2 | FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 2017
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DSG president Tara Bansal Junior Maya Durvasula reflects on year’s progress chosen as Truman Scholar Neelesh Moorthy The Chronicle With senior Tara Bansal’s tenure as president of the Duke Student Government drawing to a close, The Chronicle spoke with Bansal and asked her to reflect on the past year’s DSG projects, low voter turnout and the organization’s demographics. TC: What would you say is the accomplishment you’re most proud this year? TB: I think the creation, piloting and expansion of the living learning community. I think that is a project that really has the potential to change the social culture on this campus. It’s a pretty visionary project, and it’s also a collaboration between students, faculty and administrators, so it’s pretty large scale. It’s also particularly exciting because it’s a totally free and non-exclusive housing option that develops intellectual engagement in a new way. TC: What do you think have been the three
most important projects this year that impact the student body? TB: Apart from the living learning community, the first would be that we worked with Academic Affairs to completely rewrite the course evaluations. This is the first time they’ve been rewritten in nearly a decade, and they’re a lot more useful to students in terms of getting information out of them. The second thing is we’ve worked with admissions and Dean [Steve] Nowicki to ensure that undocumented students are treated as need-blind domestic applicants, rather than international applicants. The third big thing is that we’ve negotiated with student affairs a new group alcohol amnesty policy, where if you’re having a social event and you needed to call [Emergency Medical Services], you would get amnesty for doing so. There’s been a verbal agreement, and we’ve been allowed to publicize it. The official policy change will happen in about a month. TC: If you had one main critique of what happened this year, what would it be? TB: Internal affairs and internal decisions can be misinterpreted by external actors. I think to some extent you can’t do much about that, you just have to focus on the work. We’ve tried really hard this year to better communicate what we’re doing with the student body. If you’ve seen the new website, the new blast, all the infographics that go out on the social media pages—the more we can do that the better. I definitely want to keep encouraging students to pursue communication before judgment. There’s sometimes just going to be judgment of internal decisions that doesn’t always have all the facts.
TC: Could you give an example of when you think a decision was misjudged this year? TB: The decision when DSG approved the Sexual Health Center. There was a lot Chronicle File Photo of pushback because of just one specific Bansal said that DSG has worked to increase part of what that health center was going to its communication with the student body through a new website and email blast.
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Vir Patel The Chronicle Junior Maya Durvasula was named as a Truman Scholar, the University announced Wednesday. Truman scholars are chosen based on their leadership, public service, academic achievement and likelihood of becoming public-service leaders. Durvasula will join a cohort of 62 other students across the country and will receive up to $30,000 for future graduate studies. Additionally, she will receive priority admission to some graduate schools as well as leadership training and specialized internship opportunities within the federal government. “Maya has a real commitment to using her exceptional academic and social skills to make the nation a better place for those who are not as fortunate as she is. She does this not out of guilt, but out of a sense of responsibility,” said Robert Korstad, associate professor of public policy and history, in a Duke Today release. Durvasula, who is also a Robertson scholar, is majoring in economics with a minor in mathematics as well as a certificate in politics, philosophy and economics. After graduation, she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in economics, with an emphasis on the microeconomics of poverty and strategies for its elimination. “I’ll probably spend two years after graduating from college doing research with the University or a group like the World Bank,” Durvasula said. “Then I’d use the scholarship itself to offset the cost of tuition.” Durvasula considers her passion to be poverty alleviation. “It sounds really trivial to say I want to do the things that work,” she said. “But it’s really surprising how much policy that you see designed to address poverty or social challenges is based on some good idea or good intention someone had.” In the upcoming academic year, Durvasula will serve as co-editor-in-chief of Duke Political Review and president of
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Duke Partnership for Service. She is also currently involved in research with the Duke and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Initiative on Poverty and Inequality as well as the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases. “I think some of the more interesting stuff that I’ve done on campus has been related to social policy in North Carolina,” Durvasula said, citing research on housing and social policy related to race that she performed with the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. Before attending Duke, Durvasula—an Albuquerque, New Mexico native—took a gap year, during which she took on a variety of roles. In addition to serving as an analyst in the office of the New Mexico State Senate majority whip, she was also the policy director for Tim Keller’s 2014 bid for New Mexico state auditor and interned with a local think-tank. Durvasula said she wants to work in both academia and policy in the future.
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Courtesy of Duke Photography Durvasula is a Robertson scholar from New Mexico who hopes to earn a Ph.D. in economics.
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