INC NEWS - Fw: [DukeDurhamTownGown] Student column re. Duke on social issues and Duke-Durham relations

Tue Apr 5 18:50:07 EDT 2005

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Susan Kauffman 
forwarded by Mike Shiflett to the INC Listserve with permission

April 05, 2005 
My Duke pride 
Hazzards of duke 
by Andrew Collins 

Hate to admit it, but I’ve never been much of a Duke basketball fan. I 
started hating the Blue Devils around the time they met my Arkansas 
Razorbacks in the 1994 men’s championship game (and—ahem, Scotty 
Thurman—lost). Matriculating at Duke meant I had to lose the hate, and I 
did, but being a sports fan is serious business to me. I like to see the 
team do well, but can’t artificially manufacture that diehard love I have 
for the Hogs. 

My Duke pride comes from something different. I am happiest to call myself 
a Duke student when the leaders of our institution show courage and deep 
morality in the public sphere. That may not be as exciting or universal as 
a J. J. Redick three, but it is a very real pride to me. And given the 
frequency with which the administration has done right in the past few 
years, my pride is getting to be a darn near permanent condition. 

Duke Stores is a great place to start. Last March, Director Jim Wilkerson 
severed Duke’s relationship with Lands’ End due to the company’s alleged 
blacklisting of union workers in El Salvador. Partly due to the pressure 
exerted by Duke and other activist universities, Lands’ End agreed to fix 
its problems in a lightning-quick 36 days after Wilkerson’s announcement 
and subsequently renewed its contract with Duke. 

The University has successfully taken this step before, most recently 
against the New Era Cap Company in 2001. Wilkerson and his Allen Building 
counterparts are hardly impetuous, but when a company that services the 
University is falling short, they are generally good at taking a firm line 
and getting results. 

For this reason, I am inclined to trust President Richard Brodhead and 
Senior Vice President for Public Relations and Government Affairs John 
Burness in their handling of alleged worker mistreatment by Angelica Corp., 
another of Duke’s corporate partners. On the face of it, local activist 
organizations seem to make valid points about Angelica’s failure to provide 
workers with a “living wage.” Durham County agreed, severing its contract 
with the company. But there’s a lot that a bunch of scruffy protesters 
might not know about the situation. On something as complex as labor 
practices, the best we can do is put our most righteous people in positions 
of power and trust them to act well. 

Burness and Brodhead (and before him, Nan Keohane) have, in fact, 
established a tremendous track record on a wide variety of social issues. 
Duke’s underreported decision to raise its minimum wage to a de facto 
living wage of $10 per hour was a triumph for its low-end workers. I’m 
proud of that decision. 

Our University is perhaps most misunderstood when it comes to our 
relationship with the city of Durham. For years, a vocal minority of 
intransigent anti-Duke zealots have capitalized on the latent uneasiness 
many Durhamites have with our institution and have made our students’ and 
administrators’ lives difficult. Duke offers its police force to patrol off 
East Campus? Count on these people to object. Duke begins plans for a 
Central Campus renovation that will bring retail traffic into the city? 
They cry foul. No matter how often Burness assures this coterie of enraged 
citizens that Duke does not intend to crush unsuspecting Ninth Street 
mom-and-pop operations, they continue to make the Central renovation as 
miserable as possible. 

Thank goodness our administrators are patient and have a plan that promises 
to strengthen Ninth Street by putting a pedestrian thoroughfare from West 
through Central to Ninth and then to East. Thank goodness the Duke-Durham 
Neighborhood Partnership Initiative continues to strengthen local civic 
projects. Imagine if Duke were actually antagonistic toward Durham! 

The list of noble and good projects goes on. From genuine devotion to 
academic freedom to the Women’s Initiative, our administration has been 
more courageous than most of us realize. I am also proud of the men’s 
basketball program—not because of the number of Ws, but because it is the 
cleanest program in a dirty sport. 

Some people will never be satisfied by Duke’s social conscience. I’m glad 
we have those long-hairs around to make sure we are not getting lulled into 
a false sense of security, but I am not among their number. Good people are 
running the show. Go Duke. 

Andrew Collins is a Trinity senior and former University editor of The 
Chronicle. His column appears Tuesdays. 
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v?TARGET=printable&article_id=425271e422fe5 

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