The ChronicleT 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
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH YEAR, ISSUE 50WWW.DUKECHRONICLE.COM
DSGRU Investigates Student LifeThe independent research arm of DSG will study infrastructural inequality, the food plan and other topics this year | Online Only
‘We’re not here to be followers’Faculty and students raise concerns over the Univer-sity’s investments in fossil fuels at panel discussion | Page 2
INSIDE — News 2 | Sports 7 | Classifi ed 9 | Puzzles 9 | Opinion 10 | Serving the University since 1905 | @dukechronicle | © 2014 The Chronicle | | | | | ||
Follow Coach K on his historic quest for
1,000 winsat dukechronicle.com
A spartacular performance
Darbi Griffi th | Th e ChronicleFreshman center Jahlil Okafor scored 17 points in the Blue Devils’ 81-71 victory of the Spar-tans, despite foul trouble and playing against a steady defense.
81 NO. 4 DUKE 71NO. 19
MICH. STATE
For semi-pro basketball team, ‘sky is the limit’
Duke students who formed the Triangle Run N’ Gun hope to win
a championship this season
Patton named Middlebury
presidentDean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences will assume
position July 1, 2015
Ryan NeuTh e Chronicle
Sydney SarachekTh e Chronicle
If someone watched them practice, they might be mistaken for a Division I basketball team. Intricate passes are distributed through-out the court, a coach is explaining defensive sets and someone is throwing down a noncha-lant dunk every thirty seconds.
Then you remember that you are standing in Wilson Recreation Center, and the tallest of these players is only about 6-foot-6.
Duke students are often lauded for being entrepreneurial and innovative. But these Duke undergraduate and graduate students, along with one student from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, have done something unique—they formed their own semi-professional basketball team.
“At the beginning of the year, I realized that while I like playing [intramurals] and
Laurie Patton, dean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, is leaving her position at Duke to become president of Middlebury College.
Middlebury made the announcement Tuesday afternoon, following a unanimous decision by their Board of Trustees. Patton will assume her new role July 1, 2015—four years after she came to Duke from Emory University.
“We’re really going to miss Laurie,” said Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education. “The opportu-nity available at Middlebury is an outstanding opportunity, and I think she is a very good choice for the presidency of that institution in particular.”
Nowicki, who worked closely with Patton,
See Basketball on Page 5 See Patton on Page 5
Although unfi nished, DKU off ers positive fi rst semester“Right now, it’s just not done,”
says Duke junior studying abroad at DKU
Danielle MuoioTowerview Editor
KUNSHAN, China—Students studying at Duke Kunshan University in its inaugural semester have largely reported a positive class-room and residential experience, though the incomplete nature of the campus has limited students in some ways.
At the start of the semester, students lived in a Swiss-managed hotel five minutes from the Kunshan South Railway Station that shut-tles Kunshan residents back and forth from Shanghai in 20 minutes. It was not until Oct. 24 that students moved into the conference center, where they also attend classes. The aca-demic center and student dormitories will be complete in two to three weeks. Faculty also currently live in the conference center, as the faculty residence hall is unfinished. Their hall is also slated to be finished on the same time frame.
The third floor of the conference center has been reserved for male students and the
fourth for female. The rooms in the confer-ence center will later be for guests who come to visit DKU and need a place to stay.
Liu Yi, a student from Wuhan University who is part of the undergraduate global se-mester, said she has a private room in the con-ference center with a king sized bed. She also had a television in her room before it broke and was taken away.
Jordan Elkins, a Duke junior studying abroad at DKU, said it is possible to sometimes go days without leaving the conference center because students eat, take classes and sleep all in the same building.
“It’s going to be an experience I look back
in five to 10 years and I’ll cherish it more then than I do now, but it’s not a fully developed thriving school yet,” he said. “A lot of the Chi-nese students will tell you here that it’s the greatest experience, but I’m spoiled from go-ing to Duke.”
Kennedy Opondo, a student from Kenya pursuing a master’s degree in global health, also commended DKU’s state-of-the-art facili-ties.
“It’s a new establishment…there have been challenges so we handled that well,” he said. “The program itself is quite good…I find
See Kunshan on Page 3
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Faculty, students talk merits of fossil fuel divestmentZaynah Alam
The Chronicle
Chronicle File PhotoDivest Duke held a rally in front of the Allen Building to call on the University to divest from fossil fuels last year.
As Duke continues in its efforts towards sustainability, some members of the com-munity are raising questions surrounding University investments in fossil fuels.
A panel of professors and graduate stu-dents—sponsored by Divest Duke and the Environmental Alliance—discussed wheth-er or not divestment was the most effective way to combat the social and environmen-tal challenges of climate change. Some strongly advocated for Duke to divest, but other panelists suggested a better use of the University’s resources to progress the dis-cussion on fossil fuels.
“This is, to me, fundamentally about who we are and what we represent,” said Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke professor of con-servation of ecology, in favor of Duke’s ef-forts to divest from fossil fuels. “We’re not here to be followers, to go with the flow, to go with what is comfortable—it’s a matter of what we lead.”
Support for complete divestment was not unanimous. Tim Profeta, founding di-rector of the Nicholas Institute for Environ-mental Policy Solutions, felt the University
could be focusing its efforts on more effec-tive campaigns than absolute divestment, especially since fossil fuels are still widely used in society.
“Fossil fuels have been the key to the quality of life that we all enjoy,” Profeta said. “The market has not seen the prob-lem with pollution—we need to make the market see it in some way.”
William Pizer, a joint professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy and faculty fellow in the Nicholas School, also noted that a more subtle approach than divest-ment may also be worth considering in light of the politically charged climate sur-rounding the use of fossil fuels.
The discussion referenced several di-vestment campaigns that succeeded in the past, ranging from international divest-ments during the South African Apartheid to Duke’s successful student-based coali-tion to stop making campus apparel in sweatshops in the 1990s. Panelists agreed that divestment would provide a rallying point for other organizations in the push towards independence from fossil fuels de-spite the costs.
The panel also offered potential solu-tions to the problem of fossil fuel con-sumption beyond divestment. These in-
cluded the development of carbon capture and storage devices and widespread policy changes to incentivize cleaner energy and mobilize more apathetic supporters.
A veteran of climate change lobbies in Washington, Profeta advocated for an ap-proach that would mobilize the majority of the population in support of reducing fossil fuel dependence instead of a “51
percent solution.”Freshman Houston Warren, Divest
Duke press coordinator, commended the panel’s multifaceted and sometimes con-tentious discussion about divestment.
“It’s hard to find people who are against divestment, but the organizers did a good job of getting a diverse opin-ion,” he said.
The Chronicle www.dukechronicle.com WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | 3
the experience at DKU, for now, it is OK.”It is unclear whether the student dormi-
tories will offer similarly nice amenities when complete, as the building is unavailable for touring. The rooms will be suite style, with four students to one suites, said Bonnie Liu, associate director of career management ser-vice for the master of management studies at DKU.
Elkins noted that there is not much to do on campus and that Kunshan is not very in-teresting, though he likes living in one of the fastest growing cities in China.
Cao Weixing, vice gov-ernor of the Jiangsu pro-vincial government, said Jiangsu—the province that includes Kunshan—is one of the most developed provinces in China, with one of the highest mea-sures of gross domestic product per capita. Kun-shan itself is heralded for its rapid economic devel-opment. It is the first county-level city with a gross domestic product of more than 200 bil-lion yuan.
Students do take trips into Kunshan, which can be done through a Duke-sponsored shut-tle that runs frequently, though Shanghai seems to be the more popular destination. Opondo said many students go every week, with some going to Shanghai twice a week.
Elkins said he has not spent a weekend on campus because there is not much to do.
“I think it depends on who you are how you feel about Kunshan,” he said. “For me, it’s not the most interesting city.”
The DKU website notes that the high-
speed train reaches Shanghai, as well as the nearby Suzhou, in just 20 minutes. The cam-pus’ location, however, requires a 30 minute drive to reach the station. Students can take a bus from a stop on campus that runs every hour. Elkins added that after combining all of these factors, a trip into Shanghai is a far more time consuming experience than it is presented to be.
Pranav Sridhar, a global semester under-graduate student, said he has enjoyed his ex-cursions into Kunshan.
“It’s an awesome experience to see Kun-shan,” he said. “We all connect with the city and have visited a lot of places.”
Students also noted that visiting Kunshan has helped their Chinese because one must must have a basic grasp of the language to
navigate Kunshan, unlike in Shanghai.
“I was a bit apprehen-sive to what it was going to be like but by the end, it was okay,” said Sambhav-na Bisivas Shinav, a global semester undergraduate student, about navigating the city.
Earlier this year, Elkins wrote a Chronicle guest
column criticizing certain aspects of DKU, in-cluding a lack of healthcare facilities on cam-pus. Sridhar also noted that this was a prob-lem on campus at first.
“When we came, there were issues with a medical facility. It was not perfect just yet,” he said.
Since that time, DKU administrators have taken steps to address the concerns raised by Elkins. As Mary Brown Bullock, executive vice chancellor of DKU, noted in her reply to the column, a shuttle service is now avail-able to take students to health professionals if needed.
Several students heralded their learning
experience at DKU, noting that the classes and faculty experience has been positive.
Cathy Fu, a global semester undergradu-ate student, said that because the Duke courses are condensed to a shorter time frame than a regular semester, it created a high volume of reading that was challenging at first as a non-native English speaker. Fu added that with time, the courses have got-ten easier and she feels if she were to take an exam from earlier in the year she could do much better with the English speaking skills she acquired.
Studying at DKU, there is less of a focus on grades and more on absorbing the actual material, Elkins said. He also added his Chi-nese has improved since he came to DKU.
The students have begun on-campus ac-tivities, most notably the varsity club, where students do a variety of physical activity from hiking to playing soccer. There is also a pho-tography club and a reading club run by Don Snow, director of language and writing
programs at DKU, which consists of primar-ily Chinese students, said Florence Tesha, a global semester undergraduate student.
Jia Zheng, administrative assistant for stu-dent life at DKU, said student life often spon-sors KTV karaoke nights on campus. KTV is very popular in China, and students will often go out into town and book a room to do KTV.
Students have also participated in local traditions on campus. For the Mid-Autumn Festival, which celebrates the full moon in early September, students made paper boats and put candles in them to float in the water, Zheng said, adding that the idea came from a Vietnamese Duke student who shared this aspect of his culture.
On Halloween, which is not celebrated in China, students carved pumpkins and some even dressed up as pandas, Zheng added.
“I think DKU is going to be the best thing to ever happen to education in China in 10 years,” Elkins said. “Right now, it’s just not done.”
KUNSHANcontinued from page 1
It’s going to be an experi-ence I look back in five
to 10 years and I’ll cherish it more then than I do now, but it’s not a fully developed, thriving school yet.
— Jordan Elkins
Danielle Muoio | The ChronicleStudents attending Duke Kunshan University, pictured above, have reported positive classroom and residential experiences but say that more could be done to improve the student experience.
4 | WEDNESDAY, NOVERMBER 19, 2014 www.dukechronicle.com The Chronicle
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DUKE UNIVERSITY
Center for International Studies
An acclaimed photo series by Evgenia Arbugaeva on view at CDS – images from Tiksi, a remote port town on Siberia’s Arctic coast. Returning to the town years after her family fled the post-Soviet economic collapse, Arbugaeva captures its coastal tundra, the aurora borealis, windy snowstorms, and endless days and nights with a sense of child-hood wonder. The photographer will be in residence at Duke this fall through a joint program of the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund and Duke’s Center for International Studies. Additional support provided by the Center for Documentary Studies, Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation and the U.S. Dept. of Education.
TIKSI
Find out what your fellow students did over the summer in Brazil, conducting research projects & participating in the Duke in Brazil study-abroad program.
Refreshment will be provided.
.GLOBAL BRAZIL
(HIST 328) TuTh 11:45-1:00 PM
Inst: John French
Duke Global Brazil Lab Welcome Back Event
Friday Aug. 29, 2014 | 3:00-5:00 pmFHI Garage
(Smith Warehouse, Bay 4, C105)
CAPOEIRA Practice & Culture
(DANCE 235S) MWF 3:05-4:35 PM
Inst: Katya Wesolowski
Come learn about our courses, research teams, Portuguese language instruction, speaker series, and other activities planned for the 2014-15 academic year.
GLOBAL BRAZIL LAB CORE COURSES * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
sites.fhi.duke.edu/globalbrazilGEN. DOUGLAS M. FRASER (ret.) former commander in chief
US SOUTHERN COMMAND
Continuing Security Challenges in Central America, South America & the Caribbean:
DRUGS, IMMIGRATION, DISASTER RELIEF AND MORE
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pickup, I wanted something more,” senior and team founder David Muoser said. “I missed re-ally competitive basketball…so I literally went on Google and started searching for local leagues.”
Muoser, like many of his teammates, played basketball in high school and turned down the chance to play in college in order to come to Duke. After being away from compe-tition for so long, Muos-er was looking for a way back in.
After his Google search, Muoser stumbled upon the Tobacco Road Basketball League and decided to form his own team, the Triangle Run N’ Gun. The TRBL has been alive for four years, with teams throughout North and South Carolina and plans to expand to Atlanta and Auburn, Ala. This is the Run N’ Gun’s first season in the league. Most of the players in the league have collegiate experi-ence, and some—like the Run N’ Gun’s own Milan Prodanovic—have played profession-ally overseas.
Prodanovic, a second-year law student, is a former Iona College standout and finished second all-time for the Gaels in three-point shots made. After graduating, he ventured to Europe where he played professionally for two different clubs in the Serbian National League before returning to the states and coming to Duke.
“The experience is quite rewarding,” Pro-danovic said. “It is rare to see a group of kids from one of the top academic institutions in
BASKETBALLcontinued from page 1
added that Patton called him Sunday night as a courtesy to let him know about her decision.
Patton publicly announced her departure on Tuesday in a message to her colleagues that was included in a Duke News release.
“It will be, in a word, very painful indeed to separate from an institution I have come to love as much as I have come to love Duke,” Patton wrote. “We are greatly fortunate in that Provost [Sally] Kornbluth and President [Richard] Brodhead are deeply committed to continuing the many [arts and sciences] initiatives that we have established, and will be working with me closely until July to make sure those initiatives continue to thrive.”
A Middlebury press release revealed that Patton was selected after an extensive, six-month search from an initial pool of more
the world play basketball with the passion and dedication that my teammates have demon-strated.”
Muoser knew that the team would need leadership in order to become a legitimate contender in a semi-professional league. For-tunately, seniors and Duke basketball manag-ers Mike Sotsky and Derek Rhodes answered the call.
Sotsky, a New Jersey native, began coach-ing in eighth grade and has not looked back. After graduating high school, Sotsky took his talents to Duke where he, along with Rhodes,
became a manager for Duke’s varsity squad—a position that has enabled them to learn from pro-fessional coaches while following Coach Mike Krzyzewski through the national team circuit.
“It has been an incred-ible group to work with because each of the play-ers is committed, hard-working, loyal and team-oriented,” Sotsky said. “At
our first practice, I told the team, ‘I’m going to end up learning a lot more from you than you’ll learn from me.’ This has absolutely been true.”
The Run N’ Gun will start the season with back-to-back games, the first of which is Dec. 6 against Team Certified from Winston-Salem, N.C. The second game will be Dec. 7 against the Wilmington Sea Dawgs, who re-cently signed a player from the AND1 Street-ball Tour and another who played last season for the Memphis Tigers.
Prodanovic said the goal is simple and straightforward—to win the championship of the top semi-pro league in the Carolinas.
“We are athletic, skilled and well coached,” Prodanovic said. “I truly think the sky is the limit with this group.”
It is rare to see a group of kids from one of the
top academic institutions in the world play basketball with the passion and dedi-cation that my teammates have demonstrated.
— Milan Prodanovic
PATTONcontinued from page 1
than 250 candidates.A national search will
be held to find Patton’s replacement as dean of Trinity College, according to the Duke News release. Sociology professor Ange-la O’Rand, former dean of social sciences, will chair the search committee.
“It is a pretty big job. Duke, being what it is, will probably attract a lot of interesting and able people, and the committee will be charged with taking all these applications se-riously, narrowing them down, and probably spending the early part of this spring pretty intensively interviewing them,” O’Rand said.
Trinity is the largest of Duke’s schools aside from the Duke School of Medicine, she noted. The next dean must be prepared to consider all of the interdisciplinary initiatives moving forward.
“We’re sorry to see her go,” Nowicki said. “But Duke’s loss is Middlebury’s gain.”
Laurie Patton
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sports
THE BLUE ZONE
QUINN COOK EARNS GAME BALLsports.chronicleblogs.com
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 www.dukechroniclesports.com
SportsThe Chronicle
NDIANAPOLIS—Youth and athleticism met experience and poise Tuesday night.
Youth prevailed.No. 4 Duke knocked off No. 19 Michigan
State 81-71 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis in the first game of the fourth annual Champions Classic Tuesday night.
Although the Blue Devils cooled off slightly after shooting better than 60 percent in their first two contests against a disciplined Spartan defense, the trio of Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow and senior Quinn Cook made enough plays in the first half to give Duke a seven-point halftime lead.
Freshman point guard Tyus Jones then closed the game out for the Blue Devils, scoring all 17 of his points in the second half to help Duke pull away.
“We were efficient,” Krzyzewski said. “I thought we were strong with the ball, [with] only eight turnovers. I thought in the first half we didn’t run our sets as well as we could, although we got off to a good start with [Okafor]. I thought we handled [the big stage] well.”
The trio of Okafor, Winslow and Cook combined for 51 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists, but it wasn’t until some timely plays from Jones that Duke was able to pull away.
The Apple Valley, Minn., native was held scoreless in the opening half, but took over when Okafor went to the bench with four fouls with more than eight minutes remaining. Jones scored six quick points See M. Basketball on Page 9
Darbi Griffith | The ChronicleFreshman forward Justise Winslow scored 15 points and pulled down six rebounds in Duke’s 81-71 victory against Michigan State Tuesday.
Men’s Basketball
Tar Heels look to notch sixth win, end losing streak
Amrith RamkumarBeat Writer
Not all wins are created equally. At least not if you are located on 15-501.
North Carolina enters Thursday’s primetime matchup looking to claim its fourth win in five games and become bowl eligible in the process. But more importantly for the Tar Heels, they will have also have a chance to break a two-year losing streak to the Blue Devils.
“I’ve heard a lot about [the losing streak],” North Carolina head coach Larry Fedora said. “We know it’s a big game. I don’t really say much about it, but the kids know what’s at stake. They know what we have to do. I think they’re excited and I think they’ll be full of energy on Thursday.”
After winning its first two games of the season, North Carolina—similar to
Kevin Shamieh | Chronicle File PhotoNorth Carolina quarterback Marquise Williams leads the Tar Heels on the ground with 623 yards and 10 scores to go along with his 18 passing touchdowns this season.
Football
Nick MartinSports Editor
See North Carolina on Page 8
its 2013 season—lost its next four games and was seemingly on its way to another disappointing season despite its stellar recruiting class. But the Tar Heels have once again managed to salvage their season, as they have won three of their last four and are now one win away from bowl eligibility.
But that was not before going through the aforementioned rough patch. North Carolina’s losses—outside of its 50-43 defeat at the hands of Notre Dame—have all been blowouts. The Tar Heels’ five losses have come with an average 19-point score differential.
On the other hand, North Carolina has maintained a slim winning margin in its five victories, claiming those games by an average margin of 8.4—although that number is boosted from 3.8 thanks to the Tar Heels’ opening-day 27-point
after Okafor exited, including a four-point play that gave the Blue Devils a 64-51 lead with 7:58 left in the game, to ensure that Duke did not surrender the lead it had from the opening tip.
After Jones’ heroics, the Blue Devils were able to use its 26-10 edge in free throw attempts to maintain the advantage down the stretch. Winslow led Duke in free throw attempts, using his powerful 6-foot-6, 225-pound frame to get to the line nine times.
The Houston native knocked down six of the nine attempts, imposing his will to make an impact with 15 points and six rebounds
despite going just 4-of-11 from the field.“I missed too many [free throws] tonight
and let my team down a little bit,” Winslow said. “[But I tried to] just keep getting to the line. I want to be around that nine, 10 free throw range and just keep attacking the basket and get that.”
Despite getting strong play from four of its best players, Duke’s first win against a ranked opponent did not come easily.
Every time the Blue Devils threatened to pull away and built a sizable double-digit lead in the first 30 minutes of the game, Michigan State would respond with timely plays on both
ends of the court.The veteran trio of Branden Dawson,
Denzel Valentine and Travis Trice countered Duke’s best trio, combining for 46 points, 19 rebounds and 11 assists to give the Blue Devils all they wanted.
The noticeable missing aspect for Duke (3-0) in its third game was bench production, as Blue Devil reserves combined for just seven points on 2-of-7 shooting and failed to continue the momentum when the stars went to the bench.
But in the early going, Okafor carried
BLUE DEVILS BLOW PAST SPARTANS
8 | WEDNESDAY, NOVERMBER 19, 2014 www.dukechronicle.com The Chronicle
sports
8 | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 www.dukechroniclesports.com The Chronicle The Chronicle www.dukechroniclesports.com WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | 9
ACROSS 1 Attempt 5 Places
longshoremen work
10 Pickle flavoring14 Mozart’s “___
Fan Tutte”15 Internet giant
that purchased Flickr in 2005
16 “The Time Machine” vegetarians
17 Drifter of literature
19 Flow stopper20 Sorrowful 1954
Patti Page hit21 Pragmatic person23 Swiss/Austrian
border river24 Degree for many
a 58-Down26 One-third of a
triptych27 Cube creator28 Potent potable in
“Arsenic and Old Lace”
30 Parrot
31 It can take your breath away
32 Big ___ (hallux)
33 Nicole Kidman, hairwise
38 Brynner of “The King and I”
39 ___ Savage, player of the boy on “Boy Meets World”
40 Dr. J’s league, once, for short
43 1985 Prince hit
47 Screenwriter Sorkin
49 Pop singer Mann
50 Story assigners, in brief
51 “You had me at ___” (“Jerry Maguire” line)
52 Like preserved flowers and writers under deadline
54 Surrendered to gravity
55 Man or Mull
56 One of the original Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, whose name is a hint to the answers to the four italicized clues
59 Shoulder muscle, to a gym rat
60 Cornball
61 Forever and a day
62 Comes out with
63 Spanish “others”
64 Where Citigroup is C, for short
DOWN
1 Astronaut Wally, the first person to go into space three times
2 Airbrush, e.g.
3 Attributes
4 Two-piece suit
5 Brunette no more, say
6 Bumbler
7 Tai ___
8 German chancellor Adenauer
9 Unit of loudness
10 Rendered harmless, in a way
11 “Fighting” Big Ten team
12 Relax
13 Lilliputian
18 Vichyssoise vegetable
22 Plane’s parking place
24 Request for milk, maybe
25 Spilled the beans
29 View from Windsor Castle
31 Christian in Hollywood
34 Prepares for proofing
35 Hayseeds
36 Court replays
37 Tea choice for TV’s Frasier Crane
41 Short jackets worn open in front
42 Pain reliever
43 Canoeist’s challenge
44 Like some rescues
45 Ripe
46 Flying off the shelves
47 Starbuck’s superior
48 Greece/Turkey separator, with “the”
53 Bounce back
54 “The ___ the limit!”
57 Kiev’s land: Abbr.
58 Many a Fortune profilee, for short
PUZZLE BY DAVID POOLE
Annual subscriptions are available for the best of Sunday crosswords from the last 50 years: 1-888-7-ACROSS.AT&T users: Text NYTX to 386 to download puzzles, or visit nytimes.com/mobilexword for more information.Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 2,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).Share tips: nytimes.com/wordplay. Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/learning/xwords.
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14 15 16
17 18 19
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23 24 25 26
27 28 29
30 31 32
33 34 35 36 37
38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47 48
49 50 51
52 53 54
55 56 57 58
59 60 61
62 63 64
S C A B C H E S T G I V EL A R A L E V E R A W A YO P E N O H A R E B O N ET R A D E S E C R E T SH A S S L E A T A B A A
T O U G H O C H E R SL A V A P L O T P O I N T SA M A N A I R E S T J O EH A N D L E B A R S T I O ST I N S E L S M U S HI N A R E S B R E N D A
C O V E R S T O R I E SA L V A A D O P E O T I SD O W N T E L E X O R C AE A S T E R E C T F E E D
The New York Times Syndication Sales Corporation620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018
For Information Call: 1-800-972-3550For Release Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Edited by Will Shortz No. 1015Crossword
The Chronicle
Find the answers to the Sudoku puzzle on the classifieds page
Fill in the grid so that every
row, every column and
every 3x3 box contains
the digits 1 through 9.
(No number is repeated in
any column, row or box.)
What we see in Zeus’ eyes:Married (or is he?): ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������mouseThe death of Jon Snow: �������������������������������������������������������������������������� batchHazel: ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������stiehmyA busy second semester: ����������������������������������������������������������������manchachaA job-less future: ������������������������������������������������������������������������������nickatniteThe fifth season of Gilmore Girls: ����������������������������������������������������������� bribriA lovely night off: ��������������������������������������������������������������������� nationalparkeTerrible 60 Minutes videos: ��������������������������������������������������� makesomemoiseBarb Starbuck sees all: ������������������������������������������������������������������������������Barb
Student Advertising Manager: ������������������������������������������������������������Liz Lash Account Representatives: ����John Abram, Maria Alas Diaz, Alyssa Coughenour
Sophie Corwin, Tyler Deane-Krantz, Davis English, Philip FooKathryn Hong, Rachel Kiner, Elissa Levine, John McIlavaine
Nicolaas Mering, Brian Paskas, Juliette Pigott , Nick Philip, Maimuna Yussuf
Creative Services Student Manager: ����������������������������������Marcela Heywood
Creative Services: �������������������������������������������� Allison Eisen, Mao Hu, Rita Lo
Business Office �������������������������������������������������������������������������Susanna Booth
Predictions, Probabilities and
Reality: Media Coverage of the 2014 electionsPolitical journalists from broadcast,
print and online media evaluate election coverage
Saturday, Nov. 22, 20141:00-2:30 p.m.
Fleishman Commons, Sanford BuildingDuke University
This event is free and open to the public
Panel discussion
with:
Molly Ball The Atlantic
Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight
Brian StelterCNN
Moderated by
Bill Adair Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism
and Public Policy
The DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy presents the
2014 John Fisher Zeidman Memorial Colloquium On Politics and the Press
For information: 919-613-7306, [email protected]
HELP WANTED
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NORTH CAROLINAcontinued from page 7
M. BASKETBALLcontinued from page 7
Darbi Griffith | The ChronicleFreshman point guard Tyus Jones poured in 17 second-half points as the Blue Devils pulled away from No. 19 Michigan State to claim the 81-71 win Tuesday night.
Darbi Griffith | The ChronicleDefensive end Dezmond Johnson and the Blue Devil defense will be tasked with slowing down a potent Tar Heel attack.
the load, scoring eight quick points on 4-of-4 shooting against Michigan State (1-1) forward Matt Costello and sparking Duke’s game-opening 12-4 run.
The Chicago native went on to finish with 17 points on 8-of-10 shooting and is now 25-of-30 from the field through three games.
“I felt pretty comfortable, especially in the early going,” Okafor said. “My teammates were looking for me and they gave me a lot of confidence. [The plan was definitely to] get me some touches early and see how Michigan State was going to play.”
The junior Costello and his Spartan teammates responded to Okafor’s early onslaught by racking up eight offensive rebounds and making enough plays to stay within striking distance in the opening period.
The Blue Devils made their first seven shots of the game, but were unable to maintain a significant advantage because of defensive lapses and six turnovers.
Despite its periodical mistakes, Duke took a 40-33 lead into the locker room thanks to 10 points apiece from Okafor, Cook and Winslow and 19 points off 10 Spartan turnovers.
The takeaways fueled the Blue Devils’ 10-2 edge in fastbreak points in the early-going and made up for Duke’s inefficiency in its halfcourt sets.
“A lot of [the turnovers were] on us,” Trice said. “We kind of forced some plays and were lackadaisical with the ball, but you’ve got to give them credit too because [Duke] did a great job on defense.”
Both teams cleaned up some of their mistakes in the second half, with Michigan
State coughing it up just three times and the Blue Devils surrendering just five Michigan State offensive rebounds to finally get some breathing room late in the game.
Duke was only outrebounded 17-14 in the second half after being dominated 18-11 in the first period and giving up seven second-chance points.
“Coming into the game, we knew they were a really physical team and were really going to attack the offensive glass,” Okafor said. “At halftime we just reinstated that we were going to need to attack the glass [to win].”
Throughout the game, Duke also did a great job contesting 3-point shots, holding Michigan State to 5-of-20 shooting beyond the arc. Junior guard Bryn Forbes was the only Spartan that could connect from long range, knocking down three huge treys to keep Michigan State within shouting distance.
But despite Forbes’ success, teams are now 8-of-46 from deep against Duke this season.
After their biggest win of the season, the Blue Devils will take the court again Friday for another marquee game, a contest against Temple Friday night at 9:30 p.m. at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the semifinals of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic.
Rebounding and bench production will likely be the focus between now and then, but Krzyzewski and his staff have to be happy that their team now has big-game experience to draw upon.
“It gives you confidence,” Krzyzewski said, “We get confidence through experience and the harder the experience that you’re successful in, the more confidence you [have].... Today I think we should come away feeling really good about ourselves.”
win against Liberty.With this in mind, along with the fact that the
past two games have been decided by a combined five points, Thursday’s night game is shaping up to be a close, high-scoring affair. And that’s what North Carolina and its defense should be scared of.
The Tar Heel defense has struggled to put up a fight against the majority of its opponents this season. North Carolina ranks last in the ACC in scoring defense at 41.2 points allowed per contest, poor enough for fourth-worst in the entire NCAA. It also brings up the rear in total defense, allowing 511.6 yards per game, which also ranks fourth worst in the nation.
Despite its woes on the defensive side of the field, the Tar Heels have been humming on offense all
season. North Carolina ranks second in the conference with 430.6 yards per game. But against a stout Duke defense, the Tar Heels will need to do something no team outside of Pittsburgh has been able to accomplish this season against the Blue Devils—rack up points, not just yards.
Boasting an offense that has scored 22 touchdowns on the ground and 24 through the air thus far—North Carolina ranks second in the conference with 35.3 points per game—the Tar Heels will be as well prepared as any to pile on the points Thursday.
“Coach Fedora is one of the brightest offensive minds in the game,” Duke head coach David Cutcliffe said. “They present a lot of problems. There’s no question they’re difficult to get ready for in just a few days.”
This offensive efficiency is made possible thanks in large part to junior quarterback Marquise Williams.
After sharing time early on in the season with Mitch Trubisky, Williams has solely taken over the position
and the Tar Heel offense has thrived with the new consistency under center. He has tossed 18 touchdowns opposed to eight interceptions and averages 249.7 yards per game.
Williams’ arm is only half of what makes the Charlotte native so dangerous, as he also leads the team in rushing. Through 10 games, Williams has averaged 62.8 yards and one score per game on the ground. In last year’s thriller in Chapel Hill, Williams rushed for 108 yards and two touchdowns on just 16 carries.
“He’s a great athlete, a great player,” Duke defensive end Dezmond Johnson said. “For us as a defense, it’s going to be challenging, because a player like him, you don’t want to get off and have that opportunity to create big plays for his team.”
But the Tar Heels will need more than just Williams on the ground against Duke.
Senior running back Romar Morris—who was suspended for the Pittsburgh game due to a DUI—will return to take on the Blue Devils Thursday. This will come right on cue for North Carolina, as running backs Elijah Hood and Kris Francis will not play in Thursday’s contest. Hood has been battling injuries all season, and Francis tore his ACL and MCL against the Panthers last Saturday.
“Everybody at the beginning of the year said, ‘Oh, you’ve got so many running backs,’” Fedora said. “But [Francis] just stuck his foot in the ground and it was a bad deal.”
With Morris back in the lineup and Williams at the helm of a potent offense, the Tar Heels will give the Blue Devils a run for their money and the coveted Victory Bell Thursday night.
“We’re just ready to get the Bell back. It’s our last two games, it is the most important games and we want to be known as the team to remember in November and Duke’s in the way to stop us,” Williams said. “These guys are excited to go to whatever-the-stadium-name-is Thursday night.”
The Chronicle www.dukechronicle.com WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | 9
sports
8 | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 www.dukechroniclesports.com The Chronicle The Chronicle www.dukechroniclesports.com WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | 9
ACROSS 1 Attempt 5 Places
longshoremen work
10 Pickle flavoring14 Mozart’s “___
Fan Tutte”15 Internet giant
that purchased Flickr in 2005
16 “The Time Machine” vegetarians
17 Drifter of literature
19 Flow stopper20 Sorrowful 1954
Patti Page hit21 Pragmatic person23 Swiss/Austrian
border river24 Degree for many
a 58-Down26 One-third of a
triptych27 Cube creator28 Potent potable in
“Arsenic and Old Lace”
30 Parrot
31 It can take your breath away
32 Big ___ (hallux)
33 Nicole Kidman, hairwise
38 Brynner of “The King and I”
39 ___ Savage, player of the boy on “Boy Meets World”
40 Dr. J’s league, once, for short
43 1985 Prince hit
47 Screenwriter Sorkin
49 Pop singer Mann
50 Story assigners, in brief
51 “You had me at ___” (“Jerry Maguire” line)
52 Like preserved flowers and writers under deadline
54 Surrendered to gravity
55 Man or Mull
56 One of the original Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, whose name is a hint to the answers to the four italicized clues
59 Shoulder muscle, to a gym rat
60 Cornball
61 Forever and a day
62 Comes out with
63 Spanish “others”
64 Where Citigroup is C, for short
DOWN
1 Astronaut Wally, the first person to go into space three times
2 Airbrush, e.g.
3 Attributes
4 Two-piece suit
5 Brunette no more, say
6 Bumbler
7 Tai ___
8 German chancellor Adenauer
9 Unit of loudness
10 Rendered harmless, in a way
11 “Fighting” Big Ten team
12 Relax
13 Lilliputian
18 Vichyssoise vegetable
22 Plane’s parking place
24 Request for milk, maybe
25 Spilled the beans
29 View from Windsor Castle
31 Christian in Hollywood
34 Prepares for proofing
35 Hayseeds
36 Court replays
37 Tea choice for TV’s Frasier Crane
41 Short jackets worn open in front
42 Pain reliever
43 Canoeist’s challenge
44 Like some rescues
45 Ripe
46 Flying off the shelves
47 Starbuck’s superior
48 Greece/Turkey separator, with “the”
53 Bounce back
54 “The ___ the limit!”
57 Kiev’s land: Abbr.
58 Many a Fortune profilee, for short
PUZZLE BY DAVID POOLE
Annual subscriptions are available for the best of Sunday crosswords from the last 50 years: 1-888-7-ACROSS.AT&T users: Text NYTX to 386 to download puzzles, or visit nytimes.com/mobilexword for more information.Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 2,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).Share tips: nytimes.com/wordplay. Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/learning/xwords.
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16
17 18 19
20 21 22
23 24 25 26
27 28 29
30 31 32
33 34 35 36 37
38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47 48
49 50 51
52 53 54
55 56 57 58
59 60 61
62 63 64
S C A B C H E S T G I V EL A R A L E V E R A W A YO P E N O H A R E B O N ET R A D E S E C R E T SH A S S L E A T A B A A
T O U G H O C H E R SL A V A P L O T P O I N T SA M A N A I R E S T J O EH A N D L E B A R S T I O ST I N S E L S M U S HI N A R E S B R E N D A
C O V E R S T O R I E SA L V A A D O P E O T I SD O W N T E L E X O R C AE A S T E R E C T F E E D
The New York Times Syndication Sales Corporation620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018
For Information Call: 1-800-972-3550For Release Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Edited by Will Shortz No. 1015Crossword
The Chronicle
Find the answers to the Sudoku puzzle on the classifieds page
Fill in the grid so that every
row, every column and
every 3x3 box contains
the digits 1 through 9.
(No number is repeated in
any column, row or box.)
What we see in Zeus’ eyes:Married (or is he?): ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������mouseThe death of Jon Snow: �������������������������������������������������������������������������� batchHazel: ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������stiehmyA busy second semester: ����������������������������������������������������������������manchachaA job-less future: ������������������������������������������������������������������������������nickatniteThe fifth season of Gilmore Girls: ����������������������������������������������������������� bribriA lovely night off: ��������������������������������������������������������������������� nationalparkeTerrible 60 Minutes videos: ��������������������������������������������������� makesomemoiseBarb Starbuck sees all: ������������������������������������������������������������������������������Barb
Student Advertising Manager: ������������������������������������������������������������Liz Lash Account Representatives: ����John Abram, Maria Alas Diaz, Alyssa Coughenour
Sophie Corwin, Tyler Deane-Krantz, Davis English, Philip FooKathryn Hong, Rachel Kiner, Elissa Levine, John McIlavaine
Nicolaas Mering, Brian Paskas, Juliette Pigott , Nick Philip, Maimuna Yussuf
Creative Services Student Manager: ����������������������������������Marcela Heywood
Creative Services: �������������������������������������������� Allison Eisen, Mao Hu, Rita Lo
Business Office �������������������������������������������������������������������������Susanna Booth
Predictions, Probabilities and
Reality: Media Coverage of the 2014 electionsPolitical journalists from broadcast,
print and online media evaluate election coverage
Saturday, Nov. 22, 20141:00-2:30 p.m.
Fleishman Commons, Sanford BuildingDuke University
This event is free and open to the public
Panel discussion
with:
Molly Ball The Atlantic
Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight
Brian StelterCNN
Moderated by
Bill Adair Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism
and Public Policy
The DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy presents the
2014 John Fisher Zeidman Memorial Colloquium On Politics and the Press
For information: 919-613-7306, [email protected]
HELP WANTED
APP PROGRAMMER WANTED
app programmer needed to help medical team with innovative research� We
want your creative contribu-tion--we are flexible!
Email christopher�cox@duke�edu
TRAVEL/VACATION
BAHAMAS SPRING BREAK
$189 for 5 Days� All prices in-clude: Round-trip luxury par-ty cruise� Accommodations on the island at your choice of thirteen resorts� Appalachia Travel� www�BahamaSun�com 800-867-5018
CLASSIFIEDS
Advertise here for the best results
dukechronicle.comclassifieds
TGIF
Recess ~ today!
Sportswrap ~ today!
NORTH CAROLINAcontinued from page 7
M. BASKETBALLcontinued from page 7
Darbi Griffith | The ChronicleFreshman point guard Tyus Jones poured in 17 second-half points as the Blue Devils pulled away from No. 19 Michigan State to claim the 81-71 win Tuesday night.
Darbi Griffith | The ChronicleDefensive end Dezmond Johnson and the Blue Devil defense will be tasked with slowing down a potent Tar Heel attack.
the load, scoring eight quick points on 4-of-4 shooting against Michigan State (1-1) forward Matt Costello and sparking Duke’s game-opening 12-4 run.
The Chicago native went on to finish with 17 points on 8-of-10 shooting and is now 25-of-30 from the field through three games.
“I felt pretty comfortable, especially in the early going,” Okafor said. “My teammates were looking for me and they gave me a lot of confidence. [The plan was definitely to] get me some touches early and see how Michigan State was going to play.”
The junior Costello and his Spartan teammates responded to Okafor’s early onslaught by racking up eight offensive rebounds and making enough plays to stay within striking distance in the opening period.
The Blue Devils made their first seven shots of the game, but were unable to maintain a significant advantage because of defensive lapses and six turnovers.
Despite its periodical mistakes, Duke took a 40-33 lead into the locker room thanks to 10 points apiece from Okafor, Cook and Winslow and 19 points off 10 Spartan turnovers.
The takeaways fueled the Blue Devils’ 10-2 edge in fastbreak points in the early-going and made up for Duke’s inefficiency in its halfcourt sets.
“A lot of [the turnovers were] on us,” Trice said. “We kind of forced some plays and were lackadaisical with the ball, but you’ve got to give them credit too because [Duke] did a great job on defense.”
Both teams cleaned up some of their mistakes in the second half, with Michigan
State coughing it up just three times and the Blue Devils surrendering just five Michigan State offensive rebounds to finally get some breathing room late in the game.
Duke was only outrebounded 17-14 in the second half after being dominated 18-11 in the first period and giving up seven second-chance points.
“Coming into the game, we knew they were a really physical team and were really going to attack the offensive glass,” Okafor said. “At halftime we just reinstated that we were going to need to attack the glass [to win].”
Throughout the game, Duke also did a great job contesting 3-point shots, holding Michigan State to 5-of-20 shooting beyond the arc. Junior guard Bryn Forbes was the only Spartan that could connect from long range, knocking down three huge treys to keep Michigan State within shouting distance.
But despite Forbes’ success, teams are now 8-of-46 from deep against Duke this season.
After their biggest win of the season, the Blue Devils will take the court again Friday for another marquee game, a contest against Temple Friday night at 9:30 p.m. at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the semifinals of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic.
Rebounding and bench production will likely be the focus between now and then, but Krzyzewski and his staff have to be happy that their team now has big-game experience to draw upon.
“It gives you confidence,” Krzyzewski said, “We get confidence through experience and the harder the experience that you’re successful in, the more confidence you [have].... Today I think we should come away feeling really good about ourselves.”
win against Liberty.With this in mind, along with the fact that the
past two games have been decided by a combined five points, Thursday’s night game is shaping up to be a close, high-scoring affair. And that’s what North Carolina and its defense should be scared of.
The Tar Heel defense has struggled to put up a fight against the majority of its opponents this season. North Carolina ranks last in the ACC in scoring defense at 41.2 points allowed per contest, poor enough for fourth-worst in the entire NCAA. It also brings up the rear in total defense, allowing 511.6 yards per game, which also ranks fourth worst in the nation.
Despite its woes on the defensive side of the field, the Tar Heels have been humming on offense all
season. North Carolina ranks second in the conference with 430.6 yards per game. But against a stout Duke defense, the Tar Heels will need to do something no team outside of Pittsburgh has been able to accomplish this season against the Blue Devils—rack up points, not just yards.
Boasting an offense that has scored 22 touchdowns on the ground and 24 through the air thus far—North Carolina ranks second in the conference with 35.3 points per game—the Tar Heels will be as well prepared as any to pile on the points Thursday.
“Coach Fedora is one of the brightest offensive minds in the game,” Duke head coach David Cutcliffe said. “They present a lot of problems. There’s no question they’re difficult to get ready for in just a few days.”
This offensive efficiency is made possible thanks in large part to junior quarterback Marquise Williams.
After sharing time early on in the season with Mitch Trubisky, Williams has solely taken over the position
and the Tar Heel offense has thrived with the new consistency under center. He has tossed 18 touchdowns opposed to eight interceptions and averages 249.7 yards per game.
Williams’ arm is only half of what makes the Charlotte native so dangerous, as he also leads the team in rushing. Through 10 games, Williams has averaged 62.8 yards and one score per game on the ground. In last year’s thriller in Chapel Hill, Williams rushed for 108 yards and two touchdowns on just 16 carries.
“He’s a great athlete, a great player,” Duke defensive end Dezmond Johnson said. “For us as a defense, it’s going to be challenging, because a player like him, you don’t want to get off and have that opportunity to create big plays for his team.”
But the Tar Heels will need more than just Williams on the ground against Duke.
Senior running back Romar Morris—who was suspended for the Pittsburgh game due to a DUI—will return to take on the Blue Devils Thursday. This will come right on cue for North Carolina, as running backs Elijah Hood and Kris Francis will not play in Thursday’s contest. Hood has been battling injuries all season, and Francis tore his ACL and MCL against the Panthers last Saturday.
“Everybody at the beginning of the year said, ‘Oh, you’ve got so many running backs,’” Fedora said. “But [Francis] just stuck his foot in the ground and it was a bad deal.”
With Morris back in the lineup and Williams at the helm of a potent offense, the Tar Heels will give the Blue Devils a run for their money and the coveted Victory Bell Thursday night.
“We’re just ready to get the Bell back. It’s our last two games, it is the most important games and we want to be known as the team to remember in November and Duke’s in the way to stop us,” Williams said. “These guys are excited to go to whatever-the-stadium-name-is Thursday night.”
10 | WEDNESDAY, NOVERMBER 19, 2014 www.dukechronicle.com The Chronicle
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Which came first: the problem or the solution? While it may seem intuitive that you can’t have a solution without a problem prefacing it, new research funded by Fuqua and co-authored by Troy Campbell
and Aaron Kay detailing this dilemma has just become the most popular Duke Today post of all time. Solution Aversion, as the new effect has been appropriately named, is essentially when people deny a problem exists because they do not like the solution that would be necessary to fix the problem. As an undergraduate research assistant to this project, I am immensely proud of its empirical results, widespread acceptance and implications.
This inquiry into the peculiar psychological effects that influence decision-making has been making the rounds on established and social media alike. Initially populated in Duke Today, the influential study has made appearances in big newspapers like the Washington Post and the Herald Sun, news aggregators like The Huffington Post and Science Daily, and social media like Tumblr and forum-based site Reddit. The study made it to #3 on the Reddit science subforum, and proceeded to go viral with over 1,300 comments on that one post alone.
When asked about why he thought the study was so popular, author Campbell replied “It relates to controversial things which causes it to go viral, and it is not necessarily the science that is causing all of its popularity. What’s wonderful though is the science always sneaks in there.” Campbell went on to specify that the science in Fuqua’s study is about the psychological implications of the generalizable theory of Solution Aversion, and not specifically on the energy debate.
The study focused on widespread conservative denial of climate change. When conservatives were presented with a solution to climate change that
relied on a government regulation, the percentage of Republicans who agreed with statistics and facts presented by various scientists was around 22%. Conversely, when conservatives were presented with market-friendly methods that emphasized the profit-potential for innovation of green technology and pro-business solutions, the percentage jumped to 55%. This variation in conservative agreement was found to be statistically significant.
Campbell notes that “We tend to think politicians have disagreements about the solutions because they have disagreement over the facts. In actuality it’s often the other way around. Partisans have disagreement over the facts, because they disagree with the solution.”
It is critical to note that this doesn’t just apply to conservative reactions to discussion of climate change. Similarly, liberals tend to be anti-GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) despite near unanimity in scientists’ declarations of the safety and viability of GMO’s. The effect is undoubtedly wider than a pointed argument on partisan issues.
The beauty of Solution Aversion is its simplicity and how easy it is to understand. If someone doesn’t like the solution to a problem, it would be easier to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. This small facet of human irrationality can be applied to a huge variety of fields. While climate change was the issue tested, the theoretical implications of the science go on much farther.
Have you ever been told to clean your room and replied that “it’s really not that dirty”? This may be Solution Aversion.
Have you ever thought about going on a run but then thought “Cardio isn’t that important”? This may be Solution Aversion.
Have you ever been scheduled for a medical test and figured the check-up was too inconvenient and you would rather delay it? This may be Solution Aversion.
The effect goes on to impact value belief systems and political preferences.“When there is a problem specifically tied to one solution, and that one
solution is ideologically inconsistent with what a group of people would prefer, we should see solution aversion does to a degree guide the interpretation of whether the problems exists and the evidence behind it”, said Campbell.
Since the study’s publication, there have been a wealth of blogs picking up the idea and running with it. There have been blogs on its applicability in tech industries, in teaching, in aiding social movements.
However, Campbell notes it is important not to overstate the study’s findings. Building off the wide literature on motivated reasoning and synthesizing concepts like motivated consequentialism and the polarizing impact of science literacy, Solution Aversion is by no means a theoretical island. Additionally, while it gives us better tools to identify and understand why political divides exist and why belief systems are so difficult to overcome when any amount of ambiguity is present, it does not provide a sure-fire way to persuade people to change their opinions.
Successful communication generally requires three things—reduce wiggle room, reduce threat and give people a reason to want to believe. Reducing wiggle room means providing irrefutable facts and diminishing ambiguity. Indeed, Solution Aversion is likely to be more prevalent in situations where ambiguity is high. Reducing threat means making people less averse to the problem by making the problem appear less scary or solvable in an un-aversive way.
Duke University is once again on the cutting edge of psychology, behavioral economics and scientific research. It is helping us understand which is truly the bigger problem—the problem or the solution. The answer might very well be that it depends on who you ask.
Tyler Fredricks is a a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Tuesday.
I thank God my brain is a private place.I fear some of my thoughts will escape,
infecting the overly edited conversations I have with people.
I fear the fraternities in my section will find out what I really think about them at 2 am—and at 2 pm.
I fear that I’ll drop a thought that challenges the status quo of our society.
Writing has given me an outlet to control these thoughts. No, they don’t go away, but they do allow me to contextualize and understand my discomfort, my uncontrollable happiness, my outpour of love, my anger—my thoughts. I use my columns as an opportunity to let my brain have some fun, to let go of the structured thinking I’m trained into. While most of my uncensored, unedited thoughts don’t make it into my column, the process itself is my own source of comfort. I am my best listener. This process of writing-rewriting proved to be effective as I watched the “It’s On Us” campaign video starring Kerry Washington, Randy Jackson, Joel McHale, Mayim Bialik, Connie Britton, Vice-President Joe Biden and, of course, President Obama. The eerie music coupled with the “It’s On Us” shirts jolted me
into a state of confusion (and laughter), but before I let my brain off on its own course, let me provide some information about the President’s initiative.
In September, President Obama announced his “It’s On Us” campaign to stop sexual assault on college campuses. In a powerful and convincing speech with Vice President Joe Biden and Lily, a sexual assault victim, President Obama warns Americans that we won’t progress until we treat men and women equally.
“As far as we’ve come, the fact is that from sports leagues to pop culture to politics, our society still does not sufficiently value women,” he said. “We still don’t condemn sexual assault as loudly as we should. We make excuses. We look the other way. The message that sends can have a chilling effect on young men and women.”
The national initiative began its “Week of Action” on Monday, November 17 and will end Friday, November 21. 233 college campuses, the NCAA, Pi Kappa Alpha and Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternities, Niners Nation and SB Nation have all endorsed and supported the initiative. The week’s events include getting more people to sign the pledge, promoting roundtable discussions, and hosting bystander intervention training.
Whitehouse.gov lists steps that have taken to end sexual assault on campus. This includes sending guidance to every campus, creating the White House Task Force to protect students from sexual assault, and reviewing existing laws to make sure they adequately protect victims of sexual assault.
The website then provides 12 “tips” to help people become part of the solution. These include intervening when you see something, get help, recognize danger, keep an eye on friends, and talk to your friends about sexual assault. Now that I’ve given the context, allow me to share my (slightly edited) thoughts.
To the Obama administration, you’ve gotten it wrong. You, indeed, have your heart in the right place, your foot in the right direction. But you, and whatever committee you hired to actualize your vision, has some serious rewiring before sexual
assault is ever addressed (and if you’re hiring, I’m looking). First off, offenders do not proudly wear “I’m a rapist!” shirts. Like you said, victims usually know their offenders. People can’t intervene if they don’t see anything out of place. Two, if you’re going to enlist support from the NFL, you should probably address their own problems with sexual violence. Three, your tips highlight ways we can avoid sexual violence—not prevent it. If we intervene in a friend’s interaction with a “questionable” individual, who is to say that he/she won’t turn to another victim down the street, bar, or club?
Sexual violence does not exist a priori. It is embedded in a culture that celebrates the commodification and fetishization of bodies, especially female bodies, black and brown bodies, trans bodies, and homosexual bodies. It’s this culture that encourages, normalizes, and trivializes sexual violence. Don’t believe me?
Music tells us “you know you want it” and consent is just a set of “blurred lines.”
Jokes about “raping” that test (or game or meal) is a thing.
Magazine covers celebrate sexual innuendos only with women.
Magazines show us that women can only be sexual beings, while men should attain to be professional, successful and stylish.
There are open sexual violence investigations on 55 campuses nationwide, but only 3 percent of rapists will ever get convicted.
Similar to droplets that precipitate from a cloud, if you catch the rapist, you’re not stopping other offenders in the future. You’re just catching one person who has precipitated from a large mass hovering over us all. The steps and tips produced by the initiative address moves that we can partake in on a microscale. But these are systemic, macro problems, that need systemic, macro reform.
To address these problems, we need to take a step back and hold institutions and corporations to standards. As the women’s website Feministing states, “it’s on us to go beyond ‘It’s On Us.’” Here are a few suggestions, from feminsting and from myself, we can employ to encourage change.
It’s On You to recognize and dismantle institutions that tolerate and perpetuate violence. College campuses need to be held accountable for sexual assault cases. If you know an offender is still enjoying the liberaties on campuses, speak up. Stand up. It’s on you to condemn violence, and to make sure your college does, too.
It’s On You to hold ethical standards for magazines. We’re all guilty of enjoying magazines, music and movies that celebrate the denigration of bodies. Boycott these corporations, start a movement, publicize their wrongdoings. Through twitter, Facebook, and other media platforms, your voice will be heard.
It’s On You to encourage the national athletic leagues to set standards for their athletes. Because if you won’t, who will? They make millions off our admiration. So we cannot not send conflicting messages of what it is that we admire. Millions of kids and men and women who unconditionally support their men look up to these athletes. If one man can influence a country, imagine how many a league can impact.
So to President Obama, Vice-President Biden, the entire Obama administration and the celebrities engaged in this initiative, I sincerely thank you for your efforts. I really hope your initiative provides the results you want to see on your end. But from where I’m standing, with boots on the ground, you still have some work to do.
Leena El-Sadek is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Tuesday.
It’s on you to go beyond “It’s on us” Solution Aversion
LeenaEl-Sadek(DIS)EASED (RE)PRESENTATION
TylerFredricks PATRICIANS ETC.
Changing of the guardLaurie Patton, dean of the Trinity College of
Arts and Sciences, recently accepted the position of president at Middlebury College. Today we consider Patton’s legacy at Duke and what her departure means for the University moving forward.
Patton will be sorely missed as she leaves an indelible mark on Duke. In her three years as the dean of Trinity, Patton was instrumental in devising some of Duke’s University Courses and developing the touted Bass Connections program. She will also be remembered for her role in continuing and shaping Duke’s emphasis on interdisciplinarity. She leaves Duke to become the first female president of Middlebury College in its 214-year history. The Board wishes Patton well as she embarks on her journey north to lead with her passion and innovation at Middlebury.
Patton’s departure brings the subject of administrative turnover to the center of attention. Last year, Duke bid farewell to Provost Peter Lange and Donna Lisker, associate vice
provost for undergraduate education. Connie Simmons, associate dean for undergraduate affairs, also announced Tuesday that she will be leaving Duke after this academic year along with Patton. There has also been talk that other key members of the administration will be leaving the University in the near future. With such administrative flux, Duke’s leadership will see significant change in the coming years.
Amid this ongoing change of the administrative guard, Duke stands at a fork in the road where it will decide which path to take. It is a question about the formation of the University’s identity—the “Duke brand”—which has heretofore remained largely undefined. Unlike Stanford with its focus on Silicon Valley, MIT with its niche in technology and the University of Chicago with its emphasis on academia and producing students for graduate schools, Duke lacks a distinct identity. The unofficial “Ivy League of the South,” Duke is the jack-of-all-trades, casting a wide net to compete in all aspects of the modern university. Externally, it is perceived as a predominately upper class, white institution where sports and greek life reign paramount and where academics remain rigorous. While this external reputation may be misaligned
with Duke’s internal identity, the question of what the “Duke brand” means to those both within and without the Duke community stands.
In an attempt to enter the coveted pantheon of the nation’s top universities, Duke has cast its net wide with programs like Duke Engage, Duke Immerse and Bass Connections. Given that the University is still in its adolescence—and that it was only recently that it moved from a regional to a national school of repute—such institutional experimentation is understandable and necessary. But, significant changes within the administration pose an opportunity to assess the University’s myriad programs and focus resources to bolster key initiatives. One example may be focusing on developing Duke’s identity as a global innovator and incorporating this identity more intentionally in the curriculum. In this model, global initiatives like Duke Engage and study abroad could have follow-up programs that help students integrate their experiences into their education. It will be the role of the changing leadership to shape Duke’s identity and its reputation in the years to come, but in this process we urge a focus on depth, rather than breadth.
Editorial
MaryZiemba EASTERN EXPOSURE
“Suppose that there were a pill that you could take which would make you more intelligent. Smarter. It would help you focus. It would help you stay
awake. It would help you learn. Would you take it?”So asked philosopher Nicole Vincent in her
TEDxSydney talk in 2014. Such a pill, as all of us students know, does exist, in many prescribable forms, including Adderall, Modafinil and Ritalin. Is that a resounding yes I hear from just about every overworked student every student on campus?
With a fleeting pang of regret, I’m opposed to the use of Adderall and similar drugs by people without cognitive challenges. First of all, for a student without a cognitive disadvantage to obtain cognitive enhancers, he or she must
falsify a disorder to a doctor in order to obtain a prescription. Doing so presents legal and liability issues for both the patient and the doctor who issued the prescription. Many laws are in place to protect people from the potentially dangerous side effects of prescription drugs, which, in the case of cognitive enhancers, include paranoia, addiction, rapid heartbeat and insomnia. Improper use of the drugs can even be lethal, as was the case for a student manager for the University of Michigan football team, Josh Levine, who fatally overdosed on Adderall in 2014. Obtainment of such drugs illegally should be strictly prohibited because of the medical dangers and legal dangers it presents to the student.
Moreover, any use beyond “baseline” achievement of cognitive ability should be prohibited because the use of cognitive enhancers in those with a more typical central nervous system allows them to achieve disproportionately heightened levels of cognitive ability. The use of cognitive enhancers allows people with typical cognitive ability to focus on work intensely that might otherwise be considered mundane or mind-numbingly repetitive. For the unfair advantage that cognitive enhancers provide in school, their use should be limited to those with under-baseline cognitive ability. Grades in school ought to reflect natural ability rather than ability enhanced by drugs such as Adderall.
The use of cognitive enhancers by those without disordered cognitive ability creates a
slippery slope of an expected level of cognitive achievement. If those without attentional differences were allowed to freely use cognitive enhancers, the availability of the drugs would increase because of the many benefits of using such drugs. Already, 35 percent of college students have reported using stimulants as study tools—if the drugs were made widely available, surely the proportion of students taking them would increase. Increased cognitive enhancer use would effectively “raise the average” of academic achievement, putting the people who “academically dope” in a new, artificial cognitive elite. Students who previously fell on the higher end of the bell curve of intelligence —those who do not dope as well as those who legitimately use the drugs to modify a cognitive difference—would then find themselves closer to the average, eclipsed by the artificially higher-performing students. Then, in classes graded on a curve, for example, non-doping students earn lower grades for the same level of effort. This places students in a predicament—either deal with their newfound academic disadvantage, or start popping pills to rise back up to their previous level.
“The thing that I found the most frustrating was that [students’] use of ‘study drugs’ actually worked and some were rewarded for it,” illustratively reported a college student in Dallas, Texas in The New York Times. “One [student who doped], in particular, became salutatorian of my class while I, a hard-working and driven individual, was disadvantaged.” The student later began taking cognitive enhancement.
Extreme levels of focus and an increased expected workload would create a “new normal” of cognitive ability. In a society where students are consistently overworked, staying up all night to study and endangering their lifelong health doing so, creating this “new normal” would perpetuate this trend.
What’s more, those with and without cognitive disability who lack the monetary, medical, or social means to obtain cognitive enhancers would be left further and further behind in school and social life. Since much of the country lacks appropriate insurance or resources to obtain cognitive enhancers, it would be impossible to raise the cognitive ability of all students with cognitive enhancers. By widening the gap between the mentally able and challenged, the use of cognitive enhancers by those with typical cognitive abilities should be prohibited.
Mary Ziemba is a Trinity freshman. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
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Which came first: the problem or the solution? While it may seem intuitive that you can’t have a solution without a problem prefacing it, new research funded by Fuqua and co-authored by Troy Campbell
and Aaron Kay detailing this dilemma has just become the most popular Duke Today post of all time. Solution Aversion, as the new effect has been appropriately named, is essentially when people deny a problem exists because they do not like the solution that would be necessary to fix the problem. As an undergraduate research assistant to this project, I am immensely proud of its empirical results, widespread acceptance and implications.
This inquiry into the peculiar psychological effects that influence decision-making has been making the rounds on established and social media alike. Initially populated in Duke Today, the influential study has made appearances in big newspapers like the Washington Post and the Herald Sun, news aggregators like The Huffington Post and Science Daily, and social media like Tumblr and forum-based site Reddit. The study made it to #3 on the Reddit science subforum, and proceeded to go viral with over 1,300 comments on that one post alone.
When asked about why he thought the study was so popular, author Campbell replied “It relates to controversial things which causes it to go viral, and it is not necessarily the science that is causing all of its popularity. What’s wonderful though is the science always sneaks in there.” Campbell went on to specify that the science in Fuqua’s study is about the psychological implications of the generalizable theory of Solution Aversion, and not specifically on the energy debate.
The study focused on widespread conservative denial of climate change. When conservatives were presented with a solution to climate change that
relied on a government regulation, the percentage of Republicans who agreed with statistics and facts presented by various scientists was around 22%. Conversely, when conservatives were presented with market-friendly methods that emphasized the profit-potential for innovation of green technology and pro-business solutions, the percentage jumped to 55%. This variation in conservative agreement was found to be statistically significant.
Campbell notes that “We tend to think politicians have disagreements about the solutions because they have disagreement over the facts. In actuality it’s often the other way around. Partisans have disagreement over the facts, because they disagree with the solution.”
It is critical to note that this doesn’t just apply to conservative reactions to discussion of climate change. Similarly, liberals tend to be anti-GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) despite near unanimity in scientists’ declarations of the safety and viability of GMO’s. The effect is undoubtedly wider than a pointed argument on partisan issues.
The beauty of Solution Aversion is its simplicity and how easy it is to understand. If someone doesn’t like the solution to a problem, it would be easier to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. This small facet of human irrationality can be applied to a huge variety of fields. While climate change was the issue tested, the theoretical implications of the science go on much farther.
Have you ever been told to clean your room and replied that “it’s really not that dirty”? This may be Solution Aversion.
Have you ever thought about going on a run but then thought “Cardio isn’t that important”? This may be Solution Aversion.
Have you ever been scheduled for a medical test and figured the check-up was too inconvenient and you would rather delay it? This may be Solution Aversion.
The effect goes on to impact value belief systems and political preferences.“When there is a problem specifically tied to one solution, and that one
solution is ideologically inconsistent with what a group of people would prefer, we should see solution aversion does to a degree guide the interpretation of whether the problems exists and the evidence behind it”, said Campbell.
Since the study’s publication, there have been a wealth of blogs picking up the idea and running with it. There have been blogs on its applicability in tech industries, in teaching, in aiding social movements.
However, Campbell notes it is important not to overstate the study’s findings. Building off the wide literature on motivated reasoning and synthesizing concepts like motivated consequentialism and the polarizing impact of science literacy, Solution Aversion is by no means a theoretical island. Additionally, while it gives us better tools to identify and understand why political divides exist and why belief systems are so difficult to overcome when any amount of ambiguity is present, it does not provide a sure-fire way to persuade people to change their opinions.
Successful communication generally requires three things—reduce wiggle room, reduce threat and give people a reason to want to believe. Reducing wiggle room means providing irrefutable facts and diminishing ambiguity. Indeed, Solution Aversion is likely to be more prevalent in situations where ambiguity is high. Reducing threat means making people less averse to the problem by making the problem appear less scary or solvable in an un-aversive way.
Duke University is once again on the cutting edge of psychology, behavioral economics and scientific research. It is helping us understand which is truly the bigger problem—the problem or the solution. The answer might very well be that it depends on who you ask.
Tyler Fredricks is a a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Tuesday.
I thank God my brain is a private place.I fear some of my thoughts will escape,
infecting the overly edited conversations I have with people.
I fear the fraternities in my section will find out what I really think about them at 2 am—and at 2 pm.
I fear that I’ll drop a thought that challenges the status quo of our society.
Writing has given me an outlet to control these thoughts. No, they don’t go away, but they do allow me to contextualize and understand my discomfort, my uncontrollable happiness, my outpour of love, my anger—my thoughts. I use my columns as an opportunity to let my brain have some fun, to let go of the structured thinking I’m trained into. While most of my uncensored, unedited thoughts don’t make it into my column, the process itself is my own source of comfort. I am my best listener. This process of writing-rewriting proved to be effective as I watched the “It’s On Us” campaign video starring Kerry Washington, Randy Jackson, Joel McHale, Mayim Bialik, Connie Britton, Vice-President Joe Biden and, of course, President Obama. The eerie music coupled with the “It’s On Us” shirts jolted me
into a state of confusion (and laughter), but before I let my brain off on its own course, let me provide some information about the President’s initiative.
In September, President Obama announced his “It’s On Us” campaign to stop sexual assault on college campuses. In a powerful and convincing speech with Vice President Joe Biden and Lily, a sexual assault victim, President Obama warns Americans that we won’t progress until we treat men and women equally.
“As far as we’ve come, the fact is that from sports leagues to pop culture to politics, our society still does not sufficiently value women,” he said. “We still don’t condemn sexual assault as loudly as we should. We make excuses. We look the other way. The message that sends can have a chilling effect on young men and women.”
The national initiative began its “Week of Action” on Monday, November 17 and will end Friday, November 21. 233 college campuses, the NCAA, Pi Kappa Alpha and Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternities, Niners Nation and SB Nation have all endorsed and supported the initiative. The week’s events include getting more people to sign the pledge, promoting roundtable discussions, and hosting bystander intervention training.
Whitehouse.gov lists steps that have taken to end sexual assault on campus. This includes sending guidance to every campus, creating the White House Task Force to protect students from sexual assault, and reviewing existing laws to make sure they adequately protect victims of sexual assault.
The website then provides 12 “tips” to help people become part of the solution. These include intervening when you see something, get help, recognize danger, keep an eye on friends, and talk to your friends about sexual assault. Now that I’ve given the context, allow me to share my (slightly edited) thoughts.
To the Obama administration, you’ve gotten it wrong. You, indeed, have your heart in the right place, your foot in the right direction. But you, and whatever committee you hired to actualize your vision, has some serious rewiring before sexual
assault is ever addressed (and if you’re hiring, I’m looking). First off, offenders do not proudly wear “I’m a rapist!” shirts. Like you said, victims usually know their offenders. People can’t intervene if they don’t see anything out of place. Two, if you’re going to enlist support from the NFL, you should probably address their own problems with sexual violence. Three, your tips highlight ways we can avoid sexual violence—not prevent it. If we intervene in a friend’s interaction with a “questionable” individual, who is to say that he/she won’t turn to another victim down the street, bar, or club?
Sexual violence does not exist a priori. It is embedded in a culture that celebrates the commodification and fetishization of bodies, especially female bodies, black and brown bodies, trans bodies, and homosexual bodies. It’s this culture that encourages, normalizes, and trivializes sexual violence. Don’t believe me?
Music tells us “you know you want it” and consent is just a set of “blurred lines.”
Jokes about “raping” that test (or game or meal) is a thing.
Magazine covers celebrate sexual innuendos only with women.
Magazines show us that women can only be sexual beings, while men should attain to be professional, successful and stylish.
There are open sexual violence investigations on 55 campuses nationwide, but only 3 percent of rapists will ever get convicted.
Similar to droplets that precipitate from a cloud, if you catch the rapist, you’re not stopping other offenders in the future. You’re just catching one person who has precipitated from a large mass hovering over us all. The steps and tips produced by the initiative address moves that we can partake in on a microscale. But these are systemic, macro problems, that need systemic, macro reform.
To address these problems, we need to take a step back and hold institutions and corporations to standards. As the women’s website Feministing states, “it’s on us to go beyond ‘It’s On Us.’” Here are a few suggestions, from feminsting and from myself, we can employ to encourage change.
It’s On You to recognize and dismantle institutions that tolerate and perpetuate violence. College campuses need to be held accountable for sexual assault cases. If you know an offender is still enjoying the liberaties on campuses, speak up. Stand up. It’s on you to condemn violence, and to make sure your college does, too.
It’s On You to hold ethical standards for magazines. We’re all guilty of enjoying magazines, music and movies that celebrate the denigration of bodies. Boycott these corporations, start a movement, publicize their wrongdoings. Through twitter, Facebook, and other media platforms, your voice will be heard.
It’s On You to encourage the national athletic leagues to set standards for their athletes. Because if you won’t, who will? They make millions off our admiration. So we cannot not send conflicting messages of what it is that we admire. Millions of kids and men and women who unconditionally support their men look up to these athletes. If one man can influence a country, imagine how many a league can impact.
So to President Obama, Vice-President Biden, the entire Obama administration and the celebrities engaged in this initiative, I sincerely thank you for your efforts. I really hope your initiative provides the results you want to see on your end. But from where I’m standing, with boots on the ground, you still have some work to do.
Leena El-Sadek is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Tuesday.
It’s on you to go beyond “It’s on us” Solution Aversion
LeenaEl-Sadek(DIS)EASED (RE)PRESENTATION
TylerFredricks PATRICIANS ETC.
Changing of the guardLaurie Patton, dean of the Trinity College of
Arts and Sciences, recently accepted the position of president at Middlebury College. Today we consider Patton’s legacy at Duke and what her departure means for the University moving forward.
Patton will be sorely missed as she leaves an indelible mark on Duke. In her three years as the dean of Trinity, Patton was instrumental in devising some of Duke’s University Courses and developing the touted Bass Connections program. She will also be remembered for her role in continuing and shaping Duke’s emphasis on interdisciplinarity. She leaves Duke to become the first female president of Middlebury College in its 214-year history. The Board wishes Patton well as she embarks on her journey north to lead with her passion and innovation at Middlebury.
Patton’s departure brings the subject of administrative turnover to the center of attention. Last year, Duke bid farewell to Provost Peter Lange and Donna Lisker, associate vice
provost for undergraduate education. Connie Simmons, associate dean for undergraduate affairs, also announced Tuesday that she will be leaving Duke after this academic year along with Patton. There has also been talk that other key members of the administration will be leaving the University in the near future. With such administrative flux, Duke’s leadership will see significant change in the coming years.
Amid this ongoing change of the administrative guard, Duke stands at a fork in the road where it will decide which path to take. It is a question about the formation of the University’s identity—the “Duke brand”—which has heretofore remained largely undefined. Unlike Stanford with its focus on Silicon Valley, MIT with its niche in technology and the University of Chicago with its emphasis on academia and producing students for graduate schools, Duke lacks a distinct identity. The unofficial “Ivy League of the South,” Duke is the jack-of-all-trades, casting a wide net to compete in all aspects of the modern university. Externally, it is perceived as a predominately upper class, white institution where sports and greek life reign paramount and where academics remain rigorous. While this external reputation may be misaligned
with Duke’s internal identity, the question of what the “Duke brand” means to those both within and without the Duke community stands.
In an attempt to enter the coveted pantheon of the nation’s top universities, Duke has cast its net wide with programs like Duke Engage, Duke Immerse and Bass Connections. Given that the University is still in its adolescence—and that it was only recently that it moved from a regional to a national school of repute—such institutional experimentation is understandable and necessary. But, significant changes within the administration pose an opportunity to assess the University’s myriad programs and focus resources to bolster key initiatives. One example may be focusing on developing Duke’s identity as a global innovator and incorporating this identity more intentionally in the curriculum. In this model, global initiatives like Duke Engage and study abroad could have follow-up programs that help students integrate their experiences into their education. It will be the role of the changing leadership to shape Duke’s identity and its reputation in the years to come, but in this process we urge a focus on depth, rather than breadth.
Editorial
MaryZiemba EASTERN EXPOSURE
“Suppose that there were a pill that you could take which would make you more intelligent. Smarter. It would help you focus. It would help you stay
awake. It would help you learn. Would you take it?”So asked philosopher Nicole Vincent in her
TEDxSydney talk in 2014. Such a pill, as all of us students know, does exist, in many prescribable forms, including Adderall, Modafinil and Ritalin. Is that a resounding yes I hear from just about every overworked student every student on campus?
With a fleeting pang of regret, I’m opposed to the use of Adderall and similar drugs by people without cognitive challenges. First of all, for a student without a cognitive disadvantage to obtain cognitive enhancers, he or she must
falsify a disorder to a doctor in order to obtain a prescription. Doing so presents legal and liability issues for both the patient and the doctor who issued the prescription. Many laws are in place to protect people from the potentially dangerous side effects of prescription drugs, which, in the case of cognitive enhancers, include paranoia, addiction, rapid heartbeat and insomnia. Improper use of the drugs can even be lethal, as was the case for a student manager for the University of Michigan football team, Josh Levine, who fatally overdosed on Adderall in 2014. Obtainment of such drugs illegally should be strictly prohibited because of the medical dangers and legal dangers it presents to the student.
Moreover, any use beyond “baseline” achievement of cognitive ability should be prohibited because the use of cognitive enhancers in those with a more typical central nervous system allows them to achieve disproportionately heightened levels of cognitive ability. The use of cognitive enhancers allows people with typical cognitive ability to focus on work intensely that might otherwise be considered mundane or mind-numbingly repetitive. For the unfair advantage that cognitive enhancers provide in school, their use should be limited to those with under-baseline cognitive ability. Grades in school ought to reflect natural ability rather than ability enhanced by drugs such as Adderall.
The use of cognitive enhancers by those without disordered cognitive ability creates a
slippery slope of an expected level of cognitive achievement. If those without attentional differences were allowed to freely use cognitive enhancers, the availability of the drugs would increase because of the many benefits of using such drugs. Already, 35 percent of college students have reported using stimulants as study tools—if the drugs were made widely available, surely the proportion of students taking them would increase. Increased cognitive enhancer use would effectively “raise the average” of academic achievement, putting the people who “academically dope” in a new, artificial cognitive elite. Students who previously fell on the higher end of the bell curve of intelligence —those who do not dope as well as those who legitimately use the drugs to modify a cognitive difference—would then find themselves closer to the average, eclipsed by the artificially higher-performing students. Then, in classes graded on a curve, for example, non-doping students earn lower grades for the same level of effort. This places students in a predicament—either deal with their newfound academic disadvantage, or start popping pills to rise back up to their previous level.
“The thing that I found the most frustrating was that [students’] use of ‘study drugs’ actually worked and some were rewarded for it,” illustratively reported a college student in Dallas, Texas in The New York Times. “One [student who doped], in particular, became salutatorian of my class while I, a hard-working and driven individual, was disadvantaged.” The student later began taking cognitive enhancement.
Extreme levels of focus and an increased expected workload would create a “new normal” of cognitive ability. In a society where students are consistently overworked, staying up all night to study and endangering their lifelong health doing so, creating this “new normal” would perpetuate this trend.
What’s more, those with and without cognitive disability who lack the monetary, medical, or social means to obtain cognitive enhancers would be left further and further behind in school and social life. Since much of the country lacks appropriate insurance or resources to obtain cognitive enhancers, it would be impossible to raise the cognitive ability of all students with cognitive enhancers. By widening the gap between the mentally able and challenged, the use of cognitive enhancers by those with typical cognitive abilities should be prohibited.
Mary Ziemba is a Trinity freshman. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
Think about it
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The Spring 2015 columnist applications are now available online.
12 | WEDNESDAY, NOVERMBER 19, 2014 www.dukechronicle.com The Chronicle
The American public is presently engaged in what some are calling the “War on College.” In an age of cyber-space academic degrees, why would one choose to spend the time, money and energy to attend an on-campus university? What is college or the university for, and why does it matter?
Asking questions about the values and aims of higher education should be an integral component of its pursuit; and any intellectually curious and critical student ought to develop a comprehensive understanding of the university and to explore how, at various points in time, the purposes and ends of the university have been diversely articulated.
If you want to study at this modern research university with open eyes and critical awareness and, thus, achieve true intellectual freedom, -- i.e., not as a consumer of information but as an active and committed participant in the process of learning and reasoning -- then you might want to consider this course.
The University:What it is, and why it matters
ENG 190-1 Spring 2015 ALP, CZ, EIProf. Thomas Pfau (English, German) and Reinhard Hütter (Duke Divinity School)
MW 3:05-4:20