Feb. 27, 2013 issue

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Community discusses Community discusses identity slurs at identity slurs at Duke, in society, Duke, in society,

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Why theme parties?

by Maggie SpiniTHE CHRONICLE

Students and faculty alike say they are perplexed about how to address the recurrence of parties with inflammatory themes.

In recent years, Duke parties have grabbed national media atten-

tion with themes playing on racial and gender ste-reotypes. Parties have taken on

themes of Asians, Pilgrims and In-dians, Juveniles and Pedophiles and others. The frequency of par-ties with controversial themes raises questions about what attracts stu-dents to create such parties, and what people at Duke might do to respond to them and prevent fu-ture scandals.

“I’ve been at Duke for 20 years and I’ve seen this happen every

few years,” said Orin Starn, chair of the cultural anthropology de-partment. “I don’t know what it is about [Duke]. We seem to have a knack for throwing or doing inap-propriate things, whether it’s Karen Owen or the lacrosse women in blackface.”

Since the beginning of Spring semester, parties hosted by Kappa Sigma and Sigma Nu fraternities have received national media atten-tion for their controversial themes. Duke’s Eta Prime chapter of Kappa Sigma held a party Feb. 1 called “Asia Prime,” later relabeled “Inter-national Relations,” which gener-ated outcry resulting in a demon-stration, talks with administrators, a formal apology from the chapter and suspension by the national or-ganization and Duke. CAROLINE RODRIGUEZ/THE CHRONICLE

Clockwise from top left, students pose at a “Creepy Guys and Cutie Pies” party; “Asia Prime” party attendees dress in stereotypical costumes; activists hold a sign protesting the “Asia Prime” party; the women’s lacrosse team wears a costume involving blackface.

Duke to start using two-ply, softer toilet paper

by Ryan ZhangTHE CHRONICLE

The era of one-ply toilet paper in Duke restrooms is coming to the end of its roll.

Duke is scheduled to begin switch-ing out toilet paper products dur-ing Spring break, said Albert Scott, director of grounds, housekeeping, sanitation and recycling services. The University will finish the rest of its stockpile of one-ply paper and then re-place it with a softer two-ply product. Numerous student have complained about the quality of the paper Duke currently uses, Scott noted.

“The move is being made because the current tissue is one-ply tissue,” Scott said. “Really, with the one-ply tis-sue, most people would have to double that up in order to use it.”

In addition to cost, a number of factors are taken into account when determining which toilet paper to pur-chase, Scott said. Chief among them are quality of texture and softness of the paper. Environmentally friendly products are also given preference.

Duke currently purchases its toilet paper from Brame Specialty Company ALEX STONEHILL/THE CHRONICLE

In response to complaints about the quality of Duke’s toilet paper, the University is switching to a two-ply model.SEE PAPER ON PAGE 6

Panhel vets sororities for new chapter spot

by Imani MoiseTHE CHRONICLE

Three sororities have offi-cially been invited by the Duke Panhellenic Association to pres-ent themselves as candidates to colonize on campus.

After voting to expand the council last Spring, Panhel’s ex-tension committee reviewed ap-plications from seven national chapters and has eliminated all but three options for the one available new charter. Represen-tatives from Gamma Phi Beta, Phi Mu and Sigma Kappa will come to campus to deliver open presentations on different dates

in March. “We wanted to choose organi-

zations that were in line with the University’s goals,” said Sarah Loge, program coordinator for the Office of Fraternity and So-rority Life.

The extension committee analyzed each organization’s at-titudes toward scholarship, ser-vice and philanthropy. It also considered the overall quality of member education and leader-ship development of the orga-nizations in addition to looking at their national organization

Gamma Phi Beta Phi Mu Sigma Kappa

news analysis

SEE PARTY ON PAGE 5

SEE PANHEL ON PAGE 16

Duke looks to change pattern of parties invoking stereotypes of race or sex

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Students, faculty probe the effect of identity slurs

by Georgia ParkeTHE CHRONICLE

The Women’s Studies Pro-gram hosted a discussion Tues-day titled “Identity Slurs,” where the topics of conversation in-cluded the ethics of jokes made at the expense of minorities, specifically the Kappa Sigma “Asia Prime Party” controversy.

Approximately 20 past and current students and faculty

members gathered in the plush East Duke Parlors for an infor-mal conversation about the is-sues. Women’s Studies professor Kathy Rudy and Anne Allison, interim director of Women’s Studies and professor of cul-tural anthropology, served as moderators for the event.

Although a recurring point of interest in the discussion was the fraternity’s Feb. 1 “In-

ternational Relations” party that sparked national media attention and varied responses on cam-pus, the Women’s Studies event was scheduled before the Kappa Sigma controversy unfolded. The students in attendance presented their own views on the subject and attempted to dissect why such cracks in the foundations of race and gender relations exist.

“What is going on is bigger than just, ‘I feel offended,’” said Rudy, regarding humor that makes light of potentially offen-sive representations. “If you don’t go along with it, you’re thought to be a b**ch.”

Students brought up the is-sue of where, and if, a line ex-ists that makes certain forms of humor—including those pertain-ing to race, gender and ethnici-

ty—qualify as offensive. Several students thought that the Kappa Sigma party and resulting campus dialogue was ambiguous because there were also Asian students in attendance at the party, who thus could be said to have been mak-ing fun of their own cultures.

“It became a debate over whether it was offensive, rather than just accepting that people were offended,” said Lisa Perry, a graduate student in East Asian studies.

The conversation also refer-enced Sunday night’s Academy Awards hosted by Seth MacFar-lane, whose monologues includ-ed several jokes thought by some to be insensitive to women or mi-sogynistic, such as a joke about

Anne Allison

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Author wins LEAF award for his literary achievement

by John BarkerTHE CHRONICLE

In recognition of his contribu-tions to literature, Duke’s Nicho-las School of the Environment has elected to offer Alexander McCall Smith an award for Life-time Environmental Achievement in the Fine Arts.

McCall Smith, a Scottish author and an emeritus law professor at the University of Edinburgh, will receive the prestigious LEAF award in a ceremony April 12. He has writ-ten more than 60 books, sev-eral collections of short stories and the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detec-tive Agency” series, which has sold more than 20 million cop-ies worldwide. McCall Smith is the fifth recipient of the LEAF award, which is given annually by a selection committee affili-ated with the Nicholas School

of the Environment.“LEAF is unique in that it

awards artists for their treat-ment of and inclusion of the en-vironment in their works, thus, through their artistic work con-necting people to the natural world on an emotional and vis-ceral level,” said Nicholas School Dean William Chameides in an email Tuesday. “[McCall Smith] is unique among our previous recipients for the range of his work—from children’s stories to detective novels taking place in Botswana to scholarly work on bioethics.”

The ‘No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ series follows a Motswana woman named Mma Precious Ra-motswe and was adapted into an HBO series in 2008.

Tim Lucas, director of mar-keting communications at the Nicholas School, noted that Mc-

Call Smith’s vivid descriptions of Botswana’s ecology in the series were likely influenced by his time living in the country when he set up a law school at the University of Botswana.

“There is a strong sense of con-nection between people and plac-es in [McCall Smith’s] works,” Lucas said.

The award, selected by the school’s Board of Visitors, was spe-cifically aimed at McCall Smith’s portrayal of the land in his nov-els, yet also took into account the broader body of his work.

McCall Smith will speak at Duke in a special ceremony April 12. Tickets are free through the Bryan Center Box Office.

“We like to give this award be-cause there are some things about the environment that can’t be communicated as well by research papers as by art,” Lucas said.

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

The Nicholas School of the Environment is awarding author Alexander McCall Smith for environmental achievement in the arts.

SEE SLURS ON PAGE 6

THE CHRONICLE WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2013 | 3

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Bullied youth at risk for psychiatric disorders

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Artist Lily Yeh, who uses art for social change and justice, shares about her international experiences with students Tuesday evening.

Art for the world

by Andrew LuoTHE CHRONICLE

Adults who were bullied as children may have a higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders and depression.

Researchers at Duke Medicine showed that bullied children had an increased chance of developing adult psychiatric disorders while child bullies were at risk for antisocial behavior. This study is the first comprehensive study of its kind to analyze the relationship between peer victimization in childhood and psychiat-ric conditions in adulthood. It was pub-lished in the Feb. 20 edition of JAMA Psychiatry.

One interesting finding from the study was that while victims of bullying tended to develop emotional problems in adulthood, the peer bullies themselves had a higher risk for antisocial disorder, said William Copeland, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and lead author of the study.

“[Antisocial disorder] is the pattern of behavior categorized by a willful dis-regard for others, which sounds a lot like what bullies do,” Copeland said. “The bullies that mistreated kids when they were younger are the same ones that end up bullying adults.”

The data was gathered from the Great Smoky Mountain Study, a population-based sample that followed 1,420 chil-dren starting in 1993—an observation period of 20 years. The participants were interviewed annually until they were 16

years old and periodically in later years.The publication of the study coin-

cides with another popular anti-bullying movement. A viral video addressing the effects of bullying was posted online one day prior to the study’s publication. The video, which features a poem titled “To This Day” by Shane Koyczan, has gar-nered over 4.7 million views on YouTube to date. The video hopes to “have a far reaching and long lasting effect in con-fronting bullying,” according to the on-line description.

Since the study has been published, Copeland noted that he has been receiv-ing emails from people across the coun-try and around the world, many of whom hold on to the childhood experiences in which they were harassed and bullied. Although he had not yet watched the entire video, Copeland said Koyczan’s poem echoes the same sentiments as the email responses he has received.

“Just seeing the study and reading about [bullying] brought up strong emotions,” Copeland said. “As a society, we need to start thinking about bully-ing and kids harassing other kids. These are negative experiences that can have a lasting impact.”

The researchers are in the process of developing follow-up studies. Based on the study’s results, not all children who were bullied went on to have psychiat-ric problems. As such, the next step is

SEE BULLY ON PAGE 16


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Newly confirmed Hagel to start Pentagon workby Craig Whitlock

THE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — Chuck Hagel’s painful, prolonged and divisive nomina-tion battle in the Senate finally ended Tuesday, but it is only a prelude to the national-security challenges that will greet him on his first day of work at the Pentagon.

Hagel is scheduled to be sworn in Wednesday as secretary of defense after he scraped together enough support to win Senate confirmation by a 58 to 41 vote. Until the very end, he had to over-come fierce opposition from pro-Israel groups and a filibuster led by fellow Re-publicans who neither forgot nor forgave his withering criticism of the George W. Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq.

The Vietnam combat veteran will have less than 48 hours to move into his new office in the outer ring of the Pentagon before he probably will have to confront an even tougher challenge: slashing $46 billion in military spending — about 9 percent of the defense budget — by the end of September.

Unless President Barack Obama and Congress can conjure a last-minute deal, automatic budget cuts will start to take effect Friday. Most government agencies will be affected, but the Pentagon will take the biggest hit.

Hagel, a former two-term senator from Nebraska, will be forced to make some snap decisions about which mili-tary programs to preserve and which to sacrifice. Already, defense officials have said they may have to furlough up to 800,000 civilians, drastically scale back

training and keep ships in port, includ-ing an aircraft carrier strike group that was bound for the Persian Gulf.

“He’ll have to go through and make decisions on each and every one of those,” said William Cohen, a Republi-can who served as defense secretary in the Clinton administration. “I assume he’s been drinking from the fire hose already.”

On a personal level, Hagel will also have to quickly put aside any bruised feelings from an unusually bitter confir-mation process. His foremost political task will be to sit down with Republican

lawmakers who denounced his candida-cy and persuade them to reach a com-promise with Democrats to restore the Pentagon’s budget.

In a statement after the vote, Hagel said he was honored and promised to “work closely with Congress to ensure that we maintain the strongest military in the world.”

But Republicans who opposed Hagel gave little indication that they would give him a break.

“He will take office with the weakest support of any defense secretary in mod-ern history, which will make him less ef-fective in his job,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican in the chamber.

Pentagon officials already had to face questions about whether their new boss was a wounded duck.

“He understands the importance of healthy debate,” Pentagon press secre-tary George Little said. “And I think he is going to come in with the philosophy that he is going to be a team player in-side this building, and that will extend to the United States Congress.”

The White House faces a second con-firmation battle over Obama’s pick to lead the CIA, counterterrorism adviser John Brennan. Trying to clear Brennan’s path, the White House provided Con-gress with internal CIA e-mails and other documents related to the attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, last year.

The Senate Intelligence Committee reviewed the material in a classified ses-sion Tuesday. Several Republicans said Brennan was involved in crafting contro-

versial talking points on Benghazi, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she did not think the material would play a part in Brennan’s confirmation. The committee could send the nomination to the full Senate as soon as Thursday.

Hagel’s rough road to confirmation was unusual. Leon Panetta, the outgo-ing defense secretary, was approved by a vote of 100 to 0. Prior to Hagel, no defense nominee had run into trouble since 1989, when former senator John Tower, R-Tex., was defeated in a party-line vote amid revelations of womaniz-ing and heavy drinking.

Hagel’s personal conduct was never questioned. His supporters touted his bravery as a combat infantryman in Viet-nam, where he was awarded two Purple Hearts. As a Republican, he gave Obama an opportunity to claim a measure of bi-partisanship in his Cabinet and was ini-tially seen as a lock for Senate approval.

But the White House underestimated the degree to which Hagel had alienated his former GOP colleagues.

John McCain of Arizona and Jim In-hofe of Oklahoma, influential Repub-licans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, insisted throughout the confirmation battle that Hagel was still a “friend” but criticized him as unquali-fied, uninformed and ill prepared to lead the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, Inhofe said he still had “serious concerns” but softened his criti-cism a touch, pledging to work with Ha-gel to avert military spending cuts. “It is my hope that Senator Hagel will not

SEE HAGEL ON PAGE 6

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed the president’s nomination of Senator Chuck Hagel to fill the role of secretary of defense.


Connect with The Chronicle through social media for all the latest

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follow us on Twitter @DukeChronicle

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F T

Senior Luke Keohane, president of Kappa Sigma, declined to comment.

On Feb. 12, Jezebel wrote an article about a January party hosted by Sigma Nu’s Gamma chapter, called “Creepy Guys and Cutie Pies.” The party later acquired the nickname “Juve-niles and Pedophiles” in conversations around campus.

A post on the blog Policy Mic by senior Sunhay You referred to the event as a pre-game mixer between Sigma Nu and Pi Beta Phi sorority.

Junior Jack Riker, president of Sigma Nu, declined to comment.

Jenny Schmidt, assistant director of mar-keting and communications for Pi Beta Phi’s national organization, said Duke’s chapter is under investigation in an ongoing internal process, but declined to say whether the inves-tigation is related to the sorority’s involvement in the party.

Junior Jennifer Ross, president of the North Carolina Beta chapter, declined to comment on the party citing a national policy and deferred comment to Schmidt.

Transgressive pleasuresStarn said from an anthropological stand-

point, he thinks the appeal of hosting parties with controversial themes could be the result of fraternities wanting to be edgy or wanting to appear as rebellious groups that defy con-ventions.

“There’s a perception today, in the U.S. and at Duke, that everything is politically cor-rect, so that having a party that does some-thing around an ethnic theme is transgres-sive,” he said. “I would call it the pleasure of the forbidden.”

But junior Tom Boyle, president of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, said he thinks that party themes are often chosen without that degree of intentionality.

Around Thanksgiving 2011, Pi Kappa Phi hosted a “Pilgrims and Indians” party that invoked Native American stereotypes—an email invited attendees to tap into their “in-ner pocahotness,” for instance. After a guest column criticizing the party was published in The Chronicle and eventually gained at-tention from national media, the fraternity apologized for offending the Native American community in a letter to The Chronicle.

Before Pi Kappa Phi underwent scruti-

ny for the party, their process for choosing themes was largely unilateral, Boyle said. A single person in charge of the party would generally choose its theme, and would often send email invitations without discussing the theme with other members. The “Pilgrims and Indians” idea was generated because the girlfriend of one member charged with planning the party suggested it would be a good theme—she and several of her friends already had costumes that would fit the idea, he noted.

“People can get caught up in the competi-tion of hosting a funnier thing without think-ing about appropriateness, but I’ve never felt like anyone in our fraternity feels like they need to push the envelope,” Boyle said.

Sophomore Ray Liu, co-president of the Center for Race Relations, said he thought the recent party hosted by Kappa Sigma was offen-sive, but although he was involved with putting up fliers around campus to protest the party, he does not think there is anything “inher-ently wrong” with hosting a culturally themed party. Problems sometimes result, though, when such parties are hosted by groups that do not identify with the given culture.

“They’re not cognizant of the real pain that [a party] causes for those groups as individu-als and how that relates to their life stories,” he said. “It’s like one racial group is trying to contort what [another] culture may look like into its own image. The stories of people who come from those backgrounds are so real and diverse and painful in a lot of ways”

Ignorance and insensitivity about race and gender—whether intentional or not—could be a reason to explain the prevalence of these parties at Duke, Starn said.

“[It is] recycling the worst stereotypes about race and gender we’ve been trying to move beyond as a country for 30 or 40 years,” he said. “They’re taking us back to an older America when it was OK to make fun of peo-ple for their accents or because they don’t look like WASPs.”

Steven Foy, a doctoral student in the soci-ology department who researches the social psychology of status characteristics and race, said students often engage in unintentionally offensive behavior because they come to col-lege without having been exposed to much cultural diversity. This phenomenon could be the result of growing up in a small, homog-enous town or attending an all-girls or all-boys high school, among other reasons.

Another confounding factor is that the

prevalence of stereotypes in communities like Duke can lead individuals to be desen-sitized to remarks or references that are of-fensive.

“It’s very troubling that despite the fact we’ve had situations on campus where we’ve had racially insensitive events and then a re-sponse to those events… we continue to see this perpetuating,” Foy said. “It makes me wonder if some sort of deeper structural inter-vention is necessary.”

Toward structural changeBoyle noted that for Pi Kappa Phi specifi-

cally, the backlash from the party made mem-bers more aware of how their actions could be perceived as insensitive.

Pi Kappa Phi now chooses party themes based on suggestions from members or from the sororities with whom they mix. Once themes are proposed, the executive board sits down to comb through them and look for in-appropriateness, he said.

“There was a huge sense of embarrass-ment,” Boyle noted. “On the other hand, these cultural conversations aren’t always reaching students on a regular basis. These sorts of scandals have been the biggest sources of these dialogues on campus. In the future, you hope we can foster the conversation out-side of incidents.”

But Liu does not think the conversations that have come out of the wake of the Kappa Sigma party have been fruitful.

“You can start a social justice project out of KSig, but it’s just a one-time thing,” he said. “It’s not just about cultural change. You need structural change, too.”

Part of that structural change should in-clude creating a campus environment where individuals feel more comfortable express-ing their unease with party themes, said Amy Cleckler, gender violence prevention program coordinator at the Women’s Center.

“[Women] tell me that they and others do feel uncomfortable about the themes but because of intense social pressure to conform and not speak up, they say nothing,” Cleckler wrote in an email Thursday. “This culture of si-lence around sexism and inappropriate sexual behavior is a major factor in the startlingly low rate at which people report sexual assault.”

It is also important to realize how these parties target and marginalize women, Cleck-ler added. The focus of controversy for the Kappa Sigma party centered on race, but the invitation to that and other parties are also

implicitly sexist, requesting that women enter an objectifying environment. Because there are few repercussions on campus from other students or from University administrators, such instances of sexism become socially ac-ceptable, she noted.

“That sends the message that it is accept-able and even funny for women to be seen as seen as sexual objects, that it is alright for men in our community to ask women to dress and behave in ways that overlook their complexity as fellow human beings, and focus solely on their bodies and their potential availability to men,” Cleckler said.

More than the party itself, Liu said he was disappointed by many peoples’ negative reac-tions toward the Asian American Alliance for distributing fliers about the party on campus. Some of the fliers featured compromising pic-tures of students, although their faces were obscured.

“I don’t necessarily agree with everything minority groups do, but I can sympathize with why they do the things they do,” he said. “We just react out of pure anger and that doesn’t help the issue. At the same time, to say ‘Shame on you’ for being angry invalidates the issue.”

Foy said addressing such complex and multifaceted issues of underlying racist and sexist behavior is immensely difficult, but opening conversational spaces on campus can be a good start.

When he was an undergraduate at Emory University, the university facilitated discussion groups between students from different back-grounds after a series of racially fueled contro-versies occurred. The groups were voluntary, but many students chose to participate, he said.

“It really humanizes the process,” Foy said. “If you sit down with people in a space that’s supposed to be safe, where it’s not going to impact the way people view you on campus… it can be really helpful in getting perspectives that allow you to see multiple sides of the is-sue.”

Liu also noted that for progress to happen, students have to look inside themselves and remove themselves from the frameworks in which they are comfortable.

“You can only do so much with mandatory social justice programs,” he said. “All of these programs we try to establish here at Duke are great for moving things along, but if you don’t have a bedrock of humanity and some sem-blance of character, I think it’s very difficult for this campus to move forward.”

PARTYfrom page 1


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Inc. and Diamond Paper Company, both of which are in the same price range as most other comparable brands, Scott said.

Scott said he had no explanation for why one-ply paper was being used and acknowl-edged the need for a change.

“I just know, where I came from, we would never consider one-ply tissue,” Scott said. “In terms of texture and in terms of feel and in terms of usability, very few people use one-ply tissue.”

Several students noted their dissatisfac-tion with the toilet paper currently used.

“[The toilet paper] gives more than it takes,” freshman Ethan Chang said.

Other students noted that the comfort of the toilet paper should not be the only vari-able involved.

“I would like my toilet paper to be of good quality,” junior Joi McLaughlin said. “I ap-prove of them trying to fix the problem as long as it’s good for the environment and not harmful in any other way.”

Still, some students have not noticed any problems with the current one-ply paper.

“I don’t think it’s that bad,” freshman Wil-liam Kim said. “Sometimes [Housing, Dining and Residence Life] is not good at replacing toilet paper. But… I don’t find any difficulties using it. I think it’s fine.”

Scott says housekeeping is doing its best to replace all one-ply toilet paper as soon as possible.

“Students—and everyone—really deserve a quality tissue,” Scott said. “I wish I could change it out a lot quicker.”

PAPER from page 1

women giving themselves the flu to look thinner for the Oscars.

Rudy called the awards show “hor-rifying” but also interesting in terms of the jokes being widely received as humorous entertainment, which could reflect how aspects of one’s identity—including race, gender and ethnicity—serve as a platform for humor.

Kimmy Farmer, a freshman in atten-dance at the discussion, brought up the negative, self-imposed social boundar-ies at Duke that often prevent an open social atmosphere. Greek life in par-ticular, she noted, results in stereotypes about the people involved based on their association with an organization.

“The implied rank [of sororities] is based on the fraternities they associate themselves with,” Farmer said. “A lot of greek women do not like that.”

Rudy noted that similar discussions will hopefully take place through the Women’s Studies department in the fu-ture, in particular on the topic of sex. She said she hopes that the ideas pro-duced in discussions such as this one will disperse into the rest of the community.

“The issues they were struggling with is what Women’s Studies is designed to think about,” Rudy said. “If you’re con-fused about it, you should consider tak-ing one of our classes.”

SLURS from page 2

want to be known as the secretary of defense responsible for overseeing the gutting of our military,” Inhofe said.

Hagel did not help his cause with a mediocre performance during his con-firmation hearing. Supporters said he was already working hard to erase the episode from memory and predicted he would soon reach out to repair rela-tions in the Senate.

“It’s a two-way street,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who also sits on the Armed

Services Committee. “He’s already had many conversations. Obviously there has to be communication. It has to be honest, civil but honest. And I’m confi-dent that will happen.”

Apart from politics, Reed and other backers acknowledged that Hagel has his work cut out for him in managing the Pentagon, with its 2.2 million em-ployees, a tricky withdrawal from Af-ghanistan and a fiscal crisis.

“He has got probably the best prepa-ration one can have, given his military and executive and legislative experi-ence,” Reed said. “But it is a very daunt-

ing time.”Thomas Donnelly, a defense and

security analyst at the American En-terprise Institute, a conservative think tank, predicted that Hagel would wield minimal clout. He said the Obama ad-ministration dictates national-security policy from the White House and has marginalized the secretary of defense into a “ceremonial” job.

“It’s a slight exaggeration to say that,” Donnelly said. “It should be an important job. But if the White House is calling all the shots, there’s not much left for the secretary to do.”

HAGEL from page 4

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8 1. Freshman Jacob Blair goes casual by sporting a denim shirt from American Eagle, Old Navy pants and Vans Sneakers. 2. Sophomore Natasia Leung styles her mint-colored J Crew pants with handmade accessories. 3. Senior Claire Soorenson sports a truly international look with a cashmere scarf form Egypt, blazer from Australia, shoes from Senegal and rings from Turkey. 4. Sophomore Tre’Elis Scott matches a sporty Pacsun varsity jacket with a stylish tie from Burberry. 5. Freshman James Sawyer shows team spirit in style with his Miami Heats T-shirt and H&M cargo jacket. 6. Freshman Julia Mikhailova matches vibrant prints and colors with Express jeans and Nordstrom shirt. 7. Sophomore Sarah Rutherford brings used items back to life with her thrift shop denim jacket, corduroy skirt and combat boots. 8. Junior Paeng Sitnikong accessorizes with Forever 21 bracelets and graphic print scarf.

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SportsThe Chronicle

www.dukechroniclesports.com

WEDNESDAYFebruary 27, 2013

>> THE BLUE ZONE Check back with The Chronicle’s sports blog for all Blue Devil recruiting information. No. 10 recruit Justise Winslow will be on an unofficial visit to Duke Saturday.

SWIMMING & DIVING

MEN’S GOLF WOMEN’S GOLF

Students tent out for Saturday’s Miami game

Men look to break records at ACCs

SEE M. GOLF ON PAGE 11

SEE TENTING ON PAGE 12

SEE W. GOLF ON PAGE 11

MEN’S BASKETBALL

by Ashley MooneyTHE CHRONICLE

Even though the rest of the team has completed its ACC Championship meet, the men’s swim team is heading over to Greensboro, N.C. Wednesday for the ACC Championships.

The men’s swim team is starting off its competition in second place after total-ing 91 points in the diving events, which finished Saturday.

“Just based on [last weekend’s] div-ing going into the swimming portion of the meet we’re in second place behind Virginia Tech,” Duke head coach David Colella said. “That gives us some really good cushion to get the meet started with, and hopefully we will see some ab-solutely great performances from our men’s swimming as well.”

The ACC features five nationally-ranked teams, including No. 9 Virginia and No. 21 Virginia Tech. The Cava-liers (8-1-0, 3-0-0 in the ACC), who have swept the past five conference titles, are heading to the championships with the fourth seed, while the Hokies are enter-ing Wednesday’s competition as the top-seeded team.

Colella noted that he expects to see Duke (1-6-0, 0-5-0), which is ranked eighth in final conference standings, break more records in the coming days.

“For the last four or five years, we’ve been doing a pretty good job of break-ing the records, but then there’s a point where these times are really pretty incred-

ible times to be striving for,” Colella said. “To keep breaking them year in and year out is really tough and shows how hard our student athletes are working.”

Junior Nick McCrory finished com-petition Saturday as the first male diver to earn a sweep of three diving crowns in the men’s platform competition. He also secured first-place finishes in the 1- and 3-meter springboard. Senior Jordan Long, sophomore Clay Pinckney and freshman Deon Reid also scored points in diving events.

Beyond McCrory’s record-breaking performance, the men on the swim team are looking to break both personal and school records.

“We have some relays that could po-tentially break records,” Colella said. “Individually, [senior] Ben Hwang in the sprint freestyle, and Hunter Knight and Jim Zuponeck in the breaststrokes.”

Hwang, who ranks fifth in the con-ference in the 50 freestyle, is still trying to break his season-best time of 20.03, which he set in the Greensboro Aquatic Center Oct. 5, 2012. Knight, a junior, is currently Duke’s top performer in the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke, with times of 54.86 and 1:59.80, respectively. He is ranked fourth in the ACC for the 100 breaststroke. Zuponeck, a senior, trails with times of 55.79 in the 100 breaststroke and 2:05.71 in the 200.

The men’s team will wrap up its ac-tion Saturday.

JISOO YOON/CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO

This week K-ville will look much like it did before the UNC game, as tenters gather for the game against Miami.

Inclimate weather shortens tournament

Strong winds can’t topple the Blue Devils

by Michael SchreinerTHE CHRONICLE

After hovering near the top of the leaderboard for the past few days, the Blue Devils came up short Tuesday in the conclusion of their trip down to a water-logged Louisiana.

No. 2 Duke finished third in 2013 Allstate Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Golf Championship Tuesday after starting the final round one shot off the lead and re-maining in contention throughout the day. Playing at the par-72 English Turn Golf & Country Club in New Orleans, the team’s five-over-par final tally of 583 left it just three shots out of the playoff that featured Southern California and UCLA.

“We are right on the cusp,” head coach Dan Brooks said. “I’m pleased—we have had two tournaments now where we have finished up only behind the Cal-ifornia teams.”

Led by a steady performance by ju-nior Laetitia Beck, who finished tied for eighth, the Blue Devils had three golfers

finish in the top 20 individually. Thunderstorms kept players off of the

course Monday and reduced the Sugar Bowl to a two-day, 36-hole affair after or-ganizers abandoned the idea of replay-ing the second round. In an effort to avoid the weather delaying play further, the final round featured a shotgun-start with the lift-clean-place rules in effect through the green.

The storm that suspended play Mon-day dissipated Tuesday, but high winds in the morning led to higher second round scores. After the field put up a 74.12 aver-age Sunday, the scoring average jumped almost three strokes Tuesday.

The inclement weather turned out to be especially detrimental for the Blue Devils, whose day-two total of 300 was 17 strokes higher than their Sunday total.

“With the greens being wet and the wind not blowing extremely hard… that made that first day a good day for scoring,” Brooks said.

by Jackie KlaubergTHE CHRONICLE

The No. 9 Blue Devils’ chances of contending for a championship at the John Hayt Invitational in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. were spoiled by rainy weath-er and water-logged greens. Despite not playing the last 18 holes of the compe-tition, Duke finished in second place behind host North Florida in a tourna-ment including nine other teams in the top 50 of the latest Golfweek rankings. The Blue Devils fired a five-under 571, 12 shots behind the Ospreys.

“We are obviously always going to try to compete at the highest level we can compete at,” Duke head coach Jamie Green said. “North Florida is talented regardless of who they play. A couple of their best players had a couple good days, and that stretched them out from the rest of the field and made them hard to catch. But we were well above a lot of the teams there.”

Osprey players Kevin Phelan and Sean

Dale finished the tournament in first and second place, respectively. Phelan, a senior from Ireland, shot an impressive eight-under par in the first round and ultimately won the Invitational with a 13-under par 131.

Coming out strong from day one, the Blue Devils earned a second-place finish after the first round, six shots behind North Florida after posting a six-under par 282. Duke saw under-par perfor-mances from junior Austin Cody and freshman Mads Soegaard, who tied for 10th place with two-under 70s after the first 18 holes of play.

The Blue Devils were paired with the leading Ospreys Monday and finished the second round with a one-over par 289, taking them into the final day of play with at five-under par. Duke and North Florida were the only teams sit-ting under par entering the final round of play. The closest team to the Blue

by Jackie KlaubergTHE CHRONICLE

Although tents weren’t officially al-lowed in No. 3 Duke’s early-season matchup against Ohio State, line moni-tors are allowing students to pitch tents in Krzyzewskiville starting Tuesday night at 5 p.m. in anticipation of the Blue Dev-ils’ rematch against No. 5 Miami Satur-day night.

“When [the UNC game] finished, the first questions we got were, ‘can we set up tents and when can we set up tents for Miami?’” head line monitor Bradley Baird said. “There is a lot of excitement around this game. We are definitely go-ing to have a full house. This is going to be a lot like Ohio State. People started


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“But this last day was a lot different of a situation.”

Beck was the only Blue Devil whose score did not increase from round to round—her two even-par rounds paced the Blue Devils and gave her the over-all individual lead for a period Tuesday morning.

“I am used to playing in the wind—it is usually windy in Israel and then I

would travel to England, and of course it is windy there,” the Caesarea, Israel na-tive said. “I was very excited this morn-ing because I knew I had a pretty big ad-vantage over the other players.”

Senior Lindy Duncan, who is current-ly 12th in the nation in scoring, finished tied for eleventh after a final-round 75—including a 40 on the front—left her at one-over-par for the event.

Freshman Celine Boutier opened the tournament with a 70 but also fell victim

Devils was Central Florida, which had a score of 585, 14 shots behind Duke and 26 behind the leading Osprey.

“[The Ospreys are] a good team, they are a top-25 team regardless of how they play,” Green said. “If you put them on their home course, they are at a little bit of an advantage there. Teams that have seen their home course more regularly in different conditions and different wind patterns and directions allows them to feel more comfortable…You can be aggressive if you’ve played [the course] enough times to know what you can get away with and what you can’t.”

Duke senior Brinson Paolini fired a three-under 69 on Monday after shoot-ing a 71 on Sunday. The 69 marked the Blue Devils’ fourth round in the 60s this season. The remarkable round earned Paolini a spot in third place, tied with Cody who posted another 70, leaving the pair nine shots behind Phelan.

“Brinson led us…. He has played

W. GOLF from page 10 to Tuesday’s gusts and finished tied for 27th with a two-day total of 149.

Junior Alejandra Congrejo and se-nior Stacey Kim finished tied for 20th and 41st, respectively.

Duke faced another talented field in the tournament, as the top-four teams in the nation were present and only two of the 18 teams in the tournament are ranked outside the top 50 in the nation.

A playoff decided the team title after Southern California dropped a couple

strokes in the final holes to fall into a tie with UCLA at four-over-par. The Trojans rebounded in the extra holes, though, to beat their rival for the tournament win.

Baylor’s Hayley Davis—whose closing 68 was the lowest round on Tuesday by two strokes—took the individual title with a four-under 140.

The Blue Devils now have more than a month off until they head to Greens-boro, N.C. for the Bryan National Col-legiate at the end of March.

M. GOLF from page 10

THANH-HA NGUYEN/CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO

Junior Laetitia Beck finished tied for eighth Tuesday at the 2013 Allstate Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Golf Championship.

consistently for three-and-a-half years,” Green said. “He will probably be the first to tell you that he did not play his absolute best, he didn’t hit great golf shots all the time, but he handled things well…. If he didn’t get the wind right, he reacted well to that and got himself col-lected and ready for the next hole. He is able to compartmentalize each hole and not focus on the previous one and not worry about the one coming up.”

Duke will go across the country to Las Vegas, Nev. next weekend to compete in the Southern Highlands Collegiate Mas-ters. From the southeast to the north-west, the Blue Devils have a heavy road schedule ahead of them.

“We are fortunate to be able to pick some of the best tournaments in the country, and these guys have played well enough to garner those invitations…,” Green said. “We want to compete with the best in the country, and I know that all our teams at Duke do similarly with their schedules….We should be ready for NCAA finals when they get here.”

BRIANNA SIRACUSE/CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO

Junior Austin Cody tied for 10th place with freshman Mads Soegaard at the John Hayt Invitational.


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to camp out several days in advance for that [game]. It was a great game-day at-mosphere…. The message that I want to get out to the student body is that if you show up, we will do everything we can to get you in.”

When the teams met in Coral Gables, Fla. Jan. 23, the then-No. 1 Blue Devils suffered a demoralizing 27-point loss to the Hurricanes. The loss marked Duke’s second of the season, its first coming to N.C. State on the road the week be-fore. In a game that silenced the Cam-eron Crazies watching in dorm rooms across campus, Hurricane fans rowdily stormed the court and huddled around

TENTING from page 10 their team. Saturday’s game will likely be more competitive as the Blue Devils look to avenge a loss that exposed the team earlier in league play. The Blue Devils rebounded from the unsettling defeat with a 20-point win against Maryland just three days later.

“Through the first half I held onto the idea that we are a second-half team, and we will come back,” K-ville resident Le Qi said in regards to Duke’s lopsided loss to the ACC-leading Hurricanes. “It really got away from us. Our team had been playing so well, it seemed like it was really vulnerable [after the loss to Miami] and [invoked] a sense of fear that we wouldn’t do well in March.”

Coming off an under-attended blowout

against Boston College Sunday, loyal Cra-zies will take to the sidewalks outside of Cameron Indoor Stadium to secure their spots in the student section. Last time the Blue Devils faced the Eagles, they won by just one point on a last-minute free-throw from senior Mason Plumlee.

“Miami really beat us hard,” Qi said. “They shamed us, and we really want to get back at them. We want to come back and really hit them home….This would be a good chance to pound them to the ground…. We know Coach K is an awe-some coach, and he will push his players to do their best.”

Becca Gil, a K-ville resident whose family members are die-hard Hurricanes fans, expressed the excitement around

DAN SCHEIRER/CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO

Senior Ben Hwang will look to break records in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle events.

this family-dividing game.“I’m from Miami, [and] my parents

were at the game when we lost to them last time…. My whole family is UM except for me. I’m Duke all the way. I’m tenting out, so it will be really bad if we lose this one. It would be really awesome if we won this one and made things right again.”

Baird predicts a great game-day atmo-sphere in K-ville Saturday with grills and poster-making.

“[Crazies camping out for this game] demonstrates the enthusiasm that peo-ple have for Duke basketball,” Baird said. “It will be a great atmosphere in there. I invite everyone to come out to K-ville and enjoy game day and enjoy celebrat-ing Duke basketball.”

CAROLINE RODRIGUEZ/CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO

Junior Hunter Knight is the No. 4 in the ACC for the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 54.86.


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REVAMPED

For those who haven’t been following the melodrama unfolding in the Capitol, the next highly anticipated show takes place this

week. Proposed in the Budget Control Act of 2011 and then delayed by the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, the automatic federal budget cuts, or “sequester,” take effect on the fi rst of March, trimming defensive and non-defensive spending by a total of $85 billion. The lead roles of this tragedy: the party seeking tax increases on the villainous “wealthy,” and the party seeking greater belt-tightening due to severe, untreated bloating over the past decade. Where are they right now in reaching a deal to fi nally close the curtain on this horrendous per-formance of political representation and negotia-tion? Well that’s anyone’s guess.

With much of the banter in news and conversa-tion centered on who deserves the blame for this debauchery, the nature of this issue has become so twisted that the very politicians tasked with solving this fi scal crisis want no further part in the process. Put aside the name-calling, the invocations of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, and all other political fanfare, and what we have at the most basic level is a choice: Should the American people be forced to sacrifi ce on the behalf of the government’s recov-ery, or should the government that has increased spending under both Republican and Democrat leadership make changes on the behalf of the peo-ple who empower it?

To be clear, someone will have to pay for our out-rageous public debt, otherwise our sovereign nation will cease to exist as we know it. If one side has its way, the “wealthy” will be forced to bear the burden of shrinking the defi cit; if the other side has its way, no one will be forced to bear an unfair share of the bur-den, but support of welfare programs will be signifi -cantly reduced. Which is worse? Well let’s consider the fi rst approach. Taxes go up for the nation’s top earners (in fact, income and dividend taxes already have), and all the unemployed and minimum-wage earners feel pretty good that the greedy bastards are fi nally atoning for their glut. But the government fi nds out that even at 100 percent taxation rates, the wealthy cannot pay for even a fraction of spend-ing. Who’s next in line for the rate hike? Everyone else, eventually. Suppose you are a farmer who owns an apple orchard. You can choose to pick and sell all the apples now, or you can pick and sell only as many apples as you know are necessary to keep up with demand, letting the rest of the apples fall to the ground to create an even larger orchard for next year’s harvest. Now replace apples with national in-come (economic production), and then reconsider which is better for future growth.

Consider the opposite approach: Welfare pro-grams, which make up more than half of the cur-rent budget, are reduced to sustainable levels, and any future increase in taxes will be the same for

all earners. Believe it or not, the greatest consumer and producer welfare comes from natural market interactions, not from government interventions aimed at redistribut-

ing welfare so that everyone is equally happy. We don’t need more government welfare, because with a lighter tax burden, we can claw and scrap and earn our way to whatever welfare level we de-sire like our ancestors before us, who had no such luxury. We’re already forcing employers to provide more employees with healthcare, so why does the government still need to control the welfare sys-tem? Instead of forcing everyone to pay into these programs, why doesn’t the government mandate that insured citizens pay into a fund for his or her parents, making only direct relatives responsible instead of everyone across the board? Only the un-insured, incapable of providing for themselves be-cause of illness, age or disability would now need to draw from the government welfare pool, and this draw could be funded by a smaller tax rate on employed workers.

The bottom line is that regardless of whom you voted for last November, whom you voted for be-fore that and whom you plan on voting for in the future, the choice to be made over who should sac-rifi ce must be made now. Politicians do not care for our welfare; both sides just use those programs as bartering chips for their own benefi t. Whatever so-lution Congress and the president come up with, if any, will undoubtedly leave a sizeable portion of the voting population dismayed, so why are we bother-ing to accept their decision at all? Why not throw out the broken game of trading spending cuts for tax hikes, and come up with entirely reimagined, individualized welfare policies that will allow for lower taxes for everyone—there are more effi cient solutions beyond the current welfare system. We the people can come to a new agreement without deferring to politicians; we the people can fi nally say with authority “no more” to reckless defi cits; and we the people can choose to accept individual responsibility for our welfare instead of the current ineffi cient, collective system, removing the govern-ment from the once-sacred duty of supporting our relatives and compatriots, and all the while increas-ing our economic production through lifting the binds of heavy taxation. Let’s fi nally solve the fi s-cal crisis by thinking beyond the old, unsustainable model of spending.

William Picoli is a Pratt freshman.

commentaries14 | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2013 THE CHRONICLE

The C

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editorial

One stalemate too many

Ban laptops in class

william picoliguest column

Virtually every student has found herself in the fol-lowing situation: A profes-sor is trying to stimulate an in-depth conversation in a small seminar class but ends up talking to a dozen students with their eyes cast down at their computers. This scenario is also common: A large lecture where half of the students are browsing on Facebook, leaving the other half—who, because of audi-torium seating, are distract-ed by their peers—frustrated and inattentive.

In Tuesday’s editorial, we discussed the increasing role that online technology is playing in the classroom. Today, we turn to the most dominant use of technology in the classroom presently:

laptops. The vast major-ity of the time, laptop us-age detracts from the class-room experience. Before we spend further time and energy advancing fancy new

technology in the classroom, we should ex-

amine the most prominent and—in our eyes—detrimen-tal use of technology already. A simple move by professors to explicitly ban laptops, in both seminars and lectures, would signifi cantly enhance learning—perhaps beyond the introduction of even more technology into the classroom.

The educational benefi ts of banning laptops would be considerable. First, it would remove the temptation for students to let their browsers

amble to social media sites or other irrelevant content. Es-pecially in seminar classes, the quality of discussion is highly dependent on each student being fully present. A student’s extraneous use of laptops in class is tantamount to saying, “I am not going to give my full attention in class today,” a be-havior that is becoming ever more permissible.

Second, unnecessary lap-top usage is disrespectful to one’s classmates, creating a negative externality that af-fects students beyond the laptop user. This negative externality is not confi ned to seminars. Laptops can be distracting in auditorium-style lectures.

Finally, in a Coursera-fi x-ated age when the value of the physical in-classroom ex-

perience is often questioned, allowing laptop usage seems to be a form of giving up. Why convene class if students are half-present, constantly disturbed by text messages, games and Facebook? Cours-era is touted as a way for getting students to mentally engage in learning while out-side of the classroom. Lap-tops achieve the opposite ef-fect: mental disengagement while physically present in the classroom.

Of course, there are le-gitimate uses of laptops in the classroom. But laptops should be used sparingly and deliberately—only where there is an explicit need. For example, if the profes-sor wants the class to watch a YouTube video or quickly check a fact, laptops are war-

ranted. Note-taking, an oft-cited reason to use laptops, is usually a poor justifi cation. Pen-and-paper note-taking is a fi ne alternative, and the added convenience of typing does not outweigh the lap-top’s distracting effects.

What is the point of hold-ing class if people are not pay-ing attention? This is not just about respect; it is also about the necessity of a physical col-lege campus. The more time we spend on computers, the less important the on-campus college experience—which universities tout as a major benefi t of an elite educa-tion—becomes. For the sake of their students’ learning and the college experience at large, professors should not be afraid to ban laptops from their classrooms.

”“ onlinecomment

The biggest drawback from the movie is that when people go through major trials, there is a push towards more extrem-ist ideals. They move towards the ends of the spectrum. ... This movie showed that push towards the extreme, towards the more conservative.

—“Fedner Lauture” commenting on the column “ ‘Argo’ is bad, embarrassing and wrong. ”

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commentariesTHE CHRONICLE WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2013 | 15

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our news, sports, editorial and recess blogs.

In his recent State of the Union ad-dress, President Barack Obama ad-vocated for a raise in the minimum

wage, from $7.25 an hour to $9.00. The president’s call for feder-ally mandated higher wag-es was met with a fl urry of response from all sides of the political sphere, and debate has raged in its af-termath.

Conventional econom-ic wisdom on the mini-mum wage, for its part, is unequivocal. Despite the presence of a small dissenting minority, the vast majority of the literature on the subject—to the tune of over 85 percent of peer-reviewed studies—is in agreement that the mini-mum wage increases unemployment. Those who disagree with this conclusion, however, generally refer to a famous 1993 study by Princeton economists Da-vid Card and Alan B. Krueger in order to provide support for increases in the minimum wage.

The Card and Krueger study has re-ceived widespread attention, and has been cited in support of minimum wage hikes by President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, as well as for-mer Massachusetts Sens. John Kerry and Ted Kennedy. The appeal of the study to supporters of the minimum wage lies in its fi nding that, in a one-year survey of fast food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, employment at surveyed chains actually increased in New Jersey following an increase in the minimum wage. A host of subsequent studies have also failed to demonstrate an inverse re-lationship between the minimum wage and employment, which proponents of the minimum wage sometimes cite as further evidence in its favor.

Upon closer inspection, however, those who build their support for the minimum wage on the fi ndings of Card and Krueger might discover that the foundation of their argument is less than sturdy. The problems with the Card and Krueger study are, unfortunately, too numerous to list here—and include ev-erything from highly ambiguous survey questions to a total failure to adjust data for seasonal variations in fast food indus-try hiring practices—but a brief survey of the most substantial issues is in order.

For one thing, subsequent indepen-dent analyses have found it diffi cult to reproduce the results of the Card and Krueger study—a death knell in the world of scientifi c publication—even when they work from lists of restaurants that overlap by at least 25 percent with the list used in the original Card and Krueger study. In 1995, for instance, the conservative Employment Policies Institute compared Card and Krueger’s survey data with actual payroll data for fast food restaurants in the same location and over the same time period. The study found that, far from any increase in em-ployment, the far more reliable payroll data indicated that the minimum wage hike had actually resulted in an estimat-ed 5 percent decrease in employment.

But the EPI report doesn’t end there. The numbers used in the Card and Krue-ger study, it argues, rarely refl ect the payroll data. In fact, in a third of cases, the Card and Krueger study mistakenly lists job losses as job gains and vice ver-sa. A subsequent 1996 report from the same institution thus complained of the Card and Krueger study: “The depth of the fl aws is shocking.” “Not only are the Card-Krueger numbers wrong,” the re-

port went on, “they are often catastroph-ically wrong.” Independent economists David Neumark and William Wascher confi rmed the fi ndings of the EPI, con-

cluding, “The payroll data from the New Jersey-Pennsylvania minimum wage experiment are con-sistent with the prediction of the standard competi-tive model that minimum wage increases reduce employment of low-wage workers.”

There’s more. The vari-ability of the employment

change data in the original Card and Krueger study is, upon further inspec-tion, almost nonsensical. Neumark and Wascher argue that such a degree of variability—which somehow shows, for starters, one fast food restaurant moving from six full-time workers to 29 full-time workers and another moving from 50 full-time workers and 35 part-time workers to just 15 full-time workers and 18 part-time workers, all in the span of just eight short months—“raises serious doubts about the quality of their data.” The EPI concluded that such statistics, along with equally ab-surd data on product price fl uctuation, “defy reasonable explanation.”

Now, all of that being said, one meth-odologically fl awed study does not in-validate the case for an increase in the minimum wage. (It does suggest, how-ever, that those who wish to increase the minimum wage abandon the Card and Krueger study as their favorite piece of evidence.) In fact, the shortcomings of the Card and Krueger study, when viewed in combination with the failure of opponents of the minimum wage to empirically demonstrate the orgy of un-employment that they consistently pre-dict would follow proposals such as the president’s, serve best as evidence of the limitations of scientism and empiricism in economic thought.

When political and economic debates devolve into empirical battles like the minimum wage war, we run the risk of reducing our analyses to what econo-mists Russ Roberts and Don Boudreaux call “push button economics,” or, ac-cording to Boudreaux, the view that we can “press this economic variable up … and that economic variable down … and thereby improve society.” We forget that such policies have many hidden effects, many of which even vary between regions and industries. We may be so busy hag-gling over dubious statistical data that we ignore effects on price fl uctuations, business practices, employee benefi ts, workplace amenities, job exportation and a whole host of other complica-tions brought about by our minimum wage policies. Even these effects repre-sent only our “known unknowns,” or the things that we can plausibly say occur but have a diffi cult time quantifying. That is to say nothing of the “unknown un-knowns,” or the things we haven’t even thought to look for.

Despite the resolute certainty of the minimum wage empiricists, however, these things strike economists like Rob-erts as severely problematic for those who promote tampering with the econ-omy. “The people who are pushing for a large increase in the minimum wage are playing with people’s lives,” he worries. “I don’t understand their certainty.”

Chris Bassil, Trinity ’12, is currently work-ing in Boston, Mass. His column runs every Wednesday. You can follow Chris on Twitter @HamsterdamEcon.

Minimum wage warsNext week, Duke Students for Jus-

tice in Palestine (of which I am president) will be hosting Israeli

Apartheid Week, to which the entire Duke community is invited. The week is an internation-ally coordinated series of events geared toward edu-cating people about Israel as an apartheid system and to organize boycott, divest-ment and sanction (BDS) campaigns as part of a global movement.

The 2002 Rome Statute defi nes the crime of apart-heid as inhumane acts “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” The goal of the week is to show that Is-rael—whether it’s through home demoli-tions, road infrastructure, the separation wall, the Law of Return, indefi nite de-tentions or access to land ownership—is guilty of the crime of apartheid.

To say Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid is not to deny the Jewish people their safety and security, but to hold a state accountable for its oppression. The Israeli regime maintains its effective control and systematic oppression throughout the en-tire region. Within the Occupied Territo-ries, Palestinians live as a stateless people under military law with severely restricted movement while Israeli settlers enjoy full citizenship and much higher standards of living. With continued settlement devel-opment and an entire infrastructure built for those settlers, it’s diffi cult to continue to consider the West Bank “occupied.” Colonialism and apartheid describe the situation more aptly, with Palestinians living in what are essentially Bantustans with no hope for self-determination. Is-rael withdrew its settlements in Gaza in 2005, but its inhabitants still suffer from a siege and collective punishment from Israel. Arabs within Israel live under dif-ferent conditions from those in the Oc-cupied Territories or from refugees who are barred from returning, but they are still systematically discriminated against by the Israeli regime. They may have for-mal citizenship, but, according to Noam Chomsky, they are barred from control-ling or developing over 90 percent of the land. According to Judith Butler, “There are at least 20 laws that privilege Jews over Arabs within the Israeli legal system.”

Israel is not unique in its human rights abuses. It is imperative to stand up against all forms of military and economic domi-nation, especially when we ourselves are complicit in it. Israel, however, is unique in its “special relationship” to our own government. The U.S. State Department does not “accept the legitimacy of contin-ued Israeli settlement activity,” but we do not hesitate to provide billions of dollars a year in military aid that makes settle-ment expansion possible.

I unconditionally condemn the target-ing of civilians by Palestinian armed re-sistance groups. But none of my money

funds those killings. Any citizen who does could be prosecuted for providing mate-rial support for terrorism under the Pa-triot Act. Our tax dollars and some of our

University’s investments in certain corporations, however, fund Israel’s hu-man rights abuses. Our politicians celebrate this funding as standing by a close ally. Our University administrators remain si-lent, refusing to take re-sponsibility in how we are complicit in these human rights abuses by hiding be-

hind the excuse of “it’s a complex issue.”Our public discourse is severely limited

in the realm of foreign policy, especially with regards to Palestine/Israel (just look at how Chuck Hagel’s confi rmation hear-ing has progressed). But there is also dif-fi culty speaking openly on the topic even on college campuses. Recently, Brook-lyn College came under threat of losing public funding because its political sci-ence department agreed to host a talk on BDS. Ultimately, the lecture continued as planned, but it reminded me of the benefi ts of attending a private university during this time of austerity where our elected offi cials threaten the ideals of a free exchange of ideas and learning in our public institutions.

In late 2004, President Brodhead and the administration came under heat from some members of the community for allowing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement to hold its national conven-tion on campus. The Duke community was forced to question its academic ideals and ultimately succeeded, but we came up short in a larger moral responsibility. With regards to divestment from Israel, President Brodhead echoed his prede-cessor Nan Keohane in calling it “a very blunt instrument to address an extremely complex issue around which there is little consensus and a great diversity of opin-ions both in the campus community and in the broader society. … I am aware of no change in the situation either in the Middle East or on campus that would jus-tify moving to a different policy.”

So I ask President Brodhead and the Duke community: What kind of change are we waiting for? Consensus is already shifting at other top universities, with the Brown Advisory Committee on Cor-porate Responsibility in Investment Poli-cies issuing a statement in which they found Israel “indisputably engaged in ongoing systemic abuses of human rights and violations of international law.” But we shouldn’t have to wait for other top universities in order to follow suit. The injustices are clear. A just, non-violent course of action is available. Should we wait for the change, or shall we be the change-makers who call upon their uni-versity to respect the rights and dignity of all human beings?

Ahmad Jitan is a Trinity senior and the pres-ident of Duke Students for Justice in Palestine. His column runs every other Wednesday. You can follow Ahmad on Twitter @AhmadJitan.

End Israeli apartheid

chris bassilhuman action

ahmad jitanindecent family man


to figure out what predisposes people to develop disorders, as well as to find possible pre-vention techniques, Copeland said.

“We connected genetic data from the very beginning of the research, and we want to look at genetic markers to see who is going to have the most prob-

lems long-term,” Copeland said.Many Duke students did not

find the results of the study to be a surprise. Freshman Rishi Narula noted bullying has a negative impact, especially on young children.

“I was never bullied, but I think it does have an impact on kids that carries through to their adulthood,” Narula said. “Most people create a basis or norm for the ways things are and their place in their respec-

tive social groups during those important developmental stag-es of life.”

The effects of bullying may even apply to people who may appear outwardly happy, noted junior Savion Johnson.

“I know people who were bullied in high school that are very successful now,” Johnson said. “However, this is just how it appears on the surface—it’s hard to tell how they are doing emotionally.”

BULLY from page 3

JESSIE LU/THE CHRONICLE

Actor Timothy Mooney performs a one-man show called “Moliere Than Thou” at the Smith Warehouse Tuesday evening in an event sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute and romance studies.

Holier than thoustructures, local support systems, colonization processes and risk management policies.

Beth Monnin, vice president for communications and extension for Phi Mu—which was previously at Duke from 1934 to 1987—said the organization is happy to have the opportunity of possibly recolo-nizing at Duke.

“We are excited that our val-ues directly complement the mis-sion of the college panhellenic to challenge and educate students in the areas of leadership, cultural awareness, personal and group de-velopment, scholarship and civic responsibility,” she said.

Representatives from the other two sororities could not be reached for comment.

Once all the presentations have finished, the committee will make a recommendation to the Panhel executive board, which will then in-vite one organization to colonize on campus. The council hopes to char-ter the new sorority by Spring 2014.

One of the driving factors be-hind Panhel’s decision to expand was the fact that pledge classes are currently at capacity for all current chapters.

“Chapters felt that they were get-ting too large and couldn’t have as close of a sisterhood bond because they weren’t able to get to know each other as well,” said Panhel President Katie Howard, a junior. “Along with slightly decreasing in-coming pledge class sizes, having another chapter opens up an op-

portunity for other women who haven’t found their match within the Panhel community yet.”

Sophomore Katie Shpanskaya, a new member of a sorority, said that she believes the new soror-ity will only increase the number of women involved in greek life and will not make pledge classes smaller. She said, however, that she does not think large pledge classes are an issue.

“I think a big pledge class might actually be a good thing,” Shpans-kaya said. “You get access to a lot more people at Duke. I joined to become part of community, and a larger pledge class and sorority is very much beneficial to that.”

Kayla Hudson, an unaffiliated junior, was a participant in the “Science of Selection” discussion which took place Thursday and was hosted by the Kenan Institute for Ethics. The discussion brought together members of the greek or-ganizations, selective living groups and independent communities to talk about the nature of selective groups on campus. Hudson said the discussion suggested that all Duke students crave a feeling of inclusion.

“[An additional sorority] is a good thing considering that I know that a lot of people who want to be in greek organizations get turned down,” said Hudson. “I feel like this sorority will provide more people with a sense of com-munity and belonging.”

Gamma Phi Beta, Phi Mu and Sigma Kappa are scheduled to present March 26, 27 and 28, re-spectively.

PANHEL from page 1

Feb. 27, 2013 issue

Documents

Transcript of Feb. 27, 2013 issue