This week in Chronicle history: Coming out week

24 Sep 2011, Posted by Patton Callaway in Backpages, Chronicle History, 0 Comments

Lauren Dietrich/The Chronicle

Changes, nine years in the making.

On September 19, 2002, The Chronicle reported on “Coming Out Week” at Duke. The Alliance of Queer Undergraduates at Duke (AQUDuke) organized events to both allow gay students to feel comfortable being themselves and to bring other students’ reactions to their peers into the spotlight.

AQUDuke transformed the East Campus bridge into a rainbow as a reminder to all of the week and its purpose. Perhaps more apparent to students than the colors, however, was the “Kiss-In” event—a picnic-style lunch hosted on the lawn of the Chapel. Here students, gay or straight, did not have to shy away from showing their affections. Although many did not sieze the opportunity to display public affection, the event attacked a major issue concerning gay couples.

“You can deal with the fact that [someone is] gay, but can you deal with seeing it?” said junior Brian Barrera, president of AQUADuke, to The Chronicle in Sept. 19, 2002.

The week also included a Coming Out Week Dinner where instead of a prominent speaker, students read other students’ coming out stories.

Jessica Rosario, chair of Coming Out Week said, “The intention is that someone very unlike you will be reading your story and that people from an outside [non-LGBT] organization will get an idea of what coming out is like.”

Many students involved with Coming Out Week also participated in the annual Pride Parade and Festival. This week marks the 27th anniversary of the Parade, hosted by the Pride Committee of North Carolina. Held right off of Duke’s own East Campus, students decorate a float every year to show support for the LGBT community.

Kelly Chong, Trinity ’06,—who was only “semi-out” before coming to Duke but then fully came out—said, “Duke is known as homophobic, so I’m hoping this will change. I know it can’t happen overnight, but maybe gradually it will.”

So just how far have students come since then?

Even now with its growing Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life (LGBT), Duke has students who still face many of the same issues. Just as the organization’s name has evolved from Gothic Queers to AQUDuke to the Center for LGBT Life, the issues that gay students face continue to change.

Bull City at play

24 Sep 2011, Posted by Arden Kreeger in News, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

For the “peppy, purple-adorned people” of KaBOOM!—a national non-profit dedicated to saving play for America’s children—fun can be serious work.

For the third year in a row, KaBOOM! recognized Durham as a Playful City USA, meaning it shows an outstanding dedication to the general enjoyment of children.

“We are always looking for ways to improve the city’s parks and facilities,” wrote Rhonda Parker, director the Durham Parks and Recreation Department, in an email Thursday. “KaBOOM! is a great partner and it helps to engage the communities with their parks.”

Play City USA communities are eligible for Let’s Play grants, awarded by the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. The group hopes to build or fix 2,000 playgrounds across America by the end of 2013, benefiting an estimated five million children.

KaBOOM! has an ongoing relationship with the DPR. In June 2010, KaBOOM! contributed to a $156,156 renovation of the Burch Avenue Playground.

In order to earn its status as a Playful City USA, DPR focused on increasing safety standards in Durham playgrounds by improving the safety-surfacing of playground equipment. The DPR replaced or replenished safety-surfacing at 17 of the 54 playgrounds Durham currently manages. A new playground at Old Chapel Hill Road Park is expected to open soon.

“We are always assessing playgrounds for safety and improvements,” Parker said. “We have made no decisions as of yet and are making several funding sources.”

In North Carolina, Albemarle, Creedmoor, Greenville, Hickory and Mount Holly were also granted the Playful City USA title.

San Francisco, Columbus, OH, Hartford, CT, Auburn, WA and Orlando are among KaBOOM!’s most playful cities of the year.

Don’t text and walk

24 Sep 2011, Posted by Minshu Deng in News, 0 Comments

Elysia Su/The Chronicle

Don’t drink and drive. Don’t text and drive. Also, come to think of it, don’t drink and text either. Just trust me on that one. These instructions have all more or less made their way into collective common sense. But, “don’t text and walk?”

This is exactly the advice that the North Carolina Department of Transportation is now giving the state’s pedestrians.

According to a report from the Governors Highway Safety Association, North Carolina had the fourth highest spike in pedestrian fatalities among all 50 states after a 4-year period ending in 2010. The DOT, citing a University of Birmingham study, attributes much of this increase to distracted students and children using cell phones.

A DOT release encourages students to “pull out the earphones and put away the cell phones and music devices while crossing the street. Above all, pay attention to your surroundings.”

Although Duke doesn’t have too many roads to cross on campus, the chances of a Duke student stopping to pause their iPods while crossing Science Drive…well, it doesn’t seem too likely. Most potential collisions on campus would be between students walking, and most Duke students seem to have the whole texting while walking thing down. We pay less attention to our surroundings—we know what to expect around us.

Just remember that we are still in the so-called “Duke bubble.” Outside of it, it’s not just rainbows and butterflies and other students walking around. If you ever manage to get off of campus, keep in mind that there are plenty of cars and streets to cross, plenty of accidents waiting to happen. So, don’t text and walk.

Duke vs. recession

24 Sep 2011, Posted by Gloria Lloyd in News, 0 Comments

Brittany Zulkiewicz/The Chronicle

In a Wall Street Journal survey released last week, economists pegged the chance of the U.S. slipping into another recession at one in three—higher than at any point since the global financial crisis in 2008.

Connel Fullenkamp, director of undergraduate studies and professor of economics, and Emma Rasiel, professor of economics, both said they agree with the economists surveyed that a double-dip recession is a likely prospect.

“I think the tide has really turned in a lot of economists’ minds,” Fullenkamp said. “I’ve been pretty pessimistic all along.”

Month-to-month economic indicators have been disappointing, Fullenkamp said, with small gains lasting for a month or two before disappearing.

Fullenkamp noted that the announcement this week by the Federal Reserve of Operation Twist, a change in the Fed’s holdings of government bonds in order to stimulate the economy, shows that even the Federal Reserve’s economists have increased their estimated probability of a recession.

“The Fed has nothing left to do with interest rates since they’re already about as low as we can go, so it’s not clear how we get out of this situation easily,” Rasiel said. “I’m a little bit pessimistic.”

Rasiel said the first indicator of an approaching recession could be a downturn in the stock market. Students could be affected by a decrease in availability of off-campus jobs and jobs following graduation, she added.

Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education, is optimistic that Duke academics and student life are resilient—even in a worsening economy.

“The first recession actually had a fairly minimal impact on what we were able to do professionally here at Duke and how student life proceeded,” Nowicki said. “If one goes back to look at student newspapers from three years ago across the country, you’d see at many schools there were drastic cuts in student services—course offering went away. Almost none of that happened at Duke.”

The primary impact of the 2008 recession on Duke was the decline in value of the endowment, which lost nearly 25 percent of its value from 2008 to 2009. The endowment has recovered, but has not yet reached its peak value of $3.3 billion in November 2007.

Over the past three years, $100 million in cuts have been made across departments to respond to the University’s deficit. Officials continue to operate Duke with fiscal restraint, Nowicki said.

“At the moment, if things go back to where they were a few years ago, we’re still operating in that world still,” he said. “Having gone through the first recession, we’re ready for the second.”

Fullenkamp said Duke receives a larger percentage of its operating revenues from tuition than other schools of its caliber. Due to the fact that parents view tuition as an investment in their children’s future even during an economic downturn, Duke has been able to maintain healthy tuition revenues.

When Duke administrators examined where cuts could be made, Nowicki noted, they made a decision to preserve the core mission of the University—undergraduate education.

This meant administrators found alternative methods to pay for financial aid and programs like DukeEngage, which both relied heavily on endowment funding.

Nowicki said the Board of Trustees made a decision that whatever had to be cut, it would not be financial aid. As a need-blind institution, financial aid is a deeply ingrained mission of the University.

“James B. Duke would roll over in his grave before that would happen,” Nowicki said.

Weekend starvation

24 Sep 2011, Posted by Emma Wilson in News, 0 Comments

Reilly Gorman/The Chronicle

Great Hall, Refectory, Blue Express and Subway: what do all these campus eateries have in common? Besides the fact that they are undoubtedly some of the healthiest and most popular food venues on campus, they all shut their doors to students for most of the weekend.

Duke is known for having remarkably health-conscious students and a vibrant weekend culture, but to look at the list of campus eateries open on weekends, one might think that the university is full of commuter students and fast-food junkies.

Approximately 2,500 students reside on West Campus, but the campus’ one traditional dining hall—The Great Hall—closes after lunch on Friday and does not reopen until Sunday dinner.

Many other favorite campus eateries are closed all day Saturday, or are only open for weekday breakfast and lunch. Thus, West Campus residents are left with fast food options such as McDonald’s, Panda Express and the Loop when the weekend rolls around.

Sophomore Keoni Kailmai commented that he did not see the reasoning behind closing campus eateries on the weekend.

“It’s not like students are disappearing,” he said.

One prominent void in the menu is the lack of weekend breakfast options. In 2000, Jim Wulforst, then director of Duke Dining Services, t0ld The Chronicle that the Great Hall would close for weekend brunch to save money.

He said that many students were only buying items such as “cold cereal, boiled eggs, and packaged products” that could be served more effectively elsewhere, and cited an “expanded menu” at Alpine Bagels as a way to fill the gap.

Alpine Bagels, however, does not attempt to replicate a traditional sit-down brunch. A student favorite for speedy mealtimes, Alpine serves breakfast sandwiches and yogurt parfaits for breakfast—all wrapped to-go.

Alpine Supervisor Mary Jackson said that Alpine sees a significant increase in student traffic on the weekend, with a steady rush from 11 a.m. to closing on Saturday and Sunday—evidence that the lack of open eateries pigeonhole students.

“I think there should be more [on-campus dining] on the weekends,” said sophomore Connie Deng, who says she often eats brunch in her room on the weekends.

“I like to have omelets, pancakes and bacon—typical breakfast food,” she said. “And there’s nowhere on campus to get that.”

West campus’s newest restaurant, Pitchfork Provisions, has a full menu of hot breakfast items, but does not meet the needs of the many late-sleepers on campus, as they stop serving breakfast at 11 a.m.

The lack of options is especially surprising given that the 2007 Duke Campus Culture Initiative Report—a series of recommendations made to President Brodhead and the administration—cited a need to “change the Dining Services model so that operations are oriented towards community building among students.”

“Dining Services should not be run as a profit center, but rather be an investment…in the social environment of the community,” the report added.

The administration articulated intentions to create dining options conducive with the report’s suggestions but so far, their efforts in community building have yet to extend to the weekend.

For now, Duke students will continue to grab-and-go, Friday through Sunday.