Crazie Halloween

28 Oct 2011, Posted by Minshu Deng in Backpages, 0 Comments

Yvonne Chan/The Chronicle

As most of us have sadly realized, Halloween falls on a Monday this year. This wouldn’t really be a problem at all actually, except it’s the Monday right after Parents’ and Family Weekend. So with no time over the weekend to do the cute, innocent things we do in college like go trick-or-treating, many of us are trying to squeeze in some fun before the weekend arrives. Not that hanging out with the hardworking individuals who raised you isn’t fun…

Anyways, if you’re in the same boat as me, the realization that we only have a few hours left to find a costume is probably a little more stressful than it should be. Putting my excellent Duke education to use, I did what any good researcher does and turned to Google. My first query of “weird halloween costumes” immediately got me results from WTF Costumes and Halloween Costume Ideas: 50 Unique And Weird Ideas.

“10. Twister Game: Buy a Twister game,” the second website said. “Staple ribbon to two corners of the spinner and tie the ribbon under your chin so the spinner becomes a ‘hat.’ Cut a hole in the center of the Twister mat and wear it like a poncho. All night long you can tell people to ‘put left hand on red’ and so on.”

Mildly sexual. Mildly inappropriate. Sounds like a winner. But then again, I guess another question I should ask is, is it sexual enough? Even though “weird” costumes were the first thing I looked up, who wants too look weird on this one day where “everyone has an excuse to be slutty?”

I’m not going to start on intellectualizing the Halloween experience here, but for those students who don’t have parents visiting, this weekend won’t be so much about my parents embarrassing me as it will be about you potentially embarrassing me in front of my parents.

Maybe my point is just that making Parents’ and Family Weekend coincide with Halloween weekend was a terrible idea. In any case, I hope everyone has fun however they’re celebrating or not celebrating (#occupyperkins?)!

DukeEthicist: our fearless leaders

28 Oct 2011, Posted by Duke Ethicist in Backpages, DukeEthicist, 0 Comments

To what extent does the administration have the responsibility to uphold the community standard (i.e. with complete transparency/honesty of administrative expenditures), and would their violations of the community standard be more permissible?

The Duke Community Standard as we know it was implemented in 2003, though the university has boasted an honor system since 1924. Broken down into three bullet points, the community standard spells out the ethical code to which all undergraduates are held: in a nutshell, we are to conduct ourselves honorably in all areas of life, and act if standard is compromised.

Pause for a minute, and note the word undergraduates. Nowhere is administration explicitly mentioned in conjunction with the community standard. That said, they still have a responsibility to act ethically; they play a huge part in “promoting a climate of integrity” as the standard proposes to do.

Acting ethically and being totally transparent, however, are two totally different things. Let’s be real, these deans have a university to run and a prestigious reputation to uphold. Say a little bit of controversial behavior goes on – behavior that, if reported, would threaten the university at large. You won’t hear about it. And frankly, it might be better that way.

You see, Duke, a private institution of higher education, is a business. And though I personally am a staunch believer in corporate transparency, especially at the upper levels; the fact of the matter is that in a cutthroat capitalist society such as ours, it doesn’t work that way. Were Duke administrators to focus only on “acting ethically and transparently,” practical choices with the greatest benefit to the community might not be made. So I’m okay with the gray area.

The end justifies the means; and that end is this great university environment that we’re a part of.

If the means used to realize it weren’t quite up to ethical snuff, they still contributed to making Duke a place where a climate of integrity pervades. That’s a good enough rationalization for me.

The Duke Ethicist is a project of the Honor Council which responds to ethical questions posed by the Duke community. Our purpose is to provide a medium through which students may anonymously seek advice or spark dialogue. Got a question? Send it to dukeethicist@gmail.com, and look out for a response on our blog.

This week in Chronicle history

26 Oct 2011, Posted by Margot Tuchler in Backpages, Chronicle History, 0 Comments

Special to The Chronicle

Today, the most actively discussed issue of equality is LGBT rights. 50 years ago this week, however, our campus and our country were struggling with an issue that, thankfully, does not exist to the same extent today—anti-black racism.

The Chronicle wrote about this problem on Oct. 31, 1961 in an article called “Duke University Freshman, Negro See Alleged Assaulter Freed.”

It described the acquittal of white Durham resident Frederick Jones after he was charged with assault and battery for spitting in the face of an African American picketer, Burnice Toomer, and then charging at Duke student Donald Williams who took a picture of him being arrested. The article reports that in the incident, Jones also smashed Willams’s camera to the ground.

Both the article and the incident reported reflect a very different society than the one in which we currently live. First of all, the use of the word “Negro,” though used completely innocently and within conformity with the era, is immediately noticeable and slightly off-putting from a modern perspective, given that its use has nearly died out  due to connotations of bigotry.

And then, the article tells the tale of a judicial system that failed to convict a man who very obviously assaulted another. It seems fair to assume that today, such a breach in justice would not conceivably take place. Much has changed for the better for black Americans, but the same cannot be said for all minorities.

This 1961 article in The Chronicle is disconcerting—it’s uncomfortable to remember a time when this inequality was so glaringly obvious. It’s even more uncomfortable, though, to realize that today, members of a different minority are all too frequently being bullied, harassed and driven to suicide. Members of the LGBT community are not put at such a disadvantage in the legal system the way Burnice Toomis was, but still they are denied rights that other citizens have.

Mush has improved in the past fifty years, but sometimes it’s important to remember that there is still progress to be made.

DevilWatch: Drunk and drugged Dukies

26 Oct 2011, Posted by Melissa Dalis in Backpages, News, 0 Comments

In the weekly blog series DevilWatch, The Chronicle‘s Melissa Dalis highlights each week’s crimes, as released by the Duke University Police Department.

Oct. 17-23 was a slow week for the Duke University Police Department, which only saw a total of 20 crimes.

Drugs and alcohol crimes comprised 25 percent of the crimes this week: underage consumption in Bryan Center Walkway, Edens 3A and Erwin Rd. BP station, possession of a fake ID in the BP station, possession of drug paraphernalia in Bell Tower and “possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, aid and abet, and underage” in House HH.

Thefts this week included bottles of soda and water, a credit card, two counts of currency, two iPhones, an iPod and a pair of riding boots.

There were four assaults: one on a female in the Durham Regional Hospital, three law enforcement officers at the Durham Regional Hospital, Broad St. and the Washington Duke Inn and a “simple assault” in Jarvis.

The assaults at Broad St. and the WaDuke resulted in arrest, as well as the count of underage consumption and possession of a fake ID at the Erwin Rd. BP station.

BY THE NUMBERS

Total crimes: 20

Thefts: 7

Saturday crimes: 6

Crimes in dorms: 6

Law enforcement officers assaulted: 3

Underage consumption: 3

Politics roundup: Cain’s rise, Perry’s fall

24 Oct 2011, Posted by Walker Schiff in Backpages, Politics Roundup, 0 Comments

Herman Cain rises

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

It’s been three weeks since I last wrote a roundup, and those three weeks have been very kind to GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain.

Cain has gained significant ground in almost every poll and has gained “frontrunner” status. A Wall Street Journal/NBC news poll had him four points above Romney and eleven points behind the plummeting Rick Perry.

With Cain’s higher poll numbers comes a lot more attention for the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. For the most part, Cain has used this newfound media attention to push his 9-9-9 plan. The plan, which is not a pizza deal, proposes a 9 percent corporate income tax, 9 percent personal income tax and 9 percent sales tax. The plan has garnered plenty of criticism and is yet to receive support from any notable Republicans, yet Cain’s poll numbers haven’t taken a hit.

The main problem people have with the 9-9-9 plan is that it raises taxes for a majority of Americans while giving a tax cut to the richest among us. Cain recently revised his planning, saying that it would actually be the 9-0-9 plan for Americans under the poverty level, but that has done little to slow critics.

Cain has also used all the attention he is getting to talk about border fences—specifically electrified border fences.

In regards to the U.S.-Mexico border, Cain said, “We’ll have a real fence: 20 feet high, with barbed wire. Electrified. With a sign on the other side saying, ‘It can kill you.’”

Then, Cain went on Meet the Press and declared that this plan was a joke. All was well until a couple days later. Cain said his plan for a border fence may still involve the fence being electrified, but it was still a joke because he didn’t want to offend anyone.

Despite the fact that the attention Cain is getting might not be the best thing for his campaign, his poll numbers are still strong. Polls from the last week and a half have Cain ahead of Romney in key states such as Iowa, Ohio and South Carolina—sometimes by double digits.

Rick Perry plummets

With Cain’s rise comes Rick Perry’s fall. Perry has been plummeting in almost every poll out there, presumably due to his poor debate performances. I could talk about Perry’s poor poll numbers more specifically to show how rough his campaign is going, but an exchange from a recent interview he did with Parade Magazine more aptly elucidates how much he really has hit rock bottom.

The interviewer pressed him on whether or not he thought President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Perry avoided the questions and refused to give a definitive answer as to what he thought of the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate. He even brought up a dinner he recently had with Donald Trump in which Trump expressed that he thought Obama’s birth certificate was fake. You know a GOP candidate is desperate when he is considering the idea that Obama’s birth certificate could be fake.