Freshman 103: foodventures

06 Sep 2011, Posted by Ashley Mooney in Backpages, 2 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

College kids are notorious for being food-focused, but where are the best places to eat on Duke campus?

“The Great Hall based on Monday’s sales is the most popular dining venue on campus,” Rick Johnson, assistant vice president of student affairs, wrote in an email. “They double the sales of their nearest competitor, The Loop.”

Johnson mentioned that The Loop is especially popular at night, and it is the most popular campus eatery on Saturdays.

“The Perk, The Refectory and Pitchfork Provisions also do very well during the day,” Johnson said.

Although these may be the most popular eateries, there are several other places where Dukies can go to stuff their faces.

Classy date venues:

If you don’t want to spend a month’s worth of food points impressing a girl at the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club, consider going to Plate and Pitchfork, where you can get anything from lobster macaroni and cheese to gourmet salads and burgers. They also have a variety of vegetarian options.

The Terrace Cafe in the Duke Gardens is also great for a classy lunch date, with an array of sandwiches, baked goods and ice cream. They do close occasionally for weather, so call before you head over. Nonetheless, this cafe is always a good excuse to get out and discover the Gardens.

Graduate school dining:

Branch out and discover different parts of campus while discovering delicious food. There are two Refectories, one at the Divinity School and one in the Law School. Both are only open for breakfast and lunch, but are worth the trek.

“The brunch at The Refectory is one of the best in town,” wrote Johnson.

If you’re taking a class in Gross Chemistry, the Refectory at Duke Law School and Sanford Deli are actually your closest dining options, so check them out sometime.

Freshman tips:

The Great Hall accepts freshman breakfast swipes, so if you want to break free of your morning routine, head over to West Campus for some fresh pancakes, among other delectable breakfast food.

The Freeman Center also accepts freshman dinner swipes. Thursday’s are known for their macaroni and cheese, but try to go on other days too—the food is always mouthwatering. They also have several vegetarian options.

Johnson’s current favorite: “an omelet in The Marketplace.” Freshmen, take advantage of it while you can.

Caffeine fixes:

Watch out coffee-lovers: there’s a Starbucks in the Duke University Hospital, and they accept food points!

If you’re too lazy to make the trek to the hospital, there’s always Twinnie’s in the Engineering Quad that brews Starbucks coffee.

Another student favorite Joe Van Gogh. They sell everything you would expect a coffee shop to sell, including fresh pastries. For those on a budget, they also sell day-old pastries, which are cheaper and almost as yummy.

And for the desperate 4 A.M. coffee run when all of the buses are shut down so you can’t get to McDonald’s, Duke has one best-kept coffee secret: vending machines. There are a couple of dorms on East Campus, Bassett included, that sell bottled Starbucks Frapuccinos and double-shots. They are both larger and cheaper than anywhere else on campus, and you get to watch a relatively high-tech vending machine spit out your bottled coffee at you.

The point:

Whether you’re a carnivore or a vegan, there are over 30 places to eat on campus that will offer something for you. As to which one is the best?

“Each restaurant is unique and offers something different,” noted Johnson. “So it would be unfair to recommend one.”

So you can pour over all of the statistics you want, but the only way to really know is to embark on a foodventure and find out for yourself.

Party in the U.S.A

06 Sep 2011, Posted by Jack Wagner in Backpages, 4 Comments

Back home in Hong Kong, everyone warned me of the culture shock I was going to experience upon arrival at Duke. I didn’t know exactly what they meant at the time.

Special To The Chronicle

Of course Dukies would be slightly different than me, given that I had spent the last sixteen years of my life in Asia. But would it be the conservative political views of the South that would shock me? Maybe the way they eat? Cutting back on dimsum and replacing that component of my diet with burgers couldn’t be that drastic! But the first night of O-week I understood. Compared to Asian or European youth, many Dukies have a very different sense of what it means to have fun—what it means to party.

Granted, back in Hong Kong, I could go into a club and buy a drink when I was 16. With the stricter drinking age regulations in the United States, it is inevitable that the philosophy of drinking would be affected. “Pre-gaming” was a term I had never heard before, and what I learned is that the point of partying for many is to get as drunk as possible early in the night so that the rest of the night is more fun. Not only is this a more dangerous way of getting drunk, but it also suggests that heavy intoxication is a requirement for a good night of partying. Of course, I’ll be the first to admit that being drunk can be a lot of fun. It worries me, however, that many people I meet here have forgotten how to have fun without being near-blackout drunk.

The atmosphere at the club was also a total shock to me. The first night of O-week, when a big group of my friends arrived at Shooters, the girls and the guys started pairing up and grinding. Although it is an accepted social norm to do that here, I couldn’t believe it at first. If I tried to grind with a girl at a club in Hong Kong, she would call the cops and try me in court for molestation. And given that dry-humping is the primary mode of interaction at clubs here, it is no surprise that half of the pairs of “dancers” end up making out after the second song. At the end of that first night, one of the girls in my group told me that the guy she grinded with was “a really good dancer.” I told her to go watch some Jabbawockeez videos.

The crux of the issue is the abnormally high drinking age in the U.S. If everyone who partied at Duke was of legal drinking age, pre-gaming would no longer be necessary. This means that in general, people would probably get less drunk because they would be drinking over a longer period of time.

However, I am not convinced that lowering the drinking age would affect the grinding phenomenon. It seems to be an accepted facet of party life here that people enjoy. But what is it about American (or Duke) culture that makes grinding acceptable? And why is the attitude so different in Asia or in Europe?

It might take me my whole Duke career to answer that question.

Carnivore. Herbivore. Vegetarian. Vegan. Muckraker…

05 Sep 2011, Posted by Mary Hoch in Backpages, 2 Comments

Tori Powers/The Chronicle

Once I read about humans dining on puppy dogs, I knew that “Eating Animals” was unlike any book I had ever read.

As a Texas native, I am more than comfortable with the idea of hundreds of head of cattle being herded to the Fort Worth stockyards. Vegetarians, with few exceptions, simply do not exist in cattle country.

As I continued reading, the appalling descriptions of how animals are kept on factory farms began to affect me.

In Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” I found it unsettling to know that such ill treatment of animals and disgusting food hygiene practices were a part of America’s past. After that, Foer’s book seemed to me like a pale imitation—a rip-off. He’s not the visionary he’s lauded to be—it’s much simpler. Foer is a muckraker. He points an eager finger at the villains of his book—the food production corporations—insisting that corruption is amok and conspiracy lies beneath it all.

“It’s when you become radical or extreme is when people get hurt,” said Matt Serra, adjunct assistant professor of psychology.

Foer’s direct approach to exposing the farming industry seems radical, especially when you look at his vehement campaign against the United States farming system. There is always danger in writing a book like “Eating Animals”—even if it is only the risk of having meat thrown at you, as Foer admitted he feared during his orientation week talk.  Muckraking, however extreme it may be, holds an important place in the history of American activism.

Shortly after “The Jungle” was published, the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 were passed, making federal food inspection and regulation standard. Thanks (indirectly) to Sinclair, we have labels on our food and at least a moderate degree of confidence that nothing wayward found its way into the sausage.

A similar book, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” argued against uncontrolled pesticide usage, particularly DDT. The threat of the loss of birdsong was evidently enough to spur the United States into action. DDT was banned in 1972 and worldwide in 2001. Carson was criticized for muckraking, but look at what her book accomplished!

Maybe Foer’s bold approach to criticizing the farming industry will lead to the passing of a law regulating living conditions of farm animals. The pregnant sows in cages too small to turn around in could, one day, be roaming a wide pasture outdoors, indirectly thanks to “Eating Animals.”  The “organic” and “free-range” labels could one day actually mean something.  A nearby farm might, one day, actually bring one’s land value up. One day, “Eating Animals” might be called a success.

Although there is always a danger in being extreme, in putting it out there for all to see, it all comes down to one simple fact: Being extreme sometimes works.

Freshman 101: Go to class, do your homework

03 Sep 2011, Posted by Chinmayi Sharma in Backpages, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

Congratulations, freshmen! You have completed your first full week of college. No, shockingly, we do not count Orientation Week as the first week of school. Go figure.

Heed our (collective non-freshmen) warning: school matters, grades are real and you’re here to do something other than to disregard wenches and acquire currency.

Classes:

Remember those things that your parents told you to go to when you got to college? They exist and they should be taken seriously. College is hard. But, it’s not as hard as you think.

Go to class, do the homework.

Where did I acquire this profound piece of advice, you ask? Every teacher since first grade. They mean what they say. Even in a lecture class, coming every day makes you a familiar face, and being a familiar face goes a long way. Also, very few classes at Duke are taught by people who DON’T want their students to do well. Show your willingness to work and the professors will help you all they can.

Make use of TAs. They are paid to do what they’re doing (usually) and actually love the subject. They’re much closer to our age and understand how to sparknotes any lesson, even the most esoteric. Office hours are worth it.

When signing up for classes, check out the professor on Rate My Professor and his evaluations on ACES. Go to CourseRank, and find out what other people said about that class. If the syllabus is online, check that out first too. The more you find out in advance, the better prepared you are to make a good schedule. Trust me, you don’t want to be surprised halfway through the semester.

Learn about Trinity and Pratt graduation requirements. We may not have a core curriculum, but you can’t get by just taking underwater basket-weaving, as pragmatic as that is.

STINF, short term illness notification form. Can get you out of any class, any time. Beware, it has been known to develop dependency in the user and has terrible long term side effects like a failing grade and rectal bleeding. Be wary and try not to use it too often.

Before you start complaining, remember high school when you were in anywhere from five to eight classes every day from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. College is not that bad.

Homework:

Perkins, 24/7. ‘Nuff said.

No but really, don’t fool yourself. You will not be getting work done in your dorm. You friends are too cool and drunk people too common in places like that. Lilly has excellent cubicles, and Perkins is beautiful with comfy chairs and a variety of nooks to tuck yourself away in.

Study group? Go to the link at the bottom of Perkins. There are great rooms with cool technology and free board space to diagram or doodle.

For people who don’t like dead quiet, I suggest the Alpine Bagel or Alpine Atrium because they smell delicious, play bumpin’ music and are conveniently located next to coffee.

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

Career Center:

Go, use it. It will help you make a sick resume and keep you updated about the jobs on and off campus during the semester and over the summer. No, it is not too early. You will be competing for these things against the smartest people you know, the rest of Duke. Also, you never know when a resume comes in handy.

Buses:

Never leave yourself with less than fifteen minutes to get from campus to campus. Murphy’s Law prevails. When you need a bus, it will unfailingly be late.

C1: Goes from East Campus to West Campus and vice versa via Campus Drive and is the most common bus.

C2: Goes through central campus and takes about ten minutes longer to get from East to West Campus. Before you complain, remember that one day you could very well be living on central campus.

C1 Express: goes straight from East to West and vice versa with no stops in the middle.

C1 Smith: Does not take that long and will get you to East. Yes, it’s a long name and no one really gets off at the bus at Smith, but the extra stop only adds about a minute to the ride.

These buses do not run all hours of the night. For that, we have Safe Rides: 919-684-7233. They are free, prompt and nice people. They will take you anywhere you need to go on or in the vicinity of Duke campus when the buses are not running.

Clubs:

Do them. Whether its sports, music, theater or academic organizations, get involved with something. Take advantage of everything that Duke has to offer because doing something like competing on a sports team or writing for a daily publication are much harder to pick up outside of school. Also, some of the coolest job and internship opportunities come from the clubs you join.

And…welcome to Duke!

Freshman 102: beyond drinking and fraternizing

03 Sep 2011, Posted by Chinmayi Sharma in Backpages, 1 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

Now that you’ve experienced college and gotten through most of your challenges by the time-old strategy of “winging it,” it’s time to learn some things about Duke that few know but all should.

Duke freshmen meal plan:

Yes, it’s bad. There is no redeeming quality aside from the fact that your swipes gain you access to Wallace, the boss omelet maker. But here is how this system works.

You have 12 meal swipes a week. You can only use two per day, one for breakfast and one for dinner. For lunch, you use food points in the Marketplace to pay for the meal, but if you missed breakfast that morning, then you have four food points to spend for lunch within the allotted lunch hours. If you use two per day for every weekday, you will only have two meal swipes for the weekend. If you miss a couple meals during the week, you will have more swipes for the weekend. There are four weekend meal opportunities, a brunch and dinner each day.

Go to brunch. Waffle sundaes are the best hangover food known to man. Utilize the whipped cream near the waffle maker for a delicious strawberries and cream meal. Make your own coffee beverages with half a cup of the hot chocolate and half a cup of coffee.

Tupperware is your friend. Walk out during breakfast or dinner with about six plates of food and take that nom-age to go. Saves money and can make for awesome late-nighting.

Use your food points for Marketplace lunch; it’s the best food they serve, ever.

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT worry about refilling your meal plan. You will inevitably do it. Everyone does, multiple times. I assure you.

Invest in bin candy. If you don’t believe in calories, they don’t have to exist.

And as much as the food might be of questionable color and consistency, go to the Marketplace as much as possible. It’s a great environment and if you sit there long enough, you will run into everyone you know. Duke got one thing right with their whole community-making goals.

Remember, you’re paying for your swipes (four for breakfast and 12 for dinner), so use them. If you really hate the Marketplace, use meal equivalency points at Trinity! Stock up on water, soda, granola bars or coffee. But use what you have.

Fun, fun, fun, fun looking forward to the weekend…:

There are things to do in life aside from drinking and fraternizing.

The Coffeehouse is a super trendy place on campus that opens in evening and closes as late as 2 a.m. It serves delicious coffee and snacks from trail mix to hookah. They play interesting music and when Econ 51 problem sets get too boring, you can stare at the awesome wall paintings. Sometimes the Coffeehouse brings live bands that make use of the intimate environment to meet people in the crowd. Also, bottomless mugs of coffee, need I say more?

Northgate mall is literally a ten minute walk from East Campus and offers everything from delicious food and ice cream, to movies, to all the shops you could need. Something to do in the day when you’re really not feeling homework.

Southpoint: longer trek but worth the haul.

Hiking if your outdoorsy is great in North Carolina and not a far drive from Duke.

There are delicious farmer’s markets in Durham that are absolutely worth going to.

DPAC is an entertainment center with fantastic shows if you like music and theater.

Cat’s Cradle has awesome artists coming to perform this fall such as Adele and the Weepies.

Durham has one of the coolest food scenes around with a variety of restaurants to appease any appetite, taste preference and college budget. Treat yourself sometimes. Also, late night hunger can be satiated by Jimmy John’s speedy delivery and if you’re up for walking, Cosmic Cantina off of ninth street with cheap delicious and huge Mexican meals.

Events:

Stay up to date with what’s going on around campus because, being such a premier institution, Duke brings a lot of incredible people to speak or host events such as Robert Gates, Bob Woodward and John Legend. Yeah, we’re kind of a big deal.

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

And stay safe. Not everybody at Duke is your friend and you are responsible for your own well-being.

And make friends. People here are the illest.