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The costs of enlightenment
Improve FLUNCH As undergraduates, many of us are encouraged to get to know our professors on a more personal level. Unfortunately, this is nearly impossible to do in a large lecture course, and even seminar settings aren’t always up to the task as a result of the nature of the subject material or any other number of factors. The obvious solution is then to spend time with a professor outside of class. Of course, some professors chris bassil are not easily accommodatjust a minute ed on their own time, and those who are can typically be found pressed behind a long line outside of their offices. It often seems that forging personal relationships between student and faculty requires an inordinate amount of work, or at least that it lacks the proper vehicle. Presumably, this is why the FLUNCH program was created years ago. For those unaware, the FLUNCH program, a Duke Student Government, Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Education and Office of the Vice President of Student Affairs joint initiative, allows a student to take a professor of choice out to a meal on campus, free of charge to either party. The goal of the program, as described on the OSAF website, is to provide students with an opportunity to “establish lasting relationships with faculty members they might not have developed in the classroom.” And the program may in fact be the best vehicle by which to finally achieve this end, considering its unique intersection between informality and face-to-face interaction. However, there are some restrictions on a student’s capability to FLUNCH his professors. The first of these is that he is allowed only two FLUNCHes per semester. In light of the fact that most students fail to use even one, this stipulation does not seem so limiting. The second is that his total combined expenditure during his two FLUNCH meetings cannot exceed $100. That comes out to $25 per diner per FLUNCH, which is also more than reasonable. The final restriction on the FLUNCH program is the most aggressively apparent and does more than any other single factor to undermine the program’s appeal and success: during a FLUNCH event, the student and professor may only choose from the Great Hall, the Marketplace and the new Central Campus eatery. Because the Marketplace and Central Campus are relatively out of the way for the majority of faculty and students, the issue of FLUNCH at the Great Hall is the most pressing. It is difficult, in assessing the effect of the establishment on the program, to tell where to begin. Probably the simplest starting point is the fact that the Great Hall is a relatively unpopular campus eatery, at least according to last year’s dining survey. If students are already disinclined to dine there and, if in order to engage in the FLUNCH program they must dine there, then the desirability of the program is necessarily lowered by that association. It is not, however, just the immediate reaction to the Great Hall that negatively impacts the event. The atmosphere of the Great Hall environment also detracts from the FLUNCH experience. Consider the stated goal of OSAF in sponsoring the program: the establishment of studentfaculty relationships outside the classroom. The Great Hall mandate directly undermines that initiative by providing an interaction that is markedly similar to one that might take place in a large classroom, replete with high decibel levels, abrasive crowding and a multitude of distractions. Furthermore, the procedure of dining at the Great Hall lends itself more toward a 15 minute conversation over something togo than the sort of in depth interaction that takes place in even a slightly more intimate setting. Of course, students with a burning aversion to the Great Hall and an equally enflamed desire to break bread with a particular professor can find ways around this. Many opt to take their extracurricular interaction off-campus and overcome the inconvenience that way. Others might still travel to East or Central. In the end, a large number likely suck it up and FLUNCH at the Great Hall anyway, since it is only a small price to pay for the benefits both parties receive from the program. Still, though, it is best to avoid these reductive measures when dealing with a program with so much potential for personal enrichment. It may be easy to dismiss undesirable aspects of the FLUNCH program as nothing more than a minor inconvenience to a select few. Yet, to do so would be to overlook the contradiction that governs and perpetuates the eatery restrictions: that they exist because there are too few FLUNCHers to oppose them, and that there are too few FLUNCHers because they exist. Chris Bassil is a Trinity junior. His column runs every Friday.
friday, september 17, 2010 | 15
On Saturday, Aug. 28 at 9:30 in the morning, 15-year-old the cracks of those vacated teaching positions. 20 percent high school student Waheeda Amiri noticed a strange smell of the U.S. population is functionally illiterate. 24 percent in the air of her Kabul classroom. Shortly thereafter she and of Americans believe that their own president, a churchher classmates fell ill with headaches and sore going Christian, is a Muslim, and an even throats, and many of them lost consciousness higher percentage seem to think that such and turned blue. Ultimately 45 students and a fact, if true, would be somehow relevant four teachers ended up in the local hospital. to our national security. Fully a quarter of Three days before, the hospital had treated our population is convinced that President 74 students from a nearby school with idenObama is not a United States citizen. Not tical symptoms. Officials initially chalked the coincidentally, many of these people, citing episodes up to “mass hysteria,” but chemical one of the few provisions of the Constituanalyses of blood samples taken in similar casthat they seem to know, possess firecarol apollonio tion es indicated the effects of organophosphates. arms. For the most part, that’s not us. I had what would You chemistry majors know what that is: a a student a few years ago who was kicked off family of compounds used in insecticides and campus for shooting a BB gun out of his doestoevsky do? herbicides, as well as in chemical weapons. dorm window on East Campus. And there’s The rest of us can just call it poison gas. the occasional incident where people fly off The victims of the attacks share a common trait: they lack the handle. We had one of those this past January. But the Y chromosome. Getting an education in parts of present- generally Dukies are sentient, literate, non-violent and culday Afghanistan is a hazardous enterprise if you happen to turally sensitive people who believe that differences can be be female. Toxic gas, incendiary devices, skin-eating acid— resolved through conversation. gruesome concoctions that most of us in North Carolina Outside, though, even right down the street, that is not know only from horror films—lurk in back alleys around necessarily the case. And ignorance leads to violence; those girls’ schools across Afghanistan. Sixty schools have been who stand up for education and the pursuit of truth are burned down or destroyed this year alone—a frightening easy targets, whether they are innocent, trustful schoolchilstatistic that does not include the number of individual girls dren or tough, seasoned educators and professionals. As who have been intimidated, attacked or even murdered. always, Russia provides an instructive example—and not But the students pick themselves up, dust themselves off and just because they did their time in Afghanistan. Most of the head back to class. Waheeda, for example, said, “Whatever Russian writers you’ve heard of suffered for telling the truth they do to us, we are going to keep coming.” as they saw it. The list includes Dostoevsky (prison), Tolstoy Does anyone around here possess that kind of courage? (excommunication), Solzhenitsyn (exile) and countless I’m not sure I do. Politics in the academic world can be un- Soviet-period writers—Mandelstam, Babel, Pilnyak among pleasant, but fortunately no one has ever given me an ultima- them—who were executed outright or died in cold Sibetum: stop teaching Russian literature or be shot. Characters in rian prisons, just for writing down their thoughts. Readers, the books I read—fiction and non-fiction—do face this sort too, paid the price; they could be thrown in jail for simply of choice. Their stories—and Waheeda’s—shadow our lives. being caught with the wrong sort of book—and yet they What if we knew that invisible enemies were hovering, canis- accepted the risk. These days Russian fiction writers can ters in hand, in the dark alcoves behind Griffith Theater or write pretty much anything they want to, and obstacles to in the labs in Bio Sci? Do you feel perfectly safe near those reading are primarily economic. But even now the press is windowless cubicles in the Languages Building basement? under fire: since 1993 some 300 journalists working in RusFrom where we stand, these questions feel like a class sia have lost their lives in the line of duty. exercise—hypothetical, abstract. A bit of probing, though, Honest intellectual activity has always threatened smalland things start to hit a little closer to home. Obstacles to minded people, and not just in places that lack superhigheducation here are generally bloodless (or at least they ways. What class are you taking right now that you would have been in the years since the civil rights movement), die for? Or is it one you have not taken yet? but they exist nonetheless. The economic crisis has led to teacher layoffs everywhere, including in the Durham Public Carol Apollonio is an associate professor of the practice in SlavSchools. Ignorance waits at the gate, ready to slip through ic and Eurasian studies. Her column will run every other Friday.
Duke-Alabama football: the real story
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et’s put this game in proper context. In all the considerEnter Duke. Looking to compete athletically as well as acaable, though somewhat ancient, lore of Duke football demically among growing universities in the south, Duke’s thenhistory, there has never been a bigger game in Wallace Dean W. H. Wannamaker contacted Coach Wade for advice. At Wade Stadium. Yes, Roger Staubach and his the time, only Notre Dame’s Knute Rockne was john bussian Midshipmen played here in Staubach’s ’63 better known among the nation’s college footHiesman Trophy year. And a Tony Dorsettball coaches. In short order, Duke made Wade guest column led Pittsburgh team played here in ’76. But what was considered an astronomical offer to Alabama’s visit is of historic proportions for lots of reasons become Duke’s head football coach: $12,500 per year plus a beyond the Tide’s current No. 1 national ranking. share of the gate. Wade stunned Alabama and took the job. Football programs of Alabama’s stature have generally shied The rest is history. Wade picked up where he left off at from visiting Duke’s comparatively small stadium. In the run-up Alabama, building Duke into a national football power. While to Saturday’s tilt in Durham, there was talk of moving the game to Alabama was undefeated and won the Rose Bowl in ’34, Duke, Birmingham, Atlanta and even Charlotte. So the Crimson Tide’s led by Wade, quietly went 9-1 in ’33, 9-1 in ’36 and played for playing here is a story in itself. Yet the real story is that 80 years the national championship in the 1939 and 1942 Rose Bowls ago, Duke shocked the college sports world by hiring legendary (the latter, played at Duke). Coach Wade retired in 1950 to football coach Wallace Wade away from then-national champion become the Commissioner of the ACC’s forerunner, the Alabama and changed the course of athletic history at Duke. Southern Conference. And in ’67, Duke named the stadium Before coming to Duke, Wallace Wade, a Tennessee boy in which Saturday’s game will be played after Wade. who played at and graduated from Brown, was athletic direcDuke really owes a debt of gratitude to its visitors from tor at Vanderbilt and eventually the head football coach at the Alabama. First, for giving Wallace Wade to Duke. And for givUniversity of Alabama from 1923-1930. In miraculous fashion, ing Duke its current head coach, David Cutcliffe. (Coach Cut Wade brought the Alabama football program from obscurity graduated from Bama in ’76 and served there as an assistant to national prominence and secured its first-ever invitation to under Bear Bryant.) Fittingly, the University of Alabama in play in the nation’s only bowl game at the time, the Rose Bowl. 1998 named the street running alongside Bryant-Denny StaIn its first 20 years, the Rose Bowl had never invited a south- dium in Tuscaloosa “Wade Avenue.” ern college football team to play on New Year’s Day in PasaSo this is much more than another big, college football dena, reportedly of the view that the brand of football played game. It commemorates college football history in the south in the South was “inferior.” When the invitation finally came like no other. And the game—along with the planned, $125 to Coach Wade and his Alabama team following the 1925 million Wallace Wade Stadium renovation led by Duke Trustseason, the Tide responded by winning back-to-back Rose ees Board Chair Dan Blue—marks Duke’s renewed commitBowls—and the accompanying national championships—in ment to compete again in its conference and nationally, in 1925 and 1926. Wade’s legend at Alabama continued when the classroom and on the gridiron. Coach Wade might say his 1930 team went undefeated in the regular season and it’s high time. capped it with a 24-0 win over Washington State in the 1931 Rose Bowl. Three national titles in five years at a school that John Bussian, T ’76, is a former walk-on football player and wasn’t on the college football radar screen when Coach Wade a Raleigh-based First Amendment lawyer. He also provides legal arrived at ’Bama eight years before. services for The Chronicle.