’ S J U S T T O L D winter break in 2013 and 2014, respectively, YOU? HE’S NOT INTERESTED. and floor general Alexis Jones moved closer to T H AT S AV E S M E A L O T O F home after ACL surgery T I M E A N D M O N E Y I N T R AV E L . ” following the 2014 season, leading Baylor — D AV I D C U T C L I F F E to the Elite Eight this season.

“It’s become too easy to transfer,” said McCallie, who acknowledged that her daughter, Maddie, transferred from Miami (Ohio) to Elon after the 2013-14 season. “It’s one thing if you’re not playing than if you’re not wanted. That’s a different kind of transfer.

It’s another thing if you’re a player who just wants to go through recruiting a second time. The loyalty piece, the piece about playing for your school—that’s important to us and we want it to be important to our student-athletes. It hasn’t always been, but for the most part, it has been.”

NCAA rules require a player who has yet to earn an undergraduate degree to sit out the following season after transferring, but that deterrent may not be as strong as it once was.

“People think ‘Well, I can sit out a year, that might not be so bad,’” McCallie said. “They almost think of it as a luxury.”

Krzyzewski has watched three Blue Devils bolt for greener pastures in the last five years—Michael Gbinije went to Syracuse after the 2011-12 campaign, Alex Murphy headed to Florida partway through the 2013-14 season and Semi Ojeleye left for Southern Methodist midway through Duke’s 2014-15 slate. A fourth, Rasheed Sulaimon, was dismissed from the program in January 2015 and later transferred to TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE

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Maryland after graduating from Duke in just three years.

By earning his degree early, Sulaimon was eligible to play immediately under NCAA rules as a graduate transfer and helped the Terrapins to the Sweet 16 this season. Although much attention and scorn has been devoted to the era of one and done players, Krzyzewski maintained throughout this past season that the rise of the fifth-year transfer is one of the biggest issues facing the sport, because those transfers inject immediate veteran talent into a locker room.

“We go after the same type of guys, and some of them now go early. There’s not the predictability, so it can become more chaotic,” he said. “With the transfer thing, with 700 kids transferring in a year, that’s hit everybody. And then the fifthyear player—that’s the biggest one and done.”

Last year in the ACC, Louisville seemed to all out of scoring options after losing top scorers Montrezl Harrell and Terry Rozier to the pro ranks.

But head coach Rick Pitino secured reinforcements in the form of graduate transfers Damion Lee and Trey Lewis.

The duo combined to score 27.2 points per game and led the Cardinals to a secondplace finish in the conference’s regular season.

At the time of publication, ESPN’s most recent list of transfers had 286 names, 47 of which were graduate transfers.

Krzyzewski and McCallie have won the transfer game at times, too. Rodney Hood sat out his required one year after leaving Mississippi State for Durham, but then teamed with Jabari Parker to create one of the most dangerous offenses in the country in 2013-14. Rice transfer Sean Obi suited up for the first time this past season, and though his playing time was scarce in 2016, he bodied

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up Okafor in practice on Duke’s way to the 2015 national title. And McCallie will have Maryland transfer Lexie Brown and her Final Four experience at her disposal in the backcourt this coming season.

double-edged sword Social media creates problems as well. Several coaches interviewed for this story lamented the lack of face-to-face communication during the recruiting process as things have shifted online; McCallie said she cherishes the on-campus visits because it’s her opportunity to really get to know the recruit.

For Cutcliffe, the ability to communicate with a recruit via social media has become vital, but he worries about the extent to which the process is played out for the world to see.

“I think sometimes that’s a mistake—you become too transparent as to every place you are, or what you’re doing,” Cutcliffe said. “I’m not sure how healthy that part of it is.”

Even without having to navigate the twists and turns of social media, recruiting itself can be hazy at best. Fourstar quarterback recruit Chazz Surratt committed to Duke last April. By late June, he had backed out and given his commitment to North Carolina instead.

Reopening a recruitment is not unusual these days, but adds another complication to the puzzle. After Surratt departed for the Tar Heels, the Blue Devils did not add another quarterback to this year’s class.

Cutcliffe offered a barebones hypothetical solution in February: Do away with signing day, and allow recruits to sign with a school as soon as contact is allowed to start during their junior year.

“If you offer him, he can sign that day if he chooses to do so.

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Wouldn’t that be unique? Then all these terms would come out of the non-committable offer, the soft verbal, the decommit, et cetera,” Cutcliffe said. “It would make you think twice before you offer someone. It would also make you think twice before you said you were coming.”

A switch to that model is unlikely—Cutcliffe acknowledged as much—in part because it would likely benefit academically selective schools like Duke, which don’t find themselves in the position of waiting for a recruit’s senior grades to make the cut.

“I can tell you when I look at a four-semester transcript if the guy’s a candidate here, because they’re not going to come from the grave and get in here academically,” Cutcliffe said. “The ones that would fight it, I think, are the ones who are hoping a guy qualifies.”

Back to ‘Bang Bang’ Duke’s rise back to prominence under Cutcliffe coincided perfectly with the rise of social media. The challenge now is to keep the message up to date and accessible to recruits as technology continues to change.

Whether the next frontier is Snapchat or something entirely new, don’t expect “Bang Bang” to go away anytime soon.

“Had we said ‘Bang Bang’ back in 2008 or 2009, nobody would have known or probably cared what that meant,” Jones said. “But we’ve turned it into something now that identifies us as Duke University having gotten a recruit. And you want to put hashtags on things like that because that’s your brand.”

Like everything else Cutcliffe is doing—on the recruiting trail and on Saturdays—the branding seems to be working.

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TO GIVE OR NOT TO GIVE? STORY BY CARLEIGH STIEHM

On the morning of the Blue and White Dinner, I couldn’t find a spot in any of the Blue Zone lots before my first class. Irrationally indignant and angry, I fled to the Bryan Center parking lot and snagged a spot just as someone else was leaving. The ordeal left a bad taste in my mouth, even though I knew it was really only my fault that I hadn’t left in time to find a spot, and I was lucky enough to have gotten this one. So I can’t say I was really all that surprised when I got back to my car after class to find the ominous gold envelope on my windshield that I have become all too familiar with—a parking ticket. I’d gambled with the parking gods, and I had lost. It happens. If I were a better person, I would pay for my parking all the time—it is the law, after all—but I didn’t on this day.

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I was still a little annoyed—though mostly at myself—when I arrived at the Washington Duke Inn later that evening for the Blue and White Dinner, an annual event to honor the graduating class brought to us by the Duke Annual Fund in collaboration with President Richard Brodhead and his wife, Cynthia. Or as I liked to think of it: unlimited wine on Duke’s dime.

But as the evening unfolded, it was clear that even though I’d been lured in with wine and the prospect of seeing how many people I had managed to completely avoid in nearly four years here, there was an ulterior motive at play. From the long stretch of tables lined with laptops at the entrance to the ballroom to the stickers with the Senior Gift logo emblazoned on them, the call for money filled the incredibly large room. The feeling really came to a head when Brodhead took the stage. Sure, he began by congratulating us on making it this far, but he ended his speech by asking us to donate to the University—to start our alumni career by giving back before we had even started our post-graduate jobs.

It felt unnecessary to me. I had just gotten a $20 parking ticket. I was already giving back to the University.

My last tuition payment had barely had time to clear the bank yet, but I was already being asked to give more. It felt annoying. Couldn’t Duke wait to ask me for donations until I had at least gotten my first paycheck?

Right then, I vowed—a few times, I think—that I would not be giving to the Senior Gift fund. And yet, yesterday, only a few weeks after my initial vow, I pledged my donation. I feel a little hypocritical, but I know I did the right thing.

Here’s the thing—sometimes Duke sucks. There are so many things that I want to change about this place, things that I think about every single day, from mundane inconveniences like construction to some really crucial disagreements I have with administrative stances on diversity or support for women.

But despite all of that, this University has given me some amazing experiences, and I want future students to have those same opportunities. Even with my small

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contribution, I am helping in the best way that I deposit on a Manhattan apartment, a sum of can to pay forward my good fortune. And I feel money that I never would have wanted to just privileged that I am able to do so. hand away. But the money for the senior gift is meaningful to Duke.

Apparently, though, not everyone feels the same way.

“The Duke Annual Fund, which is supported through the Senior Gift, helps make the Duke “Unfortunately, senior gift participation has student experience possible,” Antaya previously lagged in recent years, especially compared to our told The Chronicle. “For example, Annual Fund peers,” Melissa Antaya, director of marketing for dollars help fund financial aid, merit scholarships, the Office of University Development, previously and graduate fellowships. They can also help told The Chronicle. support some of your favorite professors, pay for internship stipends and enhance campus It’s true. Last year, 32 percent of seniors gave treasures like the libraries, gardens, and chapel.” a senior gift of any size, according to OUD data, compared to an average giving rate of 64 percent I was fortunate enough to have had a at schools OUD classifies as peer institutions. At contracting job throughout this year that meant both Princeton University and the University of a steady paycheck, even though I don’t start Pennsylvania, 90 percent of the class gave, while working full-time until after graduation. That 83 percent donated at Stanford. Our peers are means allowing my bank account to cut ties beating us, which could explain why the OUD with my donation hurt a little less than it could is trying new techniques to get seniors engaged have if I was really strapped for cash. For people with donating. From the clever, if slightly over- who aren’t in that situation, it might feel easy to done, campaign they used to set up a donation feel guilted to donate even when it would be a rivalry with UNC seniors to their cheesy suggested financial strain. And that shouldn’t be the goal donation of $20.16 for the Class of 2016, they are of this fundraising. There are lots of ways that clearly trying hard. soon-to-be-alumni can give back to a University that has given so much to them, and the senior But it is just so hard to feel motivated to give, gift is just one manifestation of that. when everything else seems to cost money at this point in senior year. I just paid my security

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EXISTENTIALIST ESSAY AND PHOTOS BY MATTHEW ROCK

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Many people think that existentialism doesn’t accord meaning to anything. This isn’t quite true. Existentialism just says that nothing has inherent meaning. People give meanings to many things—sounds, objects, colors, and especially other people. The entire world is dripping with this intangible importance—thanks to what our mom and dad told us about this or that, or just because something has always made us feel a certain way. For the existentialist, there is nothing sacred about these perceptions. Everything, even the base of society itself, can be broken down, reassembled, and made to mean something new. How exactly you do this, however, is an open question.

The following photo essay is meant to explore the extent to which the existentialist philosophy can be applied to works of art that are currently on display at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art. For many artists, the notion of an object having no inherent meaning seems almost heretical. Every curve of a sculpture, every smear of paint on a portrait holds carefully constructed meaning that is the exclusive brainchild of its creator. In photographing these works of art, I felt the force of the meticulous attention paid to their molding, finding it impossible to see the work’s original intent melt away. That is, I could never imagine fully breaking down the intent of the piece and reconstructing it to suit my own creative pursuits. And frankly, it would have been disrespectful to the artist.

What I was able to do, however, was use different camera settings, find novel angles and play with focus, light and form to simultaneously add to and take away from the meanings that the pieces originally contained. I sometimes focused on one part of a larger work. Other times I played around by pairing different works in the same room, finding complements between pieces that were never supposed to interact. In editing some photos, I did nothing more than increase the contrast and amplify the colors. For others, I recombined many separate photos taken of different parts of the same portrait or mural, quite literally reassembling the reality that I saw in front of me.

In the end, I found that I could only partially bend the reality of the piece to suit my own creative ends, partially reworking the valleys and hills of meanings that run through the artistic pieces. In every photograph, you will see the manifest ghost of the original artist’s intent, bubbling from the image’s baseline subject and strongly coloring your perception of it. But, honestly, I was very happy to have these ghosts. These photos signify collaboration between two people—on one side an artist who produced an original work of art, and on the other side a photographer who sought to rework that gift into something partly new and partly old. I gained the sense that it is very possible to pick apart meaning and rework it into something new, but also that “something new” will always echo the original. Unfolding within each of the following photos is a dance between two partners, whose choreography alternates between seamless concert and frenetic confusion; the dance finally yields to somewhat of a wild beauty that is in part due to the artist, in part to the photographer, and in part to neither.

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BUILDING BEYOND BUILDINGs THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND DUKE’S latest WAVE OF CONSTRUCTION STORY BY WILL CARROLL

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From the center of the newly-named Abele Quadrangle, the telltale signs of change on campus are slowly receding.

The West Union crane, an eyesore-turned-social media darling, was quietly dismantled several weeks ago. The scaffolding of Rubenstein and Perkins Libraries are gone as well. Manicured lawns have emerged from what was once woodchips and mud. Within the next 18 months, the neoGothic quad will return to looking more or less as its chief designer and namesake intended. What Julian Abele might not have expected, however, is the assemblage of glassand-steel buildings several hundred yards away, hidden away behind iconic Duke stone. The centerpiece of this new campus is the monolithic windowed face of the new West Union, which rises up over pedestrians on the newly reopened plaza bridge.

Part One: The West Union The opening of the West Union marks the end of one of the most ambitious periods of campus growth in Duke’s history. The $95 million project will serve as a dining and social hub, featuring 13 different restaurants, a variety of adaptive social gathering spaces and the top-floor Faculty Commons.

Construction began in 2013, but the project had been in the pipeline for several decades. “[Renovating] the West Union has been something that people have thought about long before I got here,” said Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education, who arrived at Duke in 1989. The 85year old building had served as the social center of campus from the start, and played an important role facilitating Duke’ residential experience.

“The University is built and organized with a compactness that ought to make it natural for students and teachers to think and work more from a common point of view,” noted President William Preston Few in 1931. “[And] the West Union is the social center for students and teachers alike.”[1] Yet the Union, like many of Duke’s classic buildings, failed to keep pace with the school’s rapid growth. The undergraduate population grew, becoming more mobile, diverse and distributed across campus. By the time President Richard Brodhead arrived in 2004, it was clear the building needed to modernize. The elegant neo-Gothic façade was just that—the U-shaped inside had been altered from Abele’s original design, leaving an interior that was somewhat unusable and underutilized. Clogged with administrative offices, it was not the social locus that Few envisioned.

“After a fair amount of preliminary assessment, it became apparent that if you were going to do anything with West Union, you had to go whole hog,” Nowicki said.

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Recognizing how integral social and residential spaces are to the undergraduate experience drove the design and implementation of the new West Union. A building originally designed to house administrative offices will now introduce a series of adaptable, modular spaces for student use.

A project of this scale would be a major undertaking at any university. Yet the West Union is only the cornerstone of $500 million worth of construction and restoration underway at Duke, covering 60 different projects midway through 2015.[2] The magnitude of this transformation rivals the creation of West Campus itself—James B. Duke’s gift of $19 million in 1924 equals about half of the sum total being spent today, around $263 million, when adjusted for inflation.

These funds have gone toward a variety of projects, from residence halls to classrooms to parking. But a clear focus has emerged, especially in the area surrounding West Union, in enhancing the buildings that play host to student life.

“For the last 15 years or so, [we’ve] been trying to create a set of environmental opportunity for students to enjoy a robust in-class and out-of-class life,” Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta said. “[And] around 18 months from now, we will have a fully completed, downtown West Campus. The sum total of that repositions Duke to provide a very robust, and hopefully satisfying, on-campus experience.”

The West Union, Penn Pavilion and Health and Wellness Center form the trio of new buildings that Moneta and other administrators, trustees and campus planners hope will become the epicenter of campus social life. But the planning and construction processes have not been without setbacks.

Aside from the graduating class of seniors, few students on campus are able to recall when this part of West Campus—

including the Bryan Center, West Union, Flowers Building and Page Auditorium—served as anything but an obstacle to avoid when walking to class. Delays have plagued the process as well. The Board of Trustees rejected an initial design before renovations began, prompting a redesign and delayed construction. The project will be delivered more than a year behind schedule, the completion date pushed from an optimistic mid-2015 to the beginning of the 2016 school year.

There is a tangible mix of anxiety and resignation among the senior class, who’ve realized that they will miss the windfall benefits of these projects. Senior class donations have plummeted in recent years, falling from a high of 69 percent of the graduating class in 2009 to a mere 32 percent in 2015.[3] There is nothing to suggest that the trend will reverse with gift-giving in this year’s graduating class, which has been impacted most by this construction. It is surprising that an administration that invests so heavily in student life is so oblivious to how disruptive these investments in the undergraduate experience are.

“Seniors feel like they are swindled,” senior Tyler Fredricks wrote in a March Chronicle op-ed, “and construction is a big reason why.”[4]

Part Two: Abbreviated Investments Like any institution, universities are market-driven. The invisible hand dictates students’ ability to pay, donors’ ability to give and administrators’ ability to invest.

In recent years, Duke’s willingness to invest on campus has been supported by a strong stock market, healthy philanthropy and a growing alumni donor base. Yet it was the Great Recession and its chilling effect on Duke’s finances, a momentary pause TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE

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before a flurry of building, which best explains the scale and scope of today’s projects.

“The downturn wasn’t just the fact that everyone’s market value went down,” Nowicki said. “It was really resetting of expectations of what one could get out of market value in the first place.”

The dramatic change that the market abruptly corrected was detailed in the University’s strategic and master plans.

Commissioned in 1997, the Duke University Campus Master Plan 2000 provided a more cohesive vision for the school in the upcoming century. Its goals called for a different kind of expansion, one that adhered to the school’s original design principles: Duke should be a university in the forest; Duke should be a collection of memorable places; Duke should be a walkable campus, easy to circulate. “[President Brodhead] and I and [Executive Vice President Tallman] Trask always agreed we didn’t build buildings to build buildings—we built buildings to enable the scholar goals of the university”, former Provost Peter Lange told the Chronicle last year.

Fundraising efforts and new construction up until 10 years ago largely adhere to Lange’s point. Additions to the original West Campus enhanced Duke’s academic facilities, and new buildings sprawled beyond Science Drive, the traditional western boundary of campus. Duke added nearly 1.32 million square feet of academic facilities on Science Drive between 1966 and 2006, including Gross Hall, the Sanford School of Public Policy, Rubenstein Hall, the Levine Science and Research Center (LSRC) and the French Family Science Center.

The return on investment in academic facilities likely helped Duke’s rise from an elite Southern school to a global one. But it also left residential and social facilities largely untouched on West Campus. In addition to containing the sprawl, Duke also faced a unique problem: the age of its historic buildings. Much of West Campus was built concurrently, leaving the university with a handful of approximately 80-year old buildings in need of renovation.

The University prepared a strategic plan and capital campaign to execute the ambitious goals laid out in 2000. “Making a Difference”, launched in 2006, aimed to raise $1.3 billion for a variety of signature Duke initiatives, including DukeEngage and a major overhaul of campus along the axis of Campus Drive.

Funds would finally be used to reinvest West Campus facilities and redevelop Central Campus all together, transforming Duke’s residential life as much as the past half-century has transformed its academic life.

In her 1962 book, “The Death and Life of American Cities,”

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Jane Jacobs articulates the idea that vibrant urban spaces are often found in neighborhoods with cramped and constrained housing. Similar thinking dominated the planning process for what campus should be throughout the early 2000s.

In a 2008 memo to President Brodhead, Dean Nowicki emphasized Jacobs’ “street scene” as a vision for integrating campus life at Duke. Several spaces on campus, including the Bryan Center Plaza, von der Heyden pavilion and the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, already illustrated this idea of valuable, spontaneous interaction. Like the East Village of New York City, public space at Duke could be a natural extension of private life. Buoyed by philanthropic donations and a strong stock market, administrators and university planners took aim at re-imagining what the 82-year-old campus could be.

According to the memo, the new vision for campus would include five distinct neighborhoods, or districts, each with a different thematic focus: West Union, Gothic, New Edens, Gardens, and Arts. New residential spaces would respond to shifting interests and identities within the student body.

Newly renovated dining venues would provide forums for connection and conversation. The plans recognized the very real potential for administrations, trustees, planners and architects to influence campus culture through physical spaces, and, in a couple of bold strokes, to reshape the undergraduate experience at Duke.

The Board of Trustees approved $350 million for the first stage of New Campus in the summer of 2008. That figure would have been about half of the $700-800 million needed for a project of this scale, Trask estimated in 2014.

By September, the US stock market had begun on its downward spiral.[5] Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, prominent investment banks both led by Duke alumni, failed.[6] In the aftermath of a national housing bubble, Duke was forced to re-evaluate its bullish plans for a residential expansion of its own. Many administrators and trustees correctly anticipated the chilling effect of the crash of Duke’s finances, and the school’s ability to pay for costly physical construction was severely limited. The Charlotte-based Duke Endowment, the University’s independent benefactor, saw its assets drop 24 percent in value. Contributions fell by 25 percent to the university’s own endowment, forcing Duke to cancel plans to launch a new fundraising campaign.[7] Financing more construction, especially a dramatic campus overhaul, was off the table, as administrators and trustees were forced to question the scope and scale of future developments.

“If we can’t do this whole New Campus plan,” Nowicki

wondered, “what can we do?”

The planning focus shifted from the future of Duke back to its roots. With the help of an $80 million gift from the Charlottebased Duke Endowment in 2011, the largest in the University’s history, the school was able to finance the renovation of three of its landmark spaces: Baldwin Auditorium, Page Auditorium, and of course, the West Union. And while it took nearly four years after the recession began to restart serious fundraising efforts, Duke announced the start of the Duke Forward capital campaign in September of 2012. Almost 10 years after the beginning of the recession, a buoyant economy has revived both private and donations and philanthropy. New capital campaign Duke Forward is ahead of fundraising schedule, raising almost 90 percent of its target $3.25 billion target as of last year. As Chairman of the Board of Trustees and one of Duke’s largest benefactors, David Rubenstein has led several notable investments on campus, including the new $50-million Arts Center.

“We began working on things building by building, area by area,” Rubenstein noted following trustee meetings in February. “And at some point it came together that we were reconstructing a large part of campus.”

Part Three: The future of Duke The American collegiate ideal revolves around the concept of a residential undergraduate experience. Harvard and Yale emulated the model used by Oxford and Cambridge, replicating an in-residence experience that is meant to be as meaningful as the academic one. President Few, overseeing the construction of West in the late 1920s, viewed the new Duke as an extension of this tradition. Abele’s neo-Gothic design reflects this sentiment, but as Duke grew beyond its original shell, the structural differences between Duke and her predecessors became glaringly apparent.

“For us,” Moneta argues, “it’s about doing the best we can with the facilities that we have, augmenting it as we have the opportunity to build new residential opportunities”.

A Southern school much younger than its Ivy League peers, Duke has had to adapt its stance toward facilitating residential life. The mile-long divide between East and West Campus is the clearest example of the University’s structural differences, the result of rampant land speculation in Trinity Heights in the early days. President Few recognized the opportunity to start from scratch on a plot of forested land west of the former TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE

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Trinity College. This structural decision has forced the University to abandon its idea of a pedestrian campus in favor of the current busing regime. But this gap between East and West provided ample space for the school to grow inward, fueled by access to cheap land at non-urban prices and abundant funding from philanthropy and alumni sources. It has developed a distinctly Southern campus, where students spend most of their time outside in the Spring and Fall.

Duke is not alone in its ambitious pursuit of campus growth. Colleges and universities across the country quickly adapted to the new normal after the recession, Some critics have dubbed this an Edifice Complex—an obsessive pursuit of campus growth, one that raises questions about rising tuition and questions of sustainability. Most construction is paid for with tax-exempt debt financing, Trask explained, repaying the debt with a combination of philanthropic dollars and occasionally operating income.

In late March, Duke rolled out plans to initiate long-awaited Central Campus redevelopment. Residential apartments are already slated for demolition in upcoming months, forcing HDRL to relocate several

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Greek and selective living groups to temporary housing. At an estimated $250 million, the development appears to be the next iteration of the New Campus plan. The form is somewhat different, and the timeline is nearly a decade past what the University initially envisioned, but the concept is the same, at least in broad strokes—a Duke that redraws its original lines to be something more cohesive, more engaging, more ambitious.

[1] Duke University Campus Guide, 2nd Edition, page 53 [2] “Building a New Era for Duke” by Bryan Roth (12/14/2015). Duke Today [3] Duke Forward Campaign. “Senior Donations FAQ”.

[4]“Blame Construction for Low Donations.” Tyler Fredricks. The Chronicle.

[5] New York Times. ‘How the Credit Crisis Unfolded’.

[6] Lehman Brothers President and COO Bart McDade (T’1982) and Bearn Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz (T’72).

[7] “Non-profit donor has lost 24 percent of value in recession”. Julia Love (3/12/2009). The Chronicle.

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TOWERVIEW:

LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD

A physical copy of a print magazine makes something of a strong statement today simply by virtue of its existence—a commitment to a form that is quickly changing, shifting, slipping past us. For 17 years now, Towerview has existed in this form and (we like to think) done so admirably. But now it’s time for a change. Towerview’s commitment has never been to the physical magazine, it has always been to the work that fills this magazine. We have striven for reporting, writing and photography that is hard-hitting and compelling, and we will continue to do that digitally in whatever form we see best both for us and for you. For now, though, let’s take a look back—at where Towerview has been and what it has done.

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