T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y
The Chronicle
XXXDAY, MONTH THURSDAY, JANUARY XX, 2013 24, 2013
ONE ONEHUNDRED HUNDREDAND ANDEIGHTH EIGHTHYEAR, YEAR,ISSUE ISSUE84 X
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ROCKED BY THE HURRICANES
by Alex Krinsky THE CHRONICLE
CORAL GABLES, Fla.—Once Miami went on its run, it was never even close. The No. 25 Hurricanes capitalized on No. 1 Duke’s extreme shooting woes and pummeled the Blue Devils 90-63 Wednesday night at the BankUnited Center.
Duke (16-2, 3-2 in the ACC) shot an abysmal 29.7 percent from the field, well below its season average of 47.3 percent entering play. The Blue Devils missed a handful of open looks and lay-ups that were ultimately too detrimental to overcome. “Not much to say after that. They were
men, we were boys,” head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “The score and the performance reflected that disparity. They were terrific. We did not hold up our end of the bargain tonight.” The loss was the third-worst ever by a No. 1 team, and while No. 1 Duke fell to 3-2 in ACC play, the Hurricanes (14-3, 5-0)
solidified themselves at the top of the conference with an undefeated record. Duke was leading 14-13 with 10:19 left in the first half, but after that it was domination. The Hurricanes proceeded to go on a 25-1 run that lasted more than eight SEE M. BASKETBALL ON PAGE 8 CHELSEA CHEL SEA PIER PIERONI/ PIERONI/THE ONI/THE ONI/ THE CHRO CHRONICL CHRONICLE NICLEE NICL
No. 1 Duke was stunned by No. 25 Miami, which went on a 25-1 run in the first half and never looked back.
Study finds persistent Harpham to candidates: NC school inequity you have to be prepared YOUNG TRUSTEE
by Emma Baccellieri
Campaigning for Young Trustee begins Thursday and will continue for 10 days until the election on Feb. 7. During this time, the three candidates will make the case to the student body that they are best suited to take up the three-year position on the Board of Trustees. If elected, they will be charged with managing the affairs of the entire University. Given the circumstances, The Chronicle’s Julian Spector sat down with John Harpham, Trinity ’10, the most senior of the current Young Trustees on the Board. Harpham is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in political philosophy at Harvard’s department of government and serving the last few months of his three-year term as Young Trustee. As the first-ever Trustee to be elected by the student body, Harpham weighed in on the meaning of the role, the usefulness of holding elections for the position and what
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Q&A
SEE HARPHAM ON PAGE 4
Hoof ‘n’ Horn stages Cabaret, Recess page 4
CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO
John Harpham, Trinity ’10, was the first Young Trustee to be elected by the student body.
Recent Duke research shows grim consequences could accompany intensifying economic disparity in North Carolina’s public schools. According to a study conducted by the Sanford School of Public Policy, the economic imbalance in North Carolina’s schools is rising, even as racial inequity and de facto segregation have begun to level off after years of growth. Both types of disparity, however, prove detrimental to the educational experience, negatively affecting quality and creating disparate curriculums in the state. “The biggest concern that you have is that schools serving disadvantaged kids have difficulty recruiting and retaining great teachers,” said study co-author Jacob Vigdor, professor of public policy and economics.
ONTHERECORD
“A government mandate of equal pay for equal work serves only to hurt women, not help them....” —Jonathan Zhao in ‘Equal pay is anti-feminist.’ See column page 11
The study found that schools with high proportions of non-white or low-income students are more likely to have teachers with fewer years of experience and lower scores on teaching exams, and less likely to employ teachers who are National Board certified or graduates of competitive colleges. An additional weakness of economically and racially unequal schools stems from the social environment, said co-author Charles Clotfelter, Z. Smith Reynolds professor of public policy. “Someone who is in a school that is drastically different from the norm will have an experience that is separate from that of most people their age.... They’ll be isolated from the mainstream,” Clotfelter said. To quantify disparity, the study’s authors used a figure called the imbalance SEE SCHOOLS ON PAGE 6
Smart Home caters to all students, Page 3
2 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2013
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Smart Home attracts Pratt Users create conversation and Trinity innovators about places with new app by Andrew Luo THE CHRONICLE
SAMANTHA SCHAFRANK/THE CHRONICLE
Even though invention-filled work rooms—like the one seen here—may make it seem like the Smart Home caters to engineering students, the live-in research lab welcomes people from varied backgrounds. by Lucy Hicks THE CHRONICLE
For students who demand intelligence not just from their peers but from their houses, Duke has just the place to live. The Smart Home, a live-in research laboratory nestled behind the Freeman Center for Jewish Life, teaches students about environmental innovation and serves as a model for future sustainable housing practices. Although sponsored by Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, the home hopes to recruit a variety of students for each residential year. “Any Duke student can apply,” Smart Home Director Jim Gaston wrote in an email. “We try to have five Trinity and five Pratt students living in the Smart Home— we want a diverse group of students.” Initiated as a Pratt student project in 2003, the home opened its doors to residents in Spring 2008 as the first building at Duke to receive LEED Platinum, the highest sustainability rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. The home utilizes innovative environmental technology such
as rainwater harvesting for toilet water and solar heating to conserve energy in a costeffective manner. The Smart Home is also the first building on campus to exclusively employ LED lights, Gaston added. As a testament to the innovative thinking that created the space, both Smart Home Fellows and students taking classes at the house actively engage in projects surrounding sustainable technology—for example, using solar panels to provide power to tents in Krzyzewskiville and utilizing infrared lasers to detect empty parking spaces. Though residents are not required to participate in a project, prospective applicants must submit an idea that supports the general goals of the home. “We want to see that you are capable of thinking along the lines of adding to our house,” said senior Kimberly Wang, vice president of the Smart Home and second year resident. Students also have the option to join current projects with members of the Smart SEE SMART ON PAGE 5
Students can see what’s happening at different locations on and off-campus in real time with a new mobile app developed by Duke alumni. Radius, a Berkeley, Calif. start-up founded by four alumni last February, developed a web and mobile application that allows users follow conversations surrounding real-world locations—called beacons. Since the release of the beta version in November, there have been more than 500 downloads in Apple’s iTunes Store. The company will launch a redesigned version of their app within the next two weeks. “We’ve redesigned the beta version, which has 80 percent of the updated features, by making everything more polished,” said Hudson Duan, Pratt ’11 and Radius chief operations officer. “We want to SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE relaunch in grand fashion.” With the app, users can upload digital A new app created by Duke alumni, Radius, lets files—like photos and comments—that re- users hold conversations and share files related to late to a physical location, Duan said. Stu- the user’s location. dent users can create broadcast beacons for their dorm room, Cameron Indoor Stadi- gains traction, the next step will be to put um or even their classes. Once the beacon more resources into making an Android is created, students will be able to upload version and adding more useful features. digital files in real time. As of yet, there have not been any major efDuan added that one of the company’s forts into marketing. primary goals is to have the updated version “We do not know anything about our ready in time for the Duke vs. University of server load yet, so we are launching it at North Carolina at Chapel Hill men’s basket- Duke to see what happens,” Duan said. ball game on Feb. 13. “We want our product to grow organicalThis past summer, Radius was one of ly, no flyers and traditional marketing— 15 apps selected out of a pool of 608 to we don’t want to force our product on participate at the Plug and Play Tech Cen- people.” ter’s Startup Camp. David Herzka, Pratt ’12 Radius’ other founders are Fred Ehrsam, and Radius chief technology officer, noted Trinity ’10 and Jason Tian, Pratt ’11. that the exposure and connections Radius Some Duke students have already begun gained from the camp helped push their using Radius. Senior William Nance added product forward. that the startup has been a source of inspi“We were able to see other startups that ration for current Duke students interested were going through the same challenges in working for their own company. that we were having,” Herzka said. “The “It’s exciting to see that there are Duke camp put us in close contact with people alumni putting their work out there,” that connected us with potential investors.” Herzka added that once the company SEE APP ON PAGE 6
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THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2013 | 3
Minimally conscious patients House passes debt often ‘written off’ by doctors ceiling suspension by John Barker THE CHRONICLE
Medical policies limit hospitals’ ability to understand patients with traumatic brain injuries. Experts gathered Wednesday for a three-day conference to discuss the mental states of individuals with severe neurological damage as part of the Nancy Weaver Emerson Lectureship series. The Finding Consciousness conference kicked off Wednesday night in the Nasher Muse-
um of Art with a keynote speech from Dr. Joseph Fins, president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. The lectures will focus on recent advances in neuroscience that have shed light on states of consciousness in victims of serious brain injuries, as well as their ethical and legal implications. In his speech, Fins noted the failings of current medical procedures in diagnosing and treating patients in a minimally conscious state between coma
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and vegetation. Drawing on prior research, he argued that the potential for cognitive recovery in minimally conscious patients is being overlooked by a medical system that is missing the signs of awareness. “People are being written off, despite growing scientific evidence to the contrary,� Fins said. Fins referenced several studies that indicated general dissatisfaction on the part of patients’ families with the attentiveness of care offered for disabling brain injuries, as well as a “staggering� 41 percent of patients who are misdiagnosed as vegetables. Fins said many patients who appear to have entered a vegetative state are actually experiencing minimal consciousness, a partial preservation of conscious awareness. “[Minimal consciousness] is a flickering light,� Fins said. “Some patients at first glance appear to be vegetative, but start to break the rules and periodically show evidence of awareness.� Fins went on to reference numerous cases of individuals being in supposed vegetative states for years before suddenly waking up. After such prolonged
Medical ethicist Dr. Joseph Fins talks about neuroethics and surrounding minimal consciousness at the Nasher Museum of Art Wednesday evening.
SEE PATIENTS ON PAGE 6
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by Roxana Tiron and James Rowley BLOOMBERG NEWS
WASHINGTON — The House voted to temporarily suspend the nation’s borrowing limit, removing the debt ceiling for now as a tool for seeking deeper spending cuts. The measure, passed 285-144, lifts the government’s $16.4 trillion borrowing limit until May 19. It goes to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid, DNev., said lawmakers will pass the measure unchanged and send it to President Obama. “The premise here is pretty simple; it says that there should be no long-term increase in the debt limit until there’s a longterm plan to deal with the fiscal crisis that faces our country,� House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said during floor debate. “This is the first step in an effort to bring real fiscal responsibility to Washington.� The revised strategy eliminates the risk that House Republicans would be blamed for a default in the short term. Republicans plan to focus on other fiscal deadlines and say they aren’t giving up their fight for cuts to federal programs. Republicans plan to use two other approaching deadlines —
the March 1 start of automatic spending cuts and the need to pass a bill to fund the government by the end of March — to extract spending reductions from Obama and congressional Democrats. The measure passed Wednesday, H.R. 325, would allow the nation’s borrowing authority to automatically rise May 19 to accommodate the amount the U.S. Treasury borrowed during the three months that the limit is suspended. Sen. Charles Schumer, DN.Y., said at a news conference that while Democrats would prefer a longer debt limit increase, House Republicans’ decision “shows that the Republicans are in full-on retreat on fiscal policy.� “They blinked,� Schumer said. “Gambling with default was never a sound plan by the Republicans.� Still, second-ranking House Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland called the measure a “political gimmick� that puts off the debt-limit issue for three months so House Republicans “can continue to roil the Congress, roil our people and roil our country� with fiscal uncertainty. SEE DEBT ON PAGE 5
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HARPHAM from page 1 the job demands. The Chronicle: Did your understanding of the role of Young Trustee change from when you were campaigning for it to now, three years later? John Harpham: It did, and not in the way you would expect. When I was a student, I was always very harsh on candidates for Young Trustee when they said that they would be representatives of the student body to the Board because that’s not the role of the Young Trustee whatsoever. You have to be a Trustee, like anybody else, who represents the University and all of its constituencies. But, in my three years on the Board, although that basic position hasn’t changed, I’ve had a renewed appreciation of how important it is that the Young Trustee was recently a student. This is the unique expertise that you bring, that you have the perspective of a recent undergraduate who understands what is interesting, what is problematic, what is important to students. Not that you have to say that that’s right, but it’s important that you comprehend that. TC: What was the moment when you decided you wanted to be on the Board of Trustees? JH: It was my freshman year. I was a member of The Chronicle’s editorial board, and we brought in the three finalists for Young Trustee that year to interview them and write an endorsement. We read all their applications and talked to them each for 10 minutes or so and it was just fascinating, these three truly impressive people with a wide range of talents, and they were just completely devoted to thinking about what was best for Duke and giving back to the University. That seemed like a good model for me to follow. That wasn’t the moment when I knew that I would run, but I
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knew I was interested in the position. TC: How did that inspiration develop during your time as a student? JH: I had the idea that maybe I would be interested in applying for the job, and then I put it in my back pocket and went about my business. At least part of the preparation to be a Young Trustee is to experience Duke in all of its different facets. So I played a club sport, I was a member of a selective living group, I played pickup basketball, I went out with friends, I threw myself into classes, I studied abroad and just tried to live the life of an ordinary Duke student. At the same time I gained a very wide and deep knowledge of the University and also of its history through working on the Editorial Board of The Chronicle. TC: Do you think the process for selecting finalists and electing the Young Trustee is the best method for choosing the position? JH: The year I was elected was the first year that Young Trustees were elected by the student body. And at the time, like all the members of my campaign team, I though it was almost absurd that this position was elected rather than chosen by smaller groups, especially because I explained what the position was to most of the people I talked to. There are many elections where people don’t know the candidates, but they at least know what the position is that they are voting for. However, I think the question of whether or not an election is the best way to choose a Young Trustee, which is probably the central question here, is about what you think the role of a selection procedure is. If you think the role of a selection procedure is to be the most just and well-fitted way to choose a person for a particular position, then I think the Young Trustee should not be elected, because it gives both candidates and voters the impression that the Young Trustee is a representative of the student body, which again, it is not.
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But if the role of a selection procedure is to confer other kinds of benefits, then an election is not so bad because it involves many more students in the process of selecting a trustee and thus in the business of the University than ever before. It also teaches candidates as it taught me the basic principle of this position, which is that you get out of it what you put in. Effort is the biggest thing. Students can decide between those two sets of values.
“The Board does a great deal to be—the word wouldn’t be transparent—but to be open to the Duke community.” — John Harpham, Young Trustee TC: What do you think are the keys to success in running a Young Trustee campaign? JH: Talk to as many students as possible, and mostly don’t talk—listen. Also, have really thought through the kinds of big issues about the present and future of Duke that the Board deals with and have—students really do care about this—some sort of vision or set of thoughts that can resonate with your peers. TC: So it’s not enough to love Duke and want to give back? JH: No. No I mean, this is the highest governing body of a top-10 American university. You have to be prepared. And then, no matter what you’ve done as a student, you will not be prepared to be a trustee. You have to put in a great deal of work after you’re elected to be effective. TC: The actual proceedings of the Board are closed to the press, although they haven’t always been. As someone who previously worked for The Chronicle, now that you’re on the inside, do you think there is sufficient
reasoning behind keeping the proceedings closed? Does that help Duke as an institution? JH: As a student and a member of the editorial board of The Chronicle, I was a member of boards that consistently advocated for greater transparency from the Board of Trustees. As an applicant for the position of Young Trustee... I also advocated in strong terms for greater transparency from the Board. That is a matter of public record. Since I have been a member of the Board, my perspective on these issues has shifted. You would expect it to shift, and it has. Seen from the inside, the Board does a great deal to be— the word wouldn’t be transparent—but to be open to the Duke community, to receive input from and to work with the community at large, and in fact, since I have been on the Board, I would argue that we have gotten better rather than worse in this respect. What we’re often talking about here really is specifics. What are the specific ways and means by which the Board should communicate with the community? In that respect, I want and welcome a world in which students advocate for greater openness and where members of the Board and administration agree to some extent and disagree to some extent and try to work through a compromise that is amenable to all parties. That allows us to do the work that we need to do and yet also recognizes the very important truth that members of the Board are nothing if not members of the Duke community. TC: So the principle that Duke stakeholders should be involved in the process holds, but the issue of transparency doesn’t feel as pressing once you’ve seen what it takes to do the work of the Board? JH: No, no it feels pressing in different ways, and pressing as a part of a set of much larger concerns about how we are to do what we are charged with doing as a Board. Find an extended version at dukechronicle. com.
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THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2013 | 5
DEBT from page 3 The House debt-ceiling plan is accompanied by a prod to lawmakers on the budget. It says the House and the Senate each must adopt a budget resolution for the next fiscal year by April 15. If not, the pay for members of the chamber that doesn’t act will be withheld and placed in an escrow account until they adopt one — or, at the latest, until the end of the 113th Congress. Reid said the Senate plans to pass a budget this year. The Obama administration said Wednesday it welcomed the House measure as a de-escalation of the fiscal debate. The Treasury Department has said it expects to run out of emergency measures to prevent a breach of the current debt limit between mid-February and early March.
SMART from page 2 Home program as well as expand on ideas that students have presented in the past. Some current projects include Duke Rides, a rideshare program that helps students find carpools, and erecting a green wall made out of plants. The projects are not limited to Duke’s campus, noted junior Frank Lee, a current resident of the house who recently attended the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas in order to preview potential additions to the home. “It is really cool to see what is out there and what can be implemented in the home
Investors in U.S. Treasury bonds, who most directly bear the risk of a government default, haven’t shown alarm. The vote on the debt ceiling would clear the way for House Republicans to focus on the debate to replace about $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts, half of which would come from defense. Congress delayed the start date of the automatic cuts to March 1. Republicans are prepared to let the automatic cuts go forward even if Democrats don’t agree to restructure them to fall less heavily on defense, said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. After dealing with the automatic cuts, the House is expected to take up its budget resolution and then turn to a bill to fund the government through Sept. 30, according to Rep. John Fleming, R-La. The government is being funded through a stopgap measure that expires March 27.
Cross-cultural networking
and expanded on,” Lee said. The idea of sustainable living extends beyond the Smart Home’s walls. Residents have begun composting and utilizing the Duke Community Garden’s resources. Students from both organizations often gather for home-grown lunches. Wang noted that one of her favorite aspects of the Smart Home is its community feel. “Because it is a house, everything is really personal,” Wang said. “You get to know everybody really well—it’s very comfortable.” Those who are interested can find the application online on the Duke Smart Home website. Applications are due Feb. 8.
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Students learn about career opportunities and share experiences with others at the Diversity Networking Dinner in Scharf Hall Wednesday evening.
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PATIENTS from page 3 periods of neural latency, he said that some processes seen only when the brain is first forming are resurrected, allowing the brain to “re-wire” itself years after a serious injury. Dr. Jeffrey Baker, director of the History of Medicine program at the School of Medicine, explained that neurologists’ understanding of different kinds of consciousness are still developing. “The ways in which medical professionals classify brain states ranging from full consciousness all the way down to death have changed substantially over the last 200,” he said. In addition to medical practice, the workshop also focused on advances in treatment technology. Fins referred to a 2007 study by Dr. Nicholas Schiff. Schiff worked on a stimulation of the thalamus—a routing center for the brain—by electrodes that led to improved responses from victims of traumatic brain injuries. “We partially restored the aroused brain activation system in the thalamus, which had the effect of ‘waking up’ patients,” Schiff said. All such treatments will have to be extensively vetted before being clinically deployed, but Fins expressed hope for future developments. The work needs to be
APP from page 2 Nance said. “They’ve found the resources to keep themselves afloat to work on this project for the past year.” Radius is not only aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate, but it also has the poten-
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funded, he added. Fins also touched briefly on the final field covered by the workshop: ethics. Fins argued that brain injury patients do not have high visibility and are often swept under the rug. Treating a minimally conscious person as if they were a vegetable, however, is a violation of their fundamental rights, he said. “These people aren’t even perceived as meriting the protection of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This is a denial of their equal protection—it’s a basic civil right,” Fins said. At the end of his speech, Fins described the treatment of brain-injured patients as a civil rights issue, like the treatment of minorities before civil rights, women before suffrage and homosexuals today. “When I first started talking about this in a civil rights context, people looked at me like I was crazy, but if you think about these previous kinds of issues, is it any crazier than giving women the right to vote was?” he asked. The Finding Consciousness workshops will meet for the next two days at various locations around campus, covering new technology, policy and theories regarding cognition and awareness. The conference was sponsored by the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and the History of Medicine and funded Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, among others.
tial to grow, said senior Cole Bosson, another beta tester for Radius. “It became less of me doing a favor for [Hudson] and more of me exploring the app to see what it could be used for,” he added. “If I had to guess, the app has the ability to spread, assuming it gets the right kind of exposure.”
SCHOOLS from page 1 index, which compares the racial and economic composition of a county’s schools to the demographic makeup of the county’s population as a whole. In 2011, the state’s economic imbalance index was 0.18, meaning that the interaction between students of different economic levels is 18 percent less than it would be if schools were perfectly balanced by income. In comparison, this figure was 0.15 in 2005-2006 and 0.11 in 1994-1995. The white/non-white imbalance was 0.16, exactly the same as it was in 2005-2006 and only 0.01 higher than it was in 20002001. Nevertheless, there are a variety of issues facing the racial composition of North Carolina’s schools, the researchers said. The study found that charter schools are a particular area for concern, with 60 percent of students attending a school with minority enrollment of either under 20 percent or over 80 percent. “We should be very cautious with charter schools going forward,” said coauthor Helen Ladd, Edgar F. Thompson distinguished professor of public policy. “Students in charter schools tend to be in school with kids like themselves.... That pattern is almost inevitable because of underlying presences.” The study also found that the population of Hispanic students has risen dramatically over the past 10 years, adding another facet to North Carolina’s historically binary discussion of race. “Historically in the South, the race issue was always a white and black one,” Clotfelter said. “Hispanics have changed that environment.” The study reported that as a likely result of this change in demographics, the proportion of students attending schools that
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are more than 90 percent white decreased by more than half from 2005-2006 to 20112012. The report found that Durham County had the eighth-highest economic imbalance index, with 0.29, and was just outside the top 10 of racial imbalance, with an index score of 0.21. However, these figures are slightly misleading, said Heidi Carter, chair of Durham Public Schools’ Board of Education. “[The imbalance indices] measure the degree to which the composition of schools in Durham match the county as a whole, but our school system demographics do not mirror Durham [County’s],” Carter said. She noted that 25 percent of Durham County’s school age children attend either charter or private schools, making it impossible for the public schools to reflect the racial and economic balance of the entire county. She added that the percentage of white middle class students has particularly fallen since 2005, saying that the decrease was partially due to an increase of charter schools in the area. “We embrace the children that come to us with open arms, but we would much prefer that the demographics of our school system reflect the community,” she said. “That sort of balance gives students a chance to understand our common humanity.” The study was purposefully released just before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in an effort to increase awareness of the inequality that still exists in modern America, Ladd said. “Martin Luther King’s birthday reminds us that racial and economic disparities have historically played a negative role in our country,” Ladd said. “We must keep that in mind as we move forward in working to ensure that all children receive a high-quality education.”
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Where does Mason Plumlee stack up in the National Player of the Year rankings? We break it down for you on the sports blog. sports.chronicleblogs.com
January 24, 2013 www.dukechroniclesports.com
Losing Kelly isn’t Duke’s only issue It’s hard to say how things went downhill so quickly. Certainly the loss of Ryan Kelly has left a huge vacancy in the Duke lineup, but on paper the Blue Devils still have a National Player of the Year candidate in Mason Plumlee, a dynamic point guard in Quinn Cook and one of the country’s sweeter shooters in Seth Curry. Yet instead of a slight step back from a team that was earning every ounce of its No. 1 reputation, that was absorbing every punch a very tough schedule could throw at it, Wednesday night’s Tom blowout loss at Miami was more reminiscent of an early-season rout at Ohio State last season that portended a difficult year and a very early tournament exit in March. Just days after an enthusiastic Mike Krzyzewski became an Internet meme sensation with his charge onto the court to hug Plumlee, the veteran head coach was reduced to a disappointed GIF as the Hurricanes imposed their will on the Blue Devils for DUKE 63 40 minutes in a 90-63 win at the BankUnited in Coral Gables, Fla. MIAMI 90 Center The impact of Kelly’s absence cannot be overstated, especially against an opponent like Miami, which is one of the few teams in the country that possesses a player who, like Kelly, can create a matchup nightmare for opponents. Hurricane power forward Kenny Kadji poured in 22 points on just 11 shots, showed his shooting range with a 2-for-3 performance from beyond the arc, asserted his versatility with a coast-to-coast, press-breaking dunk late in the second half and demonstrated matchup awareness by demanding the ball in the post when Duke tried to cover him with the much smaller Amile Jefferson. Kelly’s loss also takes one of Krzyzewski’s primary leaders off the floor. Although Kelly is not especially demonstrative, he is a cerebral, steady hand when he plays, and that sort of presence might have proven crucial at several junctures when Duke needed a big play to stem the Hurricane tide in a hostile and raucous road arena. But for all the value that Kelly provided before being confined to crutches, Plumlee emphasized after the game that the team needs to move on and adjust to life without its power forward. “We’re just a different team, and we can’t keep pointing to that after every game,” the senior said. “We’ve got to move on. You’ve got to go with what you have.” It would be a gross oversimplification to suggest that Kelly’s injury is the only thing that has caused the Blue Devils to drop two of three games bookending an unconvincing home win over a rebuilding Georgia Tech squad. Fatigue might also be creeping up for a Duke team that has counted heavily on its starters for playing time and production. Two of Duke’s stalwarts—Mason Plumlee and Quinn Cook—entered Wednesday’s game ranked in the top seven in the ACC in percentage of minutes played. Seth Curry ranks in the top 30 despite his nagging injuries, as does Rasheed Sulaimon even though the freshman has never faced the rigors of a full college season. In the last three games, all four non-Kelly starters have seen precipitous drops in shooting percentage. Sulaimon has had the smallest deviation, falling just 7.9 percentage points. Curry has fallen from 47.4 percent to 37.5 percent, for a 9.9 percent drop. Cook and Plumlee have both approached 20-percent dips, as the point guard has fallen from 45.3 percent with Kelly to just 27.0 percent without. And Plumlee has dropped from 61.6 percent all the way to 42.2 percent. Against Miami, the formerly formidable Cook-Curry-Plumlee triumvirate combined to shoot just 6-for-37. Cook and Curry even spent substantial time on the bench, with Curry seeing just 22 minutes of action and Cook playing just 29 minutes. “It starts with us,” Plumlee said. “Coach has said that since the fall, and we have to play better for us to have a chance to win. It starts with those three guys.” Without the leadership of that trio—both in terms of scoring and morale—Kelly’s absence looms larger. The backcourt duo’s recent scoring issues have also exposed problems on defense as well. Cook’s small stature and Curry’s injury issues have reduced their effectiveness of late despite both players’ defensive tenacity. Georgia Tech shooting guard Chris Bolden set a career high with 20 points against Duke Thursday, and Miami senior Durand Scott—who also plays Curry’s position—posted a 25-point effort in Thursday’s win that represented his highest point total since his freshman season three years ago.
Gieryn
0-of-17 FG Tyler Thornton and Seth Curry struggled in Duke’s backcourt, missing all 17 of their shots. It was Curry’s first scoreless effort all season.
56.9% FG The Hurricanes easily broke through Duke’s defense, making 33-of-58 field goals, including 9-of19 (47.4%) from deep.
75 points
Four Miami players—Durand Scott, Kenny Kadji, Shane Larkin and Trey McKinney Jones—finished in double figures, combining for 75 points. Working often against Cook, Miami point guard Shane Larkin shredded Duke’s efforts at a full-court press, especially late in the game, leading to a number of easy transition dunks and 3-pointers. Larkin’s performance—which also included a career-high 10 rebounds—came just two games after N.C. State point guard Lorenzo Brown tied a career high with 13 assists against the Blue Devils. Some of the younger players played admirably even despite their elders’ struggles, but a 6-for-11 night from Jefferson and a 5-for-8 performance from Alex Murphy, while impressive, will not be enough to keep the Blue Devils afloat as they try to navigate a treacherous ACC season. The recent skid for Duke has them sounding somewhat like last season’s squad, which struggled for much of the season to find its identity. The cohesion that carried the Blue Devils with clutch play and resolve through the early part of the season has begun to come apart at the seams, leaving the team
once again working through an identity crisis. “I think we have to improve as a unit and find the identity of the team with the guys that we have right now, which is something obviously that we haven’t done yet,” Murphy said. Despite the incipient similarity, it’s premature to say that this year’s Duke team has fallen completely apart. Miami and N.C. State are two of the better teams in the conference, and the Blue Devils understandably will require an adjustment period in the wake of Kelly’s injury. This squad likely won’t end up as the team that looked invincible early in the season or as the one that just got utterly dominated on a hostile floor. The truth, as it often does, lies somewhere in between, and it at least sounds like the team is prepared to remain united even in the face of a rough stretch. “These are still my brothers,” Jefferson said. “I’ll still go to war with them any day, and I’ll never quit on them.”
8 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2013
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WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Blue Devils look to rebound from their first loss run the point, allowing Gray to play off the ball and score. The Blue Devils will look for Jones and Gray to provide the defensive intensity and offensive flow that led to victories earlier in the season. With a healthy Elizabeth Williams, who scored 11 points Monday night, along with a talented bench that includes guard Chloe Wells and forward Richa Jackson, Duke will look to find its rhythm offensively and establish a defensive intensity throughout the 40 minutes of play. The Blue Devils have found success against Clemson both as a team and individually. Williams, Wells, and guard Tricia Liston all had strong performances when matched up with the Tigers. The trio combined for 45 points in the game earlier this month with Wells leading all bench players in scoring with 10 points. Clemson is led by forward Nikki Dickson and center Quinyotta Pettaway, who each had strong games in the win against Wake Forest last Thursday. Dixon, the team’s leading scorer, averages 14.3 points per game this season, but was held to 11 by the Duke defense the last time out. Pettaway, who leads the ACC in rebounding during league play with 12.3 rebounds per game, managed just six points and eight rebounds when opposed by Williams in the paint.
by Staff Reports THE CHRONICLE
Coming off a 30-point defeat to No. 3 Connecticut—Duke’s first loss of the season—there’s no doubt the Blue Devils are eager to move on and return to ACC play. The No. 4 Blue Devils (16-1, 6-0 in the ACC) will defend their undefeated No. 4 ACC record ThursDuke day at Clemson (5vs. Clemson 12, 1-5 in ACC), which is coming off a 10-point victory against Wake Forest. Thursday, 7 p.m. Littlejohn Coliseum In the previous matchup between the Blue Devils and the Tigers Jan. 10, Duke cruised to an 82-47 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Blue Devils held a six-point advantage in that game with 17 minutes remaining before going on a 22-0 run to seal the victory. Against Connecticut, however, Duke’s first half play was strong and placed the Blue Devils down two points at the break. Connecticut’s offense awoke in the second half, however, as the Huskies went on a 20-5 run that blew open the game. A major trend for Duke this season has been inconsistency between halves and Clemson will certainly test the Blue Devils resolve coming off a challenging loss. The bright spot from Duke’s loss, though, was the play of freshman guard Alexis Jones, who scored a career-high 14 points and led Duke in scoring. Jones starts in the backcourt with Chelsea Gray and has the ability to play on the wing or
STEVEN BAO/THE CHRONICLE
Freshman Alexis Jones was a bright spot in the team’s loss to Connecticut, recording a season-high 14 points.
Offensive woes highlight Duke’s loss to Miami M. BASKETBALL from page 1 minutes until Amile Jefferson broke the Blue Devil drought with a layup. “They made shots, they played with a lot of energy, and we can’t come out flat like that,” Rasheed Sulaimon said. “They made two big runs, and we have to do a better job of slowing them down. When they punch us, we’ve got to punch back.” The run included 14 unanswered points, with six apiece coming from shooting guard Durand Scott and power forward Kenny Kadji. The run gave Miami a 38-15 lead with 2:53 remaining in the first half. “The ball doesn’t go in everyday,” Alex Murphy said. “You have to work hard on both ends of the floor, and we didn’t do that very well in the first half. They got a lot of easy shots, a lot of open shots.” Senior guard Seth Curry epitomized Duke’s shooting woes in the first half by shooting 0-for-7 from the floor, including 0-for-4 from beyond the arc. At the half Duke trailed Miami 42-19. Curry finished the game without making a bucket. “Our three veterans can’t go 6-for37,” Krzyzewski said. “That’s something I haven’t seen. You’re not going to win if Seth, Quinn and Mason go 6-for-37. When you’re doing that, it’s so unusual that it impacts you in other ways. And it impacts guys that they’re supposed to be leading.” The Hurricanes scored seven unanswered points to start the second half and never looked back. Miami’s trio of Scott, Kadji and point guard Shane Larkin combined for 65 points, as Duke was
CHELSEA PIERONI/THE CHRONICLE
Quinn Cook finished just 1-of-12 from the field, highlighting Duke’s backcourt struggles. unable to stop their penetration in the paint. The trio also accounted for eight of Miami’s nine 3-pointers.
The Hurricanes turned out not to even need a major contribution from center Reggie Johnson, who posted just
two points and five rebounds in a lastminute surprise return from a broken thumb that he suffered Dec. 21. Meanwhile, Duke—in particular its backcourt—could not buy a basket. Curry and Quinn Cook combined to make just 1-of-22 field goals. “Everybody can’t have a great game every time out,” Sulaimon said. “That’s up to the rest of the team to pick those guys up when they don’t have the night they’re capable of having. We need to do a better job collectively as a team helping our teammates out.” Sulaimon led the Blue Devils with 16 points and also added four steals. Duke’s offensive struggles were compounded by turnovers and sloppy defense, and the Blue Devils never came within striking range in the second half. Miami cruised to victory while holding the advantage in nearly every statistical category including rebounds, steals and blocks. Mason Plumlee finished with 15 points but did so on 5-of-14 shooting. He added 11 rebounds for a double-double. Murphy was a bright spot for the Blue Devils, scoring a career-high 11 points off the bench. Amile Jefferson added a career-high 13 points on 6-of-11 shooting. At the final buzzer the Miami student section flooded the court to celebrate, the second time Duke has watched a ranked opponent rush the court in just 12 days. “We have to get better,” Plumlee said. “We haven’t won on the road yet. We have to depend on each other more, everyone has to show up, we can’t just have a couple guys show up, and then tonight nobody shows up. We have to get better. We have to be more consistent.”
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Unsaid quotas? Are Asian students disad- 2011 putting Asians at 15 to 20 vantaged in the college admis- percent of these schools’ stusions process? A recent surge of dent populations. Meanwhile, articles in The New York Times Asian enrollment at the Caliand other publications has fornia Institute of Technology, raised the question of the exis- which does not use affirmatence of “Asian tive action, has quotas” at top kept pace with editorial universities. broader demoLet’s look at the numbers. graphic trends, with Asians According to data from the comprising more than 40 perNational Center for Education cent of its class. Statistics, in the last 20 years, Given that Asian Amerithe number of college-age cans constitute an increasing Asian Americans has grown proportion of prestigious scifrom about 200,000 to over ence competition champions, 400,000—nearly doubling National Merit finalists and compared to the relatively winners of other scholastic acconstant size of the 18 to 21 colades, these figures seem to year-old non-Hispanic white suggest, at least prima facie, population. During this same that “Asian quotas” may very period, Asian enrollment at well exist at America’s top priIvy League institutions re- vate universities—just as they mained constant or even did for Jews from the 1920s dropped, with numbers from into the 1950s. But admissions
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Students should be free to attend whichever social events they please without being subjected to any extraneous pressures. ... I see no reason why we can’t have both, top notch academics and championship caliber sports teams. —“DukieMike” commenting on the editorial “Our house.” See more at www.dukechronicle.com.
LETTERS POLICY The Chronicle welcomes submissions in the form of letters to the editor or guest columns. Submissions must include the author’s name, signature, department or class, and for purposes of identification, phone number and local address. Letters should not exceed 325 words; contact the editorial department for information regarding guest columns. The Chronicle will not publish anonymous or form letters or letters that are promotional in nature. The Chronicle reserves the right to edit letters and guest columns for length, clarity and style and the right to withhold letters based on the discretion of the editorial page editor.
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YESHWANTH KANDIMALLA, Editor LAUREN CARROLL, Managing Editor JULIAN SPECTOR, News Editor ANDREW BEATON, Sports Editor CHRIS DALL, Photography Editor MAGGIE LAFALCE, Editorial Page Editor KATHERINE ZHANG, Editorial Board Chair JIM POSEN, Director of Online Operations CHRISSY BECK, General Manager KRISTIE KIM, University Editor TIFFANY LIEU, Local & National Editor ANDREW LUO, Health & Science Editor CAROLINE RODRIGUEZ, News Photography Editor PHOEBE LONG, Design Editor MICHAELA DWYER, Recess Editor SOPHIA DURAND, Recess Photography Editor SCOTT BRIGGS, Editorial Page Managing Editor MATTHEW CHASE, Towerview Editor ADDISON CORRIHER, Towerview Photography Editor ANNA KOELSCH, Social Media Editor SAMANTHA BROOKS, Senior Editor REBECCA DICKENSON, Advertising Director MARY WEAVER, Operations Manager DAVID RICE, Director of External Relations
officers deny discrimination, emphasizing that there is no formula for admission and that applicants are evaluated holistically—with test scores and ethnic background only two of many considerations. Because admissions is highly complex and we do not know what actually takes place inside meetings, we do not make any prescriptive or normative claims. Looking at the available data, we find three possible explanations for the data: implicit or explicit racism among admission committees, inferiority among Asian Americans in “soft factors” or the aim of admitting a “diverse” class somehow disadvantaging Asian applicants. Explicit racism among admissions officers is a disturbing possibility, although it
most certainly happened in the past with Jewish students. Implicit racism, the kind latent within all of us, is more likely. While greater transparency about the racial composition of admission committees might help ease this worry, outright debunking is difficult. The question of soft factors is highly subjective. Although test scores and academic honors may be the most direct objective measures of an applicant’s merit, there are few standard measurements for “non-cognitive” skills. Do charisma, leadership and passion outweigh a flawless academic record? How do you define such traits anyway? Could Asians possibly be so lacking in these areas as to explain the highly peculiar statistics?
Or do “soft factors” mask antiAsian racism? “Diversity” considerations in admissions, which we support, are nevertheless difficult to define. Each applicant’s profile should be evaluated holistically, but to what precise end? Can and should admissions committees precisely define the kind of diversity they seek? What role does race, as opposed to say, socioeconomic status, play? What is the ideal “level” of diversity of an incoming class? An amorphous notion of “diversity,” like elusive “soft factors,” can potentially open the door to many prejudices if too broadly construed. While we offer far more questions than answers, we do so in the hope that others can begin to discuss them in a principled and objective manner.
Our journey is not complete
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Opportunity,” my father answered. “OpportuUnfortunately, my father arrived to the United nity is why I decided to come to this country.” States during the Iran-Contra affair and, despite not Ever since his first year of high school, my fa- having any association with the region, received a ther fantasized about attending college in the Unit- bitter welcome by the community merely because ed States. “I would dream about it,” he didn’t speak English. “The feeling he told me. “And I would go to sleep that I had to defend myself all the every night praying for my dream to time and that I was perceived guilty come true.” simply because of my accent or name My father never envisioned studyhad its toll on me,” my father told ing, living and raising a family here me. Not only was my father harassed in the United States. Growing up as throughout his college career, but he the eldest in a family of 10 siblings, was often robbed, deceived and misthree brothers and seven sisters, my mousa alshanteer led by the people whom he trusted father believed that it was selfish of the most. He supported himself by you don’t say? him to impart upon his parents sole attaining a part-time job at the camsupport of the household. Furtherpus cafeteria in-between classes, at a more, his friends laughed at his ambition, thereby local Burger King after classes and at an off-campus rendering him to states of confusion and insecurity. diner late in the evenings. He knew that in order In the midst of his teenage years, my father’s fam- to live the American dream, he would have to work ily suffered from severe economic difficulties. My harder than anyone else. In the end, the innumeragrandfather, who worked from dawn until dusk sev- ble moments of anxiety, the sleepless nights and the en days a week, was struggling to make ends meet. unforgettable adversities that my father experienced A few years later, the family was traumatized by the were worth it. When he had saved up enough monsudden death of my father’s two youngest brothers, ey, my father transferred to Ole Miss to begin studyages 1 and 2. As if that wasn’t enough for the family, ing engineering. He went on to obtain his engineermy father’s sister later suffered a stroke and passed ing degree from N.C. A&T State University, settled away, mildly due to the inadequacy of medical treat- in Greensboro, N.C., launched two businesses and ment overseas. It was these experiences of emotional pursued a second career in real estate. instability and economic uncertainty that compelled “I came to this country with a mission to succeed. my father to pursue a life outside of his home coun- I learned not to take anything for granted, to be retry. In light of his friends’ skepticism and his parents’ ceptive of others and not to be judgmental,” he said, unwillingness to see their son leave, my father knew remembering his time in Oklahoma. “I learned that that it would be best for him and his family to study, this country—regardless of what I experienced early live and raise his children in another country. Such on—has a great social system based on equality and an opportunity would allow my father to support his dignity, and a great economic system that allows for family back home and escape the memories of his individuals to succeed regardless of their circumchildhood. It took a whole year for my father’s fam- stances.” As my father was telling me his story, I saw ily to accept his wishes, and another year before my his eyes fill with tears. father received acceptances from various institutions Though I first heard of my father’s life experiencin the Soviet Union, East Germany and numerous es days ago, I was reminded of what he told me after countries in the Middle East. hearing a quote from Obama’s inaugural address: “I wasn’t happy. I knew that studying there “Our journey is not complete until we find a better wouldn’t have been any different,” he told me as we way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who drove back to campus. still see America as a land of opportunity, until bright My father was looking for colleges that offered young students and engineers are enlisted in our introductory courses in English as a second lan- workforce rather than expelled from our country.” guage, as well as an institution that would successNo matter what political ideology one adheres to, fully shape his future. He knew that he could only there’s no denying that there are thousands of indifind such hope in the same country that he dreamed viduals, like my father, longing for the freedoms of about during those long precarious nights—the our country, that are denied opportunity on a regular same country that he saw through the television set basis. And until this opportunity is granted to all indiand heard about through the radio. After a long viduals who rightfully and lawfully seek entry into the wait and several prayers, my father received an ad- United States, “Our journey is not complete.” mission letter from Southeastern Oklahoma State University, where he would study English for two Mousa Alshanteer is a Trinity freshman. His column years before transferring to the University of Missis- runs every other Thursday. You can follow Mousa on Twitsippi to study architecture. ter @mousaalshanteer.
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THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2013 | 11
commentaries
Free markets, dead people
Equal pay is anti-feminist
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very 11 minutes, an American dies because of Among the provisions of the ACA, Medicaid exa lack of health insurance. These are Ameri- pansion would have had the most dramatic effect. cans that wouldn’t have died if they lived in The ACA was more than paid for; the Congressional France, Germany, Japan or Sweden—nations that re- Budget Office projected that it would shrink, not ally stand up for the protection of human life. These raise the deficit. States would have expanded MedAmericans include the out of work, but also those icaid up to 133 percent of the poverty line, chipping who work one or many jobs trying to make ends in just $1 for every nine federal dollars spent. This meet; in fact, around one in every four working-age expansion was supposed to be more or less mandaadults is uninsured. These Americans tory; however, the Supreme Court dewere often those who had to decide cided that states would have to opt-in between rent, food, medicine or electo Medicaid expansion. tricity. These are Americans who work Bringing $9 into your state econjust as hard as we work, and who love omy for every $1 spent is, plain and just as much as we love. simple, a great deal. As an example, For all the lives cut short for lack for every $1 spent by a film or TV of insurance, there are many more company, the state of North Carolina lives derailed. Hospitals are required gives the company a quarter back. In elena botella to provide emergency care regardless the case of Medicaid expansion, every of an individual’s ability to pay, but a rebirth of wonder dime spent would bring 90 cents to they nevertheless bill the very poor for our state’s dentists, doctors and hospicare received. For an uninsured individual, break- tals. Instead of making films, we’d be making the sick ing a bone can mean breaking the bank. Uninsured well. If you ask me, that’s a better use of state funds. patients routinely pay two-and-a-half times more for The simple math of it explains why so many Repubhospital services than those who are insured. For a lican governors have already signed on. Republican family gradually eking its way into the middle class, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona explained: “By agreeing a medical emergency can reverse its fortune, often to expand our Medicaid program … we will: … save leaving parents and children out on the streets. In and create thousands of jobs; and, provide health fact, three-fifths of all bankruptcies are medically care to hundreds of thousands of low-income Arizorelated. In simpler, smaller ways, a lack of insurance nans. Saying ‘no’ to this plan would not save these prevents poor children from being the best possible federal dollars from being spent. … No, Arizona’s students and poor adults from being the best possible tax dollars would simply be passed to another state. workers—whether its pain a toothache causes a child … With this move, we will secure a federal revenue at school, or a strep throat your waitress might pass stream to cover the costs of the uninsured who alon to you because she can’t afford her antibiotics. ready show up in our doctors’ offices and emergency But wasn’t the Affordable Care Act (ACA) sup- rooms.” Duke University Health, along with more posed to change all this? than 70 other groups, recently signed a letter urging There are many people now covered by insurance Gov. McCrory to expand Medicaid. thanks to ACA: the Duke grad still looking for work North Carolina is one of just of a few states that a few months after graduation who can now stay on hasn’t yet decided on Medicaid expansion—for just his or her parents’ health insurance until the age $138 million per year, we could provide health inof 26, or the asthmatic entrepreneur whose “pre- surance to more than 700,000 of our neighbors. existing condition” used to make finding insurance Though the state must make tough choices, the nearly impossible. The most important provisions of amount spent would be paid for more than four the ACA will kick in next year. More employers will times over by restoring the 0.75 percent sales tax be forced to offer their employees health insurance that elapsed in 2011. or face penalties. The insurance exchanges, in conI’m reminded of my home state’s toast: “Where junction with the individual mandate, should make the weak grow strong and the strong grow great, it much cheaper for the self-employed and unem- here’s to down home, the Old North State!” That ployed to purchase insurance; in Massachusetts, the is my vision for North Carolina—a vision I hope cost of the average individual, non-group premium Gov. Pat McCrory and the General Assembly will decreased by 40 percent between 2006 and 2009, come to share. while across the country it increased by 14 percent. All of these provisions will make some difference. Elena Botella is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every They will save some lives. Thursday. You can follow Elena on Twitter @elenabotella.
Mariah Hukins is a Trinity senior. You can follow Mariah on Twitter @thehukes.
G
ender equality is an admirable goal that is almost universally agreed upon in our nation. We want men and women to have the same rights and equal access to opportunities. That is uncontroversial. What is wrong, however, is seeing unequal results and categorically inferring unjust treatment. In other words, what looks, feels and smells like sexism may not actually be sexism. We must first understand that seemingly organized, designed patterns may naturally arise from individual decisions that are not motivated by bigotry. For example, jonathan zhao in seminar classes, the men and the free markets, women often sit on opposite sides free people of the table with no interlay. Is this evidence of a conscious decision to segregate due to sexism? No, of course not. If every member of the class prefers to sit next to at least one person of his or her own sex, then the pattern of complete segregation will occur organically. Thus, patterns of behavior that seem collectively organized can emerge from the aggregation of individual choices that stem from innocent motives. Obviously, it is true from empirical data that women are on average paid less in the labor market as compared to men who perform comparable services. Many will immediately proclaim that this is irrefutable evidence that women are being discriminated against in the work place. They may push for legislation that would force employers to pay the same wage to both sexes. Although this is very well intentioned, as with many cases, the results do not reflect the sentiments. It produces the opposite effect. Women will actually be negatively affected by an equal pay law. If there exist occupations in which men hold a competitive advantage over women for whatever reason, forcing equal pay will cause those occupations to become even more male dominated. The only way the less productive gender can find work is if they offer to work for less. Denying them the opportunity to do that just pushes them out of that labor market. It does nothing to help either gender. Similarly, if a woman has an advantage in a certain industry, an equal pay law would actually hold them back from achieving the wage they would have gotten in a competitive market. Furthermore, if some firms truly were sexist, an equal pay law would protect those employers from the only thing that threatens them: the market. Firms that practice bigoted sexism must do so at a real economic cost in a free market. For a particular job, if the women are just as good as the men, then an unbigoted firm will have a clear economic advantage over the sexist firm. The unbigoted firm is able to choose from a wider pool of qualified workers because it is willing to pay commensurate wages to women. Clearly, the sexist firm suffers in terms of skilled labor and also market competition for its bigotry. If, however, we decree that there must be equal pay for both men and women, we effectively remove the economic penalty that had existed on the sexist employers. The firms that had given women fair wages will now be forced to cut them from the workforce, since their wage was artificially raised. Also, the unbigoted firms lose the competitive advantage they held over the bigoted firms, since now their hiring practices are forced to become identical. As such, equal pay laws serve only to remove the penalty for undue sexism in the labor market. One might point out that wage discrepancies would still exist between men and women in a perfectly free market. True. The discrepancies that arise, however, will be mostly based on statistical analyses and self-selection instead of unjust bigotry. In fact, a U.S. Department of Labor study found that when adjusted for behavioral factors, the pay gap shrunk to between 5 and 7 percent. That gap would likely further shrink when more factors are included. Once you go into the data, real world effects explain much of the gap. For example, women are much more likely than men to drop out of the workforce. This is in large part due to childbirth. As such, employers take on additional risk and cost to hire women. This risk should be reflected in the wage. This concept of statistical price discrimination should not be foreign to most people. Take for example life insurance. The data shows that women live substantially longer than men. Thus, life insurance rates for women are lower than for men. This seems fair to most people, so statistically based wage discrimination should likewise be just. It is clear that the policy advocated by most feminists is self-defeating. A government mandate of equal pay for equal work serves only to hurt women, not help them. Instead, let free markets do the work. The invisible hand is not sexist. Jonathan Zhao is a Trinity freshman. His column runs every other Thursday.
12 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2013
THE CHRONICLE
WRESTLING
Duke grabs home victory vs. App. State by Staff Reports THE CHRONICLE
SYLVIE SPEWAK/THE CHRONICLE
Immanuel Kerr-Brown recorded a key major decision for Duke in its home dual meet against Appalachian State.
Due to the renovations of the Textbook Store, textbooks will be moved from the Textbook Store to our Distribution Center.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
Textbook Requests & Information regarding the Return of Books to Publishers
TEXTBOOK REQUEST DELIVERY SCHEDULE Monday - Friday Textbook Requests Books requested by 9am: available by 11am. Books requested by 1pm: available by 3pm.
Weekend Textbook Requests: Books requested after 1pm on Friday or Saturday: available by 11am the following Monday
Mid-Level, Bryan Center • 919.684.6793 Email: textbook@duke.edu Store Hours: Monday - Wednesday: 8:30am - 7pm Thursday & Friday: 8:30am - 8pm Saturday: 9am - 6pm www.dukestores.duke.edu/textbook.php Department of Duke University Stores®
Textbooks can be requested at the Textbook Store Service Desk, which will remain in the lower level of our Bryan Center Store. The books will be delivered, and made available for purchase according to the delivery schedule. We encourage all students to purchase the books they anticipate needing for the remainder of the Spring Semester in the Textbook Store by Tuesday, January 29. Beginning Wednesday, January 30, books can be requested and delivered according to our delivery schedule. Spring 2013 textbooks will be returned to publishers beginning March 11. Please plan to purchase any of the remaining textbooks you will need for the Spring 2013 semester by Friday, March 8.
Duke opened its new home at Card Gymnasium with a bang, thwarting Appalachian State 24-15. Prior to this season, the Blue Devils competed at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The match had a little extra meaning for Duke (35), which was dismantled by the Mountaineers (6-4) last season 29-6. “Last year those guys really took it to us,” head coach Glen Lanham said in a press release. Things looked glum early for the Blue Devils, when redshirt freshman Michael Chapman lost a decision and Appalachian State’s Dominic Parisi pinned redshirt senior Peter Terrezza, giving the Mountaineers a 9-3 lead. In between those bouts, Brian Self tied the match at three apiece before Parisi’s pin put the Mountaineers back up six. “[Brian] Self is a warrior,” Lanham said. After the pin, though, the Blue Devils stole the show. Redshirt freshman Marcus Cain and redshirt sophomore Immanuel Kerr-Brown posted back-to-back major decisions to push Duke ahead 17-9. Kerr-Brown’s performance was instrumental in giving the Blue Devils the momentum needed to carry the team to the victory. A big takedown of Appalachian State’s Aaron Scott in the waning seconds of the match gave Kerr-Brown an 11-2 lead and secured a major decision for him. “I thought our guys wrestled hard and that’s all that we can ask,” Lanham said. “I’m fired up and excited about that we wrestled hard.”
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volume 14 issue 16 january 24, 2013
(RE)STAURANT WEEK
FOUR
QUARTETS Eliot’s poem inspires Chapel installation
PAGE 6
SOPHIA DURAND/THE CHRONICLE
toro y moi
chillwave musician turns to pop in new album
film fest grows NC, global film communities
band brings carnival to Duke Coffeehouse
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SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
strange beauty
music tapes
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CENTER SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
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January 24, 2013
editor’sNOTE
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mud hole/lake. I was hoping to work at the check-in desk or scan items at the camp store, whiling away the summer in a state of relative relaxation while making money for the school year. Instead, on my first day, I was asked to lifeguard at the swimming hole (it was called “the beach,” though I’m quite sure there was no sand) despite my complete lack of training, not to mention my inability to swim. At the time, it crossed my mind that this was probably frowned upon at other campgrounds, a lawsuit waiting to happen, but I went along with it. I told my boss I wasn’t a strong swimmer and she reassured me that I didn’t need to swim—she simply needed someone to sit at the top of the water slide and tell kids when they were allowed to go down. As the sunburn-prone ginger that I am, I begrudgingly assumed my position at the top of the water slide, a beach towel wrapped around my head and shoulders, leaving only a small hole for my eyes through which to supervise my charges. As kid after kid went safely down the rickety old slide, I began to feel more confident that nothing could go wrong. Beneath the cover of my sun-warmed towel, I smiled at the ease of the job and the absurdity of the situation. And then a woman went down the slide and surfaced from the muddy pit with a compound fracture, her bone protruding sharply out of her lower leg. Luckily another lifeguard (a trained one) happened to be near my area, so he went for help while more lifeguards rushed over to keep an eye on the victim. Meanwhile, I frantically tried to clear the water as small children splashed through the woman’s blood, at which point my boss reminded me things more satisying than sitar that this was a lake, not a pool Michaela Dwyer.............................................................................making a decision at the YMCA. Blood, shmud. I didn’t quit the job, and as Holly Hilliard........................................................................not having to lifeguard it turned out there were plenty Katie Zaborsky.....................................................................dropping rock climbing of other things for me to do Dan Fishman........................................................................................................tabla besides lifeguard. I also worked Ted Phillips...............................................................................skipping production at a concession stand, where I gained a new appreciation for Sophia Durand.........................................................................pretending to resign all people in the foodservice Emma Loewe.....................................................realizing that Sophia didn’t resign industry, and at the kiddie area
[recesseditors]
DUKE PERFORMANCES In Durham, at Duke, a City Revealed. ay!!! this frid
AUDACIOUS WEST COAST ENSEMBLE
NEW CENTURY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
FEAT. NADJA SALERNO-SONNENBERG, VIOLIN
MENDELSSOHN, VILLA-LOBOS, STRAUSS, WILLIAM BOLCOM FRIDAY, JANUARY 25 8 PM • REYNOLDS THEATER
go-carts, where I decided never to have children. I dealt with angry customers of every sort, perfected the art of spreading sauce on a pizza and memorized all the lyrics to Nicki Minaj’s “Your Love.” I discovered that rescuing adrift canoes is much more enjoyable while singing “Just Around the Riverbend” at top volume. I read The Color Purple while sitting under a makeshift shelter at the empty putt-putt golf course during a tenhour rainstorm, and I cleaned up countless concession-stand rat droppings even though, as I was informed by other employees, “the health inspector never usually comes until July.” I will put none of these things on my resume. No one cares about my summer job as a “Recreational Employee” at a campground in southern Ohio. Judging by the bookrelated job postings I’ve found online, I should have been doing unpaid publishing internships all along. Now, graduation is fast approaching like a small child on an out-ofcontrol kiddie go-cart, and I only have one relevant position to tell employers about, one six-month internship at a literary magazine. While that experience was an amazing one, it definitely doesn’t constitute five years’ experience. Even so, I want to believe that my job at the campground was actually beneficial to me, perhaps even more beneficial than a publishing internship would have been. Not only did I have to learn some serious people skills, but it also gave me hands-on life experience. And if I want to be a writer, isn’t life experience more important than internship experience? The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but I think, in my case, I learned more at the campground than I would have learned opening mail or doing data entry or making copies. While an internship might have passed in a haze of menial office tasks, my summer job remains vivid in my mind; each day brought with it a new, ridiculous story. Ultimately, isn’t that what I’m after, as a writer? A story, not an internship? Next year, I might not get a job in publishing. I might not get a job where I get to write or work with books or do anything useful with my English degree. Maybe I’ll have to dance around in a lobster suit or water a neighbor’s ficuses or work as a Christmas elf at Macy’s. But, as my summer job reminds me, at least I’ll have good stories to tell. —Holly Hilliard
NASHER MUSEUM OF ART AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters THE CONE SISTERS OF BALTIMORE FINAL WEEKS! Closes February 10 LEFT: Paul Gauguin, Vahine no te vi (Woman of the Mango), 1892. Oil on canvas, 28¾ x 17¾ inches (73 x 45.1 cm). The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, BMA 1950.213.
s I sit in my apartment and Google careers that involve writing (as per the advice of the Career Center), it becomes increasingly apparent to me that I should have done more internships. Since declaring an English major my freshman year, I have generally felt comfortable with the fact that I will not be going to med school or working at an investment banking firm. I’ve always thought I would be a writer, or that I would work at a publishing house or magazine, and I’ve never doubted that this goal is completely attainable. And then I became a senior and started actually looking for relevant jobs, at which point I immediately started to panic. Every job listing that I’ve found in publishing/editing/writing boasts the phrase, “MUST have AT LEAST five years experience,” with some variation of capitalization, and these aren’t even the jobs that I want. These are the assistant-to-the-assistant-to-the-assistant jobs, the kind that, on a resume, earn vague bullet points like “facilitated office communication” or “improved office organization.” I never knew I needed five years’ experience to do an entry-level job, but apparently that’s the way it goes, and now I wonder if I should regret the summers I spent back home in Ohio happily ignorant of the holes in my resume. Instead of doing an internship the summer after my first year at Duke, I took a minimum-wage job at a rural campground 45 minutes from my house. It wasn’t a summer camp and I wasn’t a counselor. It was a place where families drove their RVs and parked them next to a handmade
rday!!! ay & satuAUTHORITATIVE PIANO TRIO this frid
FRED HIRSCH TRIO
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This exhibition is organized by The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum, New York, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. In Durham, the exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. At the Nasher Museum of Art, lead foundation support is provided by the Crow Creek Foundation. Lead corporate support is provided by Wells Fargo. The media sponsor is NBC17.
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January 24, 2013
toro y moi
PAGE 3
ANYTHING IN RETURN CARPARK
One of the pioneering forces behind the chillwave movement, Chaz Bundick has set out to make his third record pop. Yes, literally, pop music. It’s a head-scratching move for someone who was at the forefront of an underground music movement. Pop has a kind of disdain attached to it, especially within the chillwave community. It’s synthesized music in the way that chillwave musicians are often trying to challenge and nuance. So why is Chaz Bundick moving to pop music? If we take him at his own word, Bundick hopes he’s refined a sound that his “girlfriend can dance to.” If that’s what he was going for, a few tracks on Anything in Return are sure successes. Opener “Harm and Change” begins at a hurried pace that’s reminiscent of his past singles, but when the electric organ comes in, the track moves in the direction of art house music. The song’s sampled vocals, from an unnamed female soul singer, are the kind I’d expect from The Weeknd, not Toro y Moi. Likewise, “So Many Details” benefits from Bundick’s seductive croons. His voice is louder, clearer and more confident than it has ever been. Both tracks are more accessible than most chillwave and much less aloof. Maybe Bundick, the 26year old, has started to move away from the somewhat-apathetic instincts of his earlier works. In its place is a sound that’s catchier and more lively, if less obviously polished. While Bundick succeeds in making his pop record, parts of the album feel forced, regressions from his typically effortless productions. “Touch” and “Cola” sound essentially the same, with droning beats and unimpressive, borderline lazy, repetition. The droning might have worked in the context of a chillwave album, but in a record that is so noticeably pop, the tracks feel tired and out of place. “Cake” and “Day One” have the opposite problem. They’re reminiscent of the sugarcoated songs I’d expect to hear from cheap mainstream pop. That is, they sounded more or less like Toro y Moi trying to imitate pop, as if he wanted to honor the return of Justin Timberlake. And with lines such as “I’m all right / she’s all right / we’re all right” and “Imma be her boy forever” Bundick’s lyrics also leave something to be desired. The best tracks on Anything in Return balance Bundick’s electro-pop with the more methodical pace of his earlier work. “Rose Quartz” is the most expertly crafted track on the album. Unlike most of the pop songs, “Quartz” shows Bundick the minimalist. The loops build slowly and the vocals are quiet enough to not overwhelm the backdrop. “High Living” is another song that benefits from its relaxed pace. Its funk-inspired percussion and high-pitched melodies are catchy, and it’s one of a handful of moments on the album when Toro y Moi successfully incorporates tropes from other genres. Elsewhere on the album there are influences from darker versions of disco, some R&B and even, occasionally, jazz—all arranged in the midst of his characteristic lo-fi haze. Though it’s clear that Bundick wants to makes danceable music, the best tracks on Anything in Return reconcile pop with his older aesthetic. —Kathy Zhou
SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
brokeback BROKEBACK AND THE BLACK ROCK THRILL JOCKEY
In a music industry where young bands are often preferred and fetishized, it’s exciting to hear well-seasoned musicians crafting some of the best rock out there. Douglas McCombs, of the bands Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day and Pullman, started Brokeback in the mid-1990s as solo project, through which he explored spare melodic sounds on his six-string Fender Bass VI. Brokeback and the Black Rock is the first Brokeback release in nearly a decade, marking a new era for the band. Like most of McCombs’s work, Brokeback is usually considered post-rock. Indeed, because of his role with Tortoise, McCombs is often credited as one of genre’s founders. Their music, like much of post-rock, avoids using lyrics, and in the case of Brokeback and the Black Rock that’s a blessing. Whereas some bands might have felt compelled to write a catchy vocal hook or tack on some nonsensical “ooh”s and “yeah”s, Brokeback lets the instruments carry the music. In its new incarnation, Brokeback has moved away from the delicate quiet melodies that characterized their earlier releases. In its place is a sound that’s both louder and richer, though never too brash. Exactly the right amount of reverb adds lushness to the dialogue between guitar and bass, especially on “The Wire, the Rag, and the Payoff” when psychedelic moments perfectly meld together the band’s ambient tendencies and instrumental narratives. The album can be described as a conversation or set of conversations—between instruments and between tracks. The musicians are perfectly in tune with each other, and the swells of emotion are arranged with an artistry often reserved for classical orchestras. Like a successful quartet, Brokeback manages to express raw emotion without appearing sloppy. In other genres of rock, like punk rock, sloppiness often gets mistaken for genuine emotion. Brokeback’s bass and guitar lines, on the other hand, delicately weave in and around each other, revisiting and modifying musical strains throughout each track. Without lyrics or quirky vocals, Brokeback can’t use contemporary poetry to hide weak musical composition. And they don’t need to,
because Brokeback and the Black Rock is so well-crafted that it stands on its own without verbal explanations. Each track is excellent, but listened to as a whole the tracks feel like movements of a larger symphony. The narrative arc and complex soundscape of Brokeback and the Black Rock are best appreciated if the album is listened to in a single sitting. Opener “Will Be Arriving” begins with a questioning guitar riff, which spins off into a thoughtful reflection, ending in what feels a big moment of discovery. Later tracks explore the angstier side of introspection, for example “Who is Bozo Texino?” which has a worried vibe and climactic moments of anguish. Yet, despite the angst, many of the tracks end on an uplifting note. “Don’t Worry Pigeon” is a quiet meditation with a cyclical pattern. The album finishes with “Colossus of Roads,” an epic ten-minute reverb-drenched affair. Three minutes in, a soulfully sweet guitar makes its first appearance, returning periodically to provide the contemplative piece with a sense of unity, finishing with a joyful uplifting guitar solo. By the end, the listener has been taken on an intense inward journey, encouraged to prod dark hidden places and, finally, brought out into the metaphorical sunshine to breath and try again. —Hannah Anderson-Baranger
last stand
DIR. JEE-WOON KIM DI BONAVENTURA PICTURES
Call me a nostalgic fool, but I miss the moment in time when action movies starred young people. Or, at the very least, people not yet eligible for social security. The first two months of this year bring us action vehicles starring Sly Stallone (66, Bullet to the Head), Al Pacino (72, Stand Up Guys) and Bruce Willis (a spritely 57, A Good Day to Die Hard). To borrow a turn of phrase from Danny Glover, these guys are getting too old for this s***. But none of these films have a former governor in the lead role, unless Jesse Ventura snuck a film by me somewhere. That honor belongs to The Last Stand, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first post-Governator starring role. The set-up is relatively straightforward. Big bad drug cartel man Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) escapes the custody of FBI Agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) and flees for the Mexican border. As in most action movies, the FBI is incompetent, so the task of stopping him falls to local sheriff Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger) and his rag-tag group of deputies and enlisted locals (most notably Johnny Knoxville and Luiz Guzman). Among many flaws, one stands out as truly tragic: you know the parts with Arnold and his deputies that you’d expect to be corny and absurd? They’re actually quite entertaining! Knoxville and Guzman are reliably offbeat actors, and they bring a winning energy to the action sequences. Sure, the dialogue and plot are perfunctory and clichéd, SEE LAST STAND ON PAGE 7 2I¿FLDO 6SRQVRU RI '3$&
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You’ve Got To Be There.
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January 24, 2013
EMMA LOEWE/THE CHRONICLE
Hoof ‘n’ Horn adapts Cabaret by Lucy Hicks THE CHRONICLE
Schaefer Theater bustles as directors and managers make their final changes to both the stage and sound only five minutes before the show. “Can you turn the saxophone up?” calls the music director to the soundboard above. She continues to make small tweaks before disappearing behind a black curtain. The stage is split—one side of the theater is made to look like an old hotel room, decorated with a tired mattress and desk accompanying faded green and white walls. On the opposite stage is an elevated platform, the setting entirely black barring a sign that hangs from the catwalk, which flashes CAB-A-RET. Hoof ‘n’ Horn, Duke’s student-run musical theater group, debuts its production of Cabaret this Thursday. Set in pre-Nazi Berlin in 1931, the musical follows the nightlife at the seedy Kit Kat Klub and the relationship between Sally Bowles, a singer at the club, and American writer Cliff Bradshaw, their fledging romance chronicled alongside the sudden Nazi rise to power. The show’s depth and complexity bring Hoof ‘n’ Horn to largely unexplored emotional ground, noted Producer Drew Klingner. “Cabaret has more weight to it than many Hoof ‘n’ Horn shows tend to have,” Klingner wrote in an email. “As an organization, we’re always looking to better ourselves as artists and collaborators.” The play was also more physically demanding, with intricately choreographed numbers in almost every scene. While the theater group did not have the means in the past to put on such a production, “we finally have the resources at Hoof ‘n’ Horn to pull off a show that demands rigorous dance,” said the producer. Throughout the play, the Emcee at the Kit Kat Klub captures the changing feel of German society in his cabaret, infusing a more grave tone to the frivolous nature of the traditional nightclub entertainment. “When you think of cabaret, you think ‘dark’ as in ‘nightlife’ but you don’t think historically dark or controversial,” said Kyle Aldedice, who plays the Emcee. “But being in it, you can’t help but feel for what actually went on and the people that were hurt and oppressed.” Though the original play debuted on Broadway in 1966, Hoof ‘n’ Horn produced the now more popular 1987 version of the show. This revised musical is slightly more scandalous than the original, including controversial lines that were previously omitted for older audiences. The major plot change is Cliff’s sexuality, said Klingner. Though Cliff is straight in the original 1966 version, he is portrayed as bisexual in the revised version, an addition that brings more complexity and emotional vulnerability to the play.
As the Nazi occupation in Berlin rises, Cliff also struggles to distance himself from a former male lover as he pursues a relationship with Sally. Through Cliff’s implied sexuality, the play touches on the discrimination against homosexuals as well as Jews during Nazi rule, a detail that proves even more relevant in today’s political landscape. Though not as severe, this intolerance still holds true in present day, noted Klingner. Hoof ‘n’ Horn takes many artistic risks to bring to light the darkness of the period as well as a shared public ignorance during the Nazis’ rise. The increasing presence of the swastika as the play unfolds “The show’s depth and comevokes the fear and uncertainty of many plexity bring Hoof ‘n’ Horn to German citizens at largely unexplored emotional the time. While the ground.” history of the Nazi movement and Holocaust is generally common knowledge throughout the world, the imagery of the musical as well as the strong interplay between actors manipulates audience emotions in new and profound ways. “I would want an audience to come with some background of what happened in the 1930s and 1940s in Germany,” Aldedice said. “But when they leave, I want them to be able to, like I do, feel for the characters and the people.” Hoof ‘n’ Horn hopes that beyond generating a powerful response from the audience, the subject matter will also provoke conversations that previously were considered too controversial or taboo for open discussion. Klingner added that audience members should come with an open mind, and “dig deep” for the powerful message of the show. “Because there are a lot of historical sensitivities involved with it, people may be hesitant to discuss the problems that they see in the show or the problems that they see in our society that are still related to the show,” Klingner said. “It’s important to make changes to the future based on what we screwed up in history.” Cabaret opens on Jan. 24 and continues through Feb. 3 in Schaefer Theater. See www.hoofnhorn.org for tickets.
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Recess Interviews: Julian Koster frontman of the Music Tapes by Lauren Feilich and Adrienne Harreveld THE CHRONICLE
Julian Koster is best known for his work with the Elephant Six Recording Company as a member of Neutral Milk Hotel and the frontman of the Music Tapes. He and the Music Tapes will bring his latest experiment, “The Traveling Imaginary,” to the Duke Coffeehouse this Tuesday at 8 p.m. The group will pitch a circus tent inside of the Coffeehouse, within which they will host a night of music and entertainment. Recess writers Adrienne Harreveld and Lauren Feilich chatted with Koster about his unique stage antics, creative approach and future plans. Recess: Just for people who don’t know about the tour or what’s going on, can you just describe what your vision for this tour is? Julian Koster: Sure, it’s kind of a realization of a lifelong dream and fascination for the Music Tapes, which is to be able to create both a place to welcome people into and a unique experience that’s new for them to have. We’ve always been completely delighted with the idea of offering a kind of amusement that feels like you’re stepping into a whole world that’s fun and adventurous and different from anything you’ve experienced before. It has sincere, inviting, warm and very fun elements. And so we’ve constructed this tent that the whole show takes place in, especially for that experience. And games, all the games—we always work in making up games and stories, as well as music. R: Why is the title “The Traveling Imaginary?” JK: That’s just what it was called when it came to me. Generally speaking, things come to me. When I’m dreaming stuff up, it’s not so much that I’m going through a rational process of deciding things, it’s just, “pop, there it comes” and it’s like I’m a little kid, I’m just delighted to see what came out of nowhere. And I don’t necessarily personally believe that the things that people create come from them anyway. I feel like it’s all written in the universe, written in everything, and it’s not like one person is some great creator as much as it is that anyone is excited or inspired and loves something about the world very much. If they keep their eyes open, things will come to them. R: That’s really cool. Is that sort of how you come to make music? JK: Yes! I love melodies, I love the feeling of singing, I love the feeling of playing music, I love the feeling of stories, making up stories, ‘cause then you just start living them, they just start coming to you and then you just get lost in them and, you know, those are just some of my favorite things about being a human being on planet Earth. R: I know that once you kind of conceived the idea of “The Traveling Imaginary” you all started a Kickstarter to get the funding. How does it feel to see that you exceeded your goal by so much? JK: Oh, it was pretty mind-boggling. It happened within a few hours and I really had no idea. It was so much for me to conceive that there were people out there who would suddenly get some sort of notification, or would hear on the internet, and out of nowhere spontaneously and instantaneously take money that is a part of eating and living and surviving and put it toward something so selflessly. It is an amazing and humbling thing to realize, that those people were there and they would act so quickly, and it was just delightful, and incredibly heartening, of course. R: I know as part of your Kickstarter, as part of the campaign, you sold the banjo that you used while performing In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. How did that feel? Did it feel like you were moving on to a new chapter?
What was the motivation for selling the banjo? JK: I mean, that was just my banjo that I used for everything for about ten years. Actually, the banjo started kind of dying as an instrument. In 2000, there was a Neutral Milk Hotel reunion. It was the last show of that trip, and I was pretty sure it would be the last show that banjo ever played. I was doing this thing where I hung a cymbal from the ceiling of this huge venue and I was holding a megaphone and hitting the cymbal with a pole at certain points during the song, and I missed, so I grabbed the banjo and I just threw it like a spear at the cymbal, and it went flying off into the wings of the stage and I was like, “Well, it’s going to be in pieces, and that’s the end of that banjo.” It felt like a fitting end. And I went backstage and it was perfectly intact. So it worked for a few more years but it didn’t function much as a banjo anymore. I just felt like, I love that banjo, but the reason that I love that banjo is because of the adventures. If I could turn that banjo into a little piece of adventure, really just a drop in the bucket of the Kickstarter, but it was a nice drop, and I just thought, “Cool! It’s all about the adventures.” So it was sort of nothing, in a way. It was nothing because the thing I’m sentimental about is adventures, and making things exist, so if the banjo had meaning, it was only because it was a part of this process, but this process is what gives it meaning. R: I read online that with the extra money you were planning on buying this extraordinary instrument, and you were leaving it as a surprise. Have you revealed what that instrument is or will we have to wait for the show to find out what it is? JK: We have not revealed what it is. We’re kind of on the multi-year plan now. We have so much stuff in the works, it’s unbelievable, but it’s not gonna happen until 2014. We’re going to do a much bigger version of this event and some of the things, like that thing, for instance, may or may not be in field for this trip, but there’s all kinds of things that are going to be in field for this trip, and so there are surprises galore now, and there’s gonna be surprises galore for the next two years. It’s going to be a very exciting adventure for us. There’s a lot in the works. I might have to go, we’re pitching a tent right now and I’m sort of an important worker. R: That’s totally understandable. Thanks so much for talking to us. We’ll see you on the 29 at the Duke Coffeehouse! JK: That sounds great! I’ll see you guys there. Thanks a lot.
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January 24, 2013
Painters, musician reimagine T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets by Dan Fishman THE CHRONICLE
It has been seventy years since the first publication of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Over time, the poem has been increasingly recognized as the poet’s magnum opus, his most impassioned attempt to find meaning in a world badly traumatized by two world wars. It’s a dark poem, at times ecstatic and intensely spiritual. For many artists, especially Christian artists, the work serves as a dependable source for inspiration and solace. Next week’s exhibition “Engaging Eliot: Four Quartets in Word, Color and Sound,” presented by Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts (DITA), provides an opportunity to experience three artists’ interpretations of Eliot’s masterpiece. Makoto Fujimura and Bruce Herman have fashioned huge paintings in response to the poem, which will be the largest artworks ever mounted in the Duke Chapel. Yale composition professor Christopher Theofanidis has created a thirtyminute musical score for quintet. On Monday evening, in the presence of Fujimura and Herman’s massive paintings and bookended by short readings from Eliot’s poem, Theofanidis’ composition will be performed by the esteemed Ciompi Quartet and longtime pianist/DITA-director Jeremy Begbie. The artists, all of Christian faith, have each had long personal relationships with Four Quartets. Fujimura—whose work combines modern painting styles reminiscent of Rothko and Pollock alongside old world Japanese techniques usually categorized under the genre Nihonga—turned to Eliot’s poem in response to trauma he experienced living two blocks from Ground Zero on September 11. The paintings he made for the exhibition are considered to be markedly different from his earlier works, and he seems to be responding to the darkness of Four Quartets. “It’s a real turning point for Makoto,” said Christina Carnes, a student in the Divinity School who works for DITA. “He uses a lot of black. And he uses minerals as a material in a way that allows for a refraction of light that can be seen in person—a kind of mineral reflection.” Unlike Fujimura’s abstract paintings, Bruce Herman’s use
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human figures and more straightforwardly express themes from Quartets, including the four seasons and the four elements of the ancient world. “His work may be more approachable, with more accessible emotions,” Carnes said. Theofanidis’ composition, like Eliot’s poem, utilizes repetition to disrupt notions of time. His score is titled “At the Still Point,” a phrase that comes from the first section of the four-part poem that discusses, among other things, methods to escape the psychological expectation of linear time. In addition to Monday’s performance, there will also be a colloquium on Tuesday evening at which Duke professors will discuss the lasting impact of Four Quartets. On Tuesday afternoon, both the painters will talk to student artists about their work in the context of a brown-bag lunch. In total, the events are a chance for conversations about the theological ramifications of artistic works to take place beyond the boundaries of the Divinity School. “I hope the Divinity School can be seen as a place where people of different views and perspectives on similar things can come together for enriching and fruitful conversations,” Begbie said. “For many people the arts are a great way into discussing the big questions of life and death. Because they’re allusive and metaphorical, they can give [people] room to explore things without feeling cajoled or battered.” After seventy years, there may be no better way to honor Four Quartets and Eliot than to discuss with a wide community the type of Christianity and the type of art in which Eliot found comfort against the perils of his time. “Engaging Eliot: Four Quartets in Word, Color and Sound” runs from Jan. 28 to Feb. 9 at the Duke Chapel and Divinity School. Visit the Divinity School website to register for Monday’s performance and Tuesday’s colloquium.
nosaj thing HOME INNOVATIVE LEISURE
A producer since he was a freshman in high school, Nosaj Thing has crafted cosmic-sounding instrumentals for the likes of Kid Cudi, Kendrick Lamar and other underground hip hop artists. It’s his solo work, however, that most fully reveals his musical palette. Nosaj Thing—alias of L.A.-based producer Jason Chung—returns after his acclaimed 2009 debut Drift with a glitch-hop album imbued with melancholy and expanded to accommodate a fuller sonic spectrum. Home, Nosaj Thing’s sophomore LP, is a reflection on the impermanence of sound. The title-track launches a world full of chopped-up ghostly vocals, drum snaps and electronic interjections. The opener, like many others on the album, feels like the soundtrack for a wayward astronaut floating through the lonely vacuum of space, a MIDI board hard-wired into his suit. The next track “Eclipse/Blue,” features vocals from Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino. The guest vocals, a new addition to Nosaj Thing’s musical repertoire, add a layer of beauty to his sound. Makino’s sad but vibrant voices couples with the sense of longing established by the lyrics (‘I used to know/ how to please you’) and breathes despondency into the album’s soundscape. The midsection of the LP is the weakest: it’s ephemeral in a way that borders on ineffectual. Songs like “Safe,” “Glue,” and “Tell” are aesthetically pleasing, and they pass by without complaint, but they are ultimately devoid of compelling features. Home’s inconsequential string of songs is countered by a brilliant downtrodden ending sequence. “Try,” “Phase III” and “Lights Off” lend weight to an electronic sound that fades in and out, giving glimpses but never sticking to one audio trick for very long. “Try,” with guest vocals from Toro y Moi, especially hits home and is the strongest song on the album. The track starts off with a pulsating drumbeat matched up with eerie vocal apparitions that eventually transforms into Toro y Moi’s trademark ethereal vocal signature. Vacillating in between “I know I did you wrong/ I know I did you right,” the singing coalesces unexpectedly well with Nosaj Thing’s ambient glitch. Home is propelled by a promising beginning, hindered by a passable midsection and saved by a poignant conclusion. A great glimpse into the continuing evolution of a promising producer, the LP reveals itself as a comfortable place for Chung to explore new vocal territory and lend weight to the vastness of his electronic creations. —Derek Saffe
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Strange Beauty film fest comes to Manbites by Jordyn Gracey THE CHRONICLE
Starting today and running through Sunday, Manbites Dog Theater will host the Strange Beauty Film Festival. The festival will screen an array of diverse short films that vary from the Haiku-inspired Come, See the Real Flowers of this Painful World by Duke MFA student Shanshan Wong to the Sundance Film Festival-selected animation Belly by London-based Julia Potts. Strange Beauty is an event that continually aims to combine and exhibit local talent, experimental visuals, practiced cinematography and creative variation. Jim Haverkamp, an adjunct instructor in the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), and his wife, the filmmaker Joyce Ventimiglia, first conceived of Strange Beauty as a D.I.Y “art project” they could complete with relative ease after the arrival of their first child. The pair were used to collaborating on such creative endeavors and had been looking for a project they could work on from home. A short-film festival became appealing. At the time, Haverkamp observed that “with the rise of Vimeo and Youtube, everyone [was] making movies,” and he saw a unique opportunity to showcase a truncated form that is common among both amateur and professional filmmakers. Haverkamp and Ventimiglia’s efforts have led to the impressive success of a festival that, according to cinematographer and AMI lecturing fellow Josh Gibson, “is becoming a vital stop in the short film festival circuit.” As a professor, Haverkamp has found his understanding of film as a medium change and evolve: “I get really energized by seeing students’ [work]. It helps you to remember what it was like to be new to film, when there was limitless possibility… I have had to unlearn all the rules.” The growth of the arts in Durham and Chapel Hill owes much to local citizens whose “D.I.Y approach” to creative
collaboration—similar to the efforts of Haverkamp and Ventimiglia—has cultivated openness to artistic innovation. It is this attitude of embracing the new that draws filmmakers and artists from around the country. Haverkamp himself remembers how Flicker—a collaborative, communitybased film showcase that began in Chapel Hill in the early nineties—fueled his desire to move to North Carolina. “There were a lot of people [making films] here. I don’t know if there is something in the water,” he said. The artistic identity of the Triangle region has also been shaped by renowned arts festivals such as the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the American Dance Festival. In the future, Haverkamp envisions this trend growing—especially in the context of Duke’s new MFA program. “I only see the film community in the Triangle getting stronger,” he said. “The new MFA program in Experimental Documentary Arts is attracting top-caliber students from around the world to Durham.” Gibson’s work will be featured alongside that of two other faculty members at this weekend’s celebrated Rotterdam Festival in the Netherlands, demonstrating how the reach of Durham’s creative community extends beyond North Carolina. “The Triangle is well-known throughout the Southeast as a great film community, but [it] is also becoming a fixture of the international film scene,” Haverkamp said. It was through the work of two of the artistic directors at Manbites Dog Theater, Jeff Storer and Edward Hunt, that Strange Beauty found its venue. Through a prior collaboration with the pair, Jim Haverkamp became interested in using the theater’s space to stage the festival. According to Storer, a professor of the practice in Duke’s Theater Studies program, the festival fit the theater’s mission by “allow[ing] film to experiment in terms of form and in
terms of content.” From its inception, Manbites Dog has been interested in artists whose work transcends the limitations of the mainstream. As Storer said, “What Manbites Dog tries to do is provide a home for artists and companies that might have more difficulty finding a home…We look for creative artists and projects that can challenge audiences and surprise audiences.” Haverkamp believes that any time you bring people together to experience creativity in a communal setting, they realize that art is something that anybody can make. It is this axiom that drives him to continue to organize artistic collaborations such as Strange Beauty. This attitude will also continue to encourage the arts to take root and to flourish in the Triangle. As Haverkamp says, “Really, what you need is interesting people.” The Strange Beauty Film Festival runs Jan. 24-26 at Manbites Dog Theater. Find a full schedule of events at strangebeauty.org.
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and Arnold reads stiltedly, but it never verges into the land of the truly terrible. Oddly enough, it’s the lone Oscar winner in the cast who brings the whole proceedings to a screeching halt. The film spends about half of its runtime with the FBI and Cortez, and to call it boring would be an understatement. Whitaker’s performance is so phoned-in that he must owe substantial late fees to Verizon Wireless, and Noriega is simply dull. As a result, the first hour or so suffers from serious pacing issues from which it never really recovers. That being said, if you ever see the film on HBO and it’s already an hour in, it would be worth tuning in for the titular “Last Stand” at the border town. Director Ji-Woon Kim is an artist when it comes to violence, able to keep the proceedings unserious and heightened without becoming self-knowingly over-the-top, a la Crank or Shoot ‘Em Up. The film loves gunplay (perhaps too much for some: by an accident of unfortunate political timing, it may be the most brazenly anti-gun control film ever made), and when Arnold and the guy from Jackass are shooting up random bad guys, the film comes alive. Unfortunately, 30 good minutes do not a good feature make. Arnold may, shockingly, have some energy left in the tank, but the former Mr. Universe isn’t strong enough to lift up the film around him. —Harry Liberman
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Recess Interviews: Johanna Kramer author of The Food Lover’s Guide to Raleigh, Durham, & Chapel Hill In honor of Triangle Restaurant Week, in which local restaurants entice diners with prix fixe lunch and dinner menus, Recess interviewed one of the area’s most ardent food promoters, Johanna Kramer. author of 2012’s The Food Lover’s Guide to Raleigh, Durham, & Chapel Hill, Kramer sat down with Recess staff writer Cord Peters at The Federal to discuss the Triangle’s reputation as an emerging food mecca. R: How do you decide which venues to promote? JK: I try to help the lesser-known restaurants more than the ones that are already well known. I want to help the ones with good food striving to attract customers by giving them a little push. I am constantly going to restaurants, but I mostly push food events. R: What has made Durham a “foodie” city? Why is there such a concentration of good places to eat? JK: People are very interested in food and supporting local. Food brings people together. Families come together, friends meet, and the common thing that helped this is food. In Durham we’ve elevated the quality of food and the community has been made to feel part of the process. What’s important to me is that I can shake hands or give a hug to a farmer. R: Durham has been receiving a lot of attention lately. How would you characterize Durham on the national scale? JK: We should be called the “Southern Dining Destination.” There may be other cities with just as good food like Charleston, but Durham is not only delicious, it is affordable. For that matter, the whole Triangle area is. R: Do you see a lot of Duke students coming downtown? JK: I have noticed that. I was at Geer Street Garden earlier this week and it was a mostly Duke crowd. The downtown revitalization is drawing more people to a central locale. R: With so many restaurants, do you think there is a saturation of venues? JK: The beauty of all of them is that they are small. Ev-
ery restaurant can be busy without being overwhelmed. Of course, restaurant openings can bog down others’ business, but once the novelty wears off the new places become part of the great selection of restaurants. R: What is one distinguishing quality about the Durham food scene? JK: Buying local. If you go to the farmer’s market you are most likely bump into owners of various restaurants. R: They’re buying right from the farmer’s market? JK: Absolutely. I saw the owners of Toast just this weekend buying ingredients from the local farmers. They were one of the first to start downtown, and one of the ways they did it was by buying locally. There are even restaurants partnering with local farms. There’s the Eno Hospitality Group that is a partnership between the Piedmont Restaurant in Durham and Zely & Ritz in Raleigh and Coon Rock Farm, this great sustainable farm in Hillsborough. Here you have a farm that’s part of the restaurant group. R: Do you think this contributes to the quality of the food scene? JK: Yes. Being able to buy locally and knowing the farmers created a food community. Farmers and restaurateurs are both part of the process. It’s like the goal of Competition Dining, which I’m covering this week—bringing the chef, the farmer and the diner together. I think this encompasses what Durham’s all about. R: What type of events do you promote? JK: I am promoting various food events throughout the year. Sometimes I judge; sometimes I am the official blogger. One event people should go to this spring is the Bull City Food and Beer Experience, which will feature 20 restaurants and 50 breweries together. When it comes to the Triangle area, it not just about supporting food, it’s also about supporting breweries. R: Is [beer] becoming a big thing in Durham? JK: Yes. Asheville, which has been named “Beer City USA” four years in a row, and Durham are building a local brew scene. There’s three major brewing companies [that are] opening breweries in Asheville – Sierra Nevada, New
Belgium and Burial Beer. This says that beer in Asheville, and for that matter, in all of North Carolina, is for real. I promote local North Carolina beer left, right and center. When I go to a restaurant, I always order a local beer, and if that place doesn’t have it, I’ll go to another place. R: You’ve mentioned food trucks and great restaurants/ bars. What about higher end restaurants? JK: We’re well known for our fine dining as well. You can’t pick up a national food magazine without a local North Carolina food restaurant being mentioned. Chefs are put on a national stage and do well. It draws people here. R: How has the revitalization downtown enhanced the dining experience? JK: One of the things that has elevated the food scene is that it is walkable. You can park your car in one spot and go to many different places throughout the night. This is definitely a national trend in cities the size of Durham. You are finding that there is a push for downtown resurgence across the country. People are trying to save local. What brings it together is food. If there is good food, it is a domino effect, and the downtown thrives.
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