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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2004
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THE INDEPENDENT DAILY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
ONE HUNDREDTH YEAR, ISSUE 23
Students rarely use sick policy
Party reps speak on key issues by
Seyward Darby THE CHRONICLE
by
The sounds ofheated political discourse echoed off the walls of the Great Hall Monday night as students, armed with questions about key issues surrounding the 2004 presidential election, gathered for a discussion with representatives from the state Republican and Democratic parties. The event, called “Presidential Question and Answer Time,” was the first in a series of activities organized as a part of the “One Sweet Vote” initiative —a campus-wide campaign sponsored by the Residence Life and Housing Services that aims to promote student interest in the November election. Melissa Bixler, a GA in Craven Quad and one of the panel’s organizers, said the goal of Monday night’s event was to reach out to both students and politicians in an attempt to encourage dialogue between the two groups. “College students are notoriously left out of the loop when it comes to being addressed by the candidates,” Bixler said.
people. Each panelist began with a brief description of his respective party, but the students quickly turned the dialogue from the abstract to the concrete, making Iraq the linchpin of the evening’s discussion. Sophomores David Cardenas and Adam Mintz both questioned Sen. John Kerry, DMass., and President George W. Bush’s planned courses of action in the Middle
Stuck in bed with a looming midterm? There’s no need to trek to Student Health for an excuse —you can use the official method for notifying professors that you’re sick without even leaving your room. An online form, accessible from the TReqs website about Trinity College policies and the Pratt School of Engineering’s online listing of rules and procedures, officially replaced Dean’s Excuses for shortterm illnesses October 2003. Nearly a year later, undergraduates and professors remain largely unfamiliar with the new Short-Term Illness Notification Policy. “I haven’t had anybody use it yet,” said Professor Richard A. Palmer, who teaches General Chemistry, one df Duke’s largest lecture classes. He noted that the situation might change during midterm week. Missing a midterm or the deadline for a homework assignment because of sickness is exactly the type of reason students would use the Short-Term Illness Notification Policy. After logging in with their NetlDs and passwords, students can fill in the blanks and send standardized e-mails to their professors, promising to make up graded work in accordance with class policy and affirming their adherence to the
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Panelists Bill Cobey (left) and Jerry Meek discuss hot political issues at the Great Hall Monday night. ‘This is an opportunity for the Republicans and the Democrats to first of all, show up and say, ‘We are interested in what you have to say,’ and secondly, ‘Your input is important to us in making decisions.’” The two guest panelists—Jerry Meek, Trinity ’92 and current vice chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, and Bill Cobey, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a' recent candidate for the North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nomina-
Meg Bourdillon THE CHRONICLE
tion—sat facing the audience of about 80
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Snail mail slow to satisfy students BY GABRIEL CHEN
Senior Dan Avissar waits at the Bryan Center Post
Office to send packages in the mail.
First-year Divinity School student Luke Lin is frustrated. His birthday package, sent by priority mail about three weeks ago by his parents in Maryland, did not arrive on time. It was supposed to take three to four days to reach him, but it took two and a half weeks. Tve never experienced this I sort of feeling of unreliability before,” Lin said. “As an undergraduate at Emory [University], I never had to worry about whether my / packages would make it to me in a timely manner. Moreover, I would not have to go through any waiting period for packages to be sorted out or have them potentially lost.” Lin’s experience with Duke Postal Operations is not unusual. Many students said they have had packages and pieces of mail arrive
THE CHRONICLE
several days or even weeks late. When The Chronicle told Michael Trogdon, Postal Operations general manager, about the numerous complaints students had about the delay of their mail, he said the office examined the packages on the student shelves to compare when they were mailed with when they were entered into the system. The majority of packages sitting on the shelves, he said, were sent two to three days before Duke processed them. A few had a lapse of four days, and a few packages were sent more than a week before. He stress' the delayed mail, however, ha dresses—the wrong box numb' number or the wrong zip code “When you are dealing wi dreds of incoming package: day, I don’t think this is out * ordinary,” Trogdon said, refei to the errors in addresses. “Bu long as the mail and packat are all correctly addresse there should not be any bac log of mail—packages, parcel
letters, magazines, etc.” Students, however, still said they thought the post office was inefficient, “When I lived on campus it used to take me seven ,to 10 days to receive a first-class letter mailed from Cincinnati, Ohio,” said third-year medical student David Evans, Trinity 02. “Now that I live off-campus, I receive the same letter in three to four days.” Senior Anthony Lau said mail delivered from the Raleigh-Durham area to his home POST OFFICE ON PAGE 6
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