Tuesday, February 11,2003
Partly Cloudy High 49, Low 33 www.chronicle.duke.edu Vol. 98, No. 96
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Wahoos Lose The women’s basketball team defeated Virginia 7548 Monday night in Cameron Indoor Stadium. See page 9
THE INDEPENDENT DAILY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
DSG looks at election procedures By MOLLY NICHOLSON The Chronicle
JEFF BURLIN/THE CHRONICLE
STUDENTS AGAINST THE WAR IN IRAQ set up camp on the Chapel Quad Monday morning to attract attention to their cause and promote discussion among students, staff and faculty. The students modeled their campout on a similar effort at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Students camp out to protest Iraq war By CHARLES LIN The Chronicle
Some tent for tickets, others tent for peace. Monday morning, members of Students Against the War in Iraq pitched tents on the Chapel Quadrangle, forming a place they affectionately call Peaceville to raise campus awareness about the war many fear to be almost imminent. Approximately 20 students gathered around 9 a.m., setting up tables and displays of vocal opposition to the war
“First we got attacked by the rain, in Iraq. Their aim; to alert the student body and bring the issue to the fore- then by the wind, but we’re out here to front of discussion. the end,” said freshman Marina Kukso, “We want to provide a visible state- another organizer ofPeaceville. Response also warmed throughout ment to people that there are folks who are willing to inconvenience their lives the day as more people stopped by to in some ways in response to the way chat or to lend their support. “A lot of that the lives of so many other people people conveyed concern about what’s have been inconvenienced,” said junior to happen, but at the same time, they Dave Allen, one ofthe event organizers, feel powerless,” Kukso said, Despite a rainy start to the day, the See PEACE on page 8 campers remained optimistic,
Duke Student Government executive elections are less than a month away, but legislators may still vote to make major changes to the voting procedures. This Wednesday, the Legislature will vote on an amendment—proposed by Justin Ford, DSG executive vice president—to the election by-laws that would require a candidate to receive a majority vote in the presidential election or face a run-off with the opponent who received the next highest number of votes. That amendment, however, has drawn criticism from students and DSG members alike. Approval would almost guarantee that all presidential elections would end in a run-off, as no presidential candidate in DSG’s history has received the majority of the vote. Ford, a senior, said he proposed the amendment on behalf of the six-member executive committee, which approved the amendment by a majority vote. “Our thoughts were that a president who is elected by the majority would have an unquestionable mandate by the student body,” Ford said. He added that the executive committee’s decision to present the amendment was not specific to current leadership within the organization. “Our decision was based on trying See DSG on page 8
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By ANDREW COLLINS The Chronicle you are a professor, and you come into your office one mornsee a message from a reporter requesting an interview. Sure, .ttered, but you’re just not sure if you have the time to respond, Now think of hundreds and hundreds of those messages—so many that your voice mail fills up and the reporters start calling random department numbers trying to track you down. Not only that, but they call you at home. Think of deranged callers threatening your wife, Think of requests from the likes of Tom Brokaw to fly you to New York or Washington, D.C. Now think of all this happening within a few days, and you may get a sense of the sudden celebrity of Duke Professor of History Alex Roland Roland, one of the country’s pre-eminent space policy experts and a former NASA historian, has been swamped by the press since the disin-
Biology, has Briaid Hogan chair of the Department of Cell hirincluding department, the several ideas for improving 3 new See page ing faculty.
ALEX ROLAND HAS RISEN TO NATIONAL PROMINENCE ONCE AGAIN
tegration of the shuttle Columbia upon re-entry Feb. 1. He finds himself subjected to a “constant” barrage of phone calls from news outlets ranging from CBS to The Herald-Sun of Durham, The teeming masses of media, finding him unreachable, often resort to
alternate avenues. “The secretaries go crazy because they have to field all these phone calls,” said John Thompson, professor and chair of the history department. “Literally, [administrative assistant to the chair Vivian Jackson] could do no work for the department because she spent all her time fielding.phone calls.” Roland currently has 35 pages of names and numbers queued up awaiting his response, many of which he will not be able to answer. “I try to select the ones that seem most important,” he said. “First of See ROUND on page 7
Robert Shiller, a Yale economics professor, spoke Monday on the causes behind stock market bubbles. Seepages
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Postdoctoral fellows received official University recognition for their group, the Duke University Postdoctoral Association. See page 4