October, 2014

TOWERVIEWOCTOBER 2014 | VOL. 16 | ISSUE 3

on the housebetter with age fist bumps & french friessports and state

tales from duke’s student-run bar

a half-century into his duke career, victor strandberg’s best days are yet to come.

javon singletary knows how to make every duke

student feel like a regular.

the ncaa has problems. congress thinks it CAN

FORCE the solution.

2 TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE

Miró: The Experience of Seeing is organized by the Seattle Art Museum and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

SEPT 14

FEB 22 through

nasher.duke.edu/miro

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Joan Miró, Paysage (Landscape) (detail), 1974. Acrylic and chalk on canvas, 96 1⁄16 x 67 ½ inches (244 x 171.5 cm). Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain. © 2014 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, New York / ADAGP, Paris, France.

TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE 3

TOWERVIEWOCTOBER 2014 - VOL. 16 - ISSUE 3

CONTENTS05

06

08

12

16

22

24

26

31

TOWERVIEW STAFF

CARLEIGH STIEHM

HAILEY CUNNINGHAM

DANIEL CARP

GEORGIA PARKE

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

JESSICA LANCE AND JACLYN ONUFREY

JILLIAN APEL

GEORGIA PARKE

SAVORY SANDWICHESDurham’s best thing since sliced bread.

THAT TIME I...Took an 11,000-foot leap of faith.

LORD OF THE LOOPJavon Singletary dishes out memories with a side of food.

SPORTS AND STATEWhy the government wants to fi x college athletics.

BEER AND SPACE INVADERSThe Hideaway: Duke’s student-run watering hole.

PHOTO ESSAYScenes of fall break.

EXPLORING THE RUBENSTEINA peek at Duke’s rarest manuscripts.

50 YEARS AT DUKEThrough the eyes of Victor Strandberg.

THE FINAL EXAMJulian Salazar throws clay in between schoolwork.

CONTENTS

ON THE COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ELYSIA SUStep 1: “Story about a bar...needs beer.”Step 1: “Story about a bar...needs beer.”Step 1:Step 2: “Okay, I’ll go get some.”Step 3: Few beers later...Step 4: “Okay, now let’s fi nd a picture of beer.”Step 5: “Bartender rocking a classic ‘80s porn stache—that’s a winning combo.”


EDITOR’S NOTE

letter from the editors

Dear readers,

This time last year, all of our friends were drunk at Oktoberfest.Whether it’s tenting for the Duke-North Carolina game or climbing Baldwin Audito-

rium, we like to think there are activities here that create an authentic Duke experience. It’s these moments—big or small, intellectual or slightly moronic—that give us a special connection to our University. We know they cannot be recreated anywhere else.

Another tradition each class buys into the Fall of their junior year is studying abroad. Last year, 505 of the 1,725 juniors packed their bags and fl ew across the pond to drink in Germany, country hop and learn too, of course.

But while most of our friends were expanding their knowledge of draft beer, we spent the majority of our time editing articles and making the fi nal touches to the daily paper in 301 Flowers. Our jobs were so time consuming that any of our friends still on campus forgot that we hadn’t gone abroad. And to be honest, sometimes it seriously—for lack of a better word—sucked.

Here’s the thing, our friends abroad did not have to deal with a squirrel running over their personal belongings as they worked on major supplements or wrote papers from the third fl oor of Flowers. And our friends abroad certainly did not have to learn the art of attending class and acting like a human being on (three hours of) no sleep. Let’s not get started on the angry emails and phone calls...

But given the opportunity to make the choice again, we would gladly choose our sleep-deprived life as college journalists all over again (though we could probably have benefi ted from eating less buffalo chicken pizza). It is very rare to be given an opportunity at the age of 20 to take complete control of an organization that guides a signifi cant portion of campus dialogue. Being an uppermast editor on The Chronicle allowed us to take a role in University life that our fellow students will never experience. We called administrators in the middle of the night, we were recognized by Duke’s upper echelons, we wrote stories that—for better or for worse—made waves nationally.

When our friends returned to us last January, they tried to explain how four months in Spain or Australia had completely changed their life. We looked at them and laughed.

Living in another country can teach you a lot of valuable lessons—and they probably learned some of them—but we invite them to give a semester living in 301 Flowers a shot. Last year was a crash course in running our own small business—managing a staff, creating and implementing strategies, dealing with crippling pressure and making split-second decision making. One false move could get us sued.

There was no way you could really prepare for it. We learned on the job, just like some-one would learn to navigate an unfamiliar European city with a language barrier. And, hey, we got through a decent amount of beer too.

A year later, we get to look back on our abroad experience, of sorts. Was it the most fun that we’re ever going to have? Probably not. But was it something we can regard—with-out a doubt—as life-changing? Absolutely.

Towerview is a subsidiary of The Chronicle and is published by the Duke Student Publishing Company, Inc., a non-profi t corporati on independent of Duke University. The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of Duke University, its students, faculty, staff , administrati on or trustees. Columns, lett ers and cartoons represent the views of the authors.

To reach The Chronicle’s editorial offi ce at 301 Flowers Building, call (919) 684-2663 or fax (919) 684-4696. To reach The Chronicle’s business offi ce at 103 West Union Building, call (919) 684-3811. To reach The Chronicle’s adverti sing offi ce at 2022 Campus Drive, call (919) 684-3811 or fax (919) 684-8295. Contact the adverti sing offi ce for informati on on sub-scripti ons. Visit The Chronicle and Towerview online at dukechronicle.com

©2014 The Chronicle, Box 90858, Durham, N.C. 27708. All rights reserved. No part of this publicati on may be reproduced in any form with-out the prior, writt en permission of the business offi ce. Each individual is enti tled to one free copy.

EDITORS-IN-CHIEFDANIEL CARP AND DANIELLE MUOIO

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTORCREATIVE DIRECTOR

ASSOCIATE EDITOREXECUTIVE EDITOR

ELYSIA SUELIZA STRONGHAILEY CUNNINGHAMCARLEIGH STIEHM

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSJILLIAN APEL, DANIEL CARP, HAILEY CUNNINGHAM, JESSICA

LANCE, JACLYN ONUFREY, GEORGIA PARKE, CARLEIGH STIEHM

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERSANTHONY ALVERNAZ, SOPHIA DURAND, DARBI GRIFFITH, EMMA

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TOWERVIEWTHE CHRONICLE’S

NEWS AND CULTURE MAGAZINE

DANIEL CARP DANIELLE MUOIO


THAT TIME I...FELL OUT OF THE SKY

As we broke the line of thin, wispy clouds, I was certain it was time to jump. A quick glance at the altitude barom-eter on my wrist, however, proved me wrong—we were at 3,000 feet, less than halfway to our 11,000-foot summit. The plane was tiny, with no seats and only room for one paying customer at a time, and, to be honest, as we ascended toward 4,000 feet, I felt like jumping had become the less scary alternative to the shaking of the old metal contraption.

It had only been three days earlier that I decided skydiving was in my future. The idea of jumping out of a plane had always been alluring to me, but in the “I think it is cool when other people do it” kind of way—like nose piercings and eating cake frosting straight from the jar. But the al-lure proved to be too compelling, and I found myself researching the drop zones of North Carolina.

After coercing my former roommate into joining in this literal leap of faith, I discovered all of the well-known, com-mercial skydiving companies in the Triangle area were booked solid for the weekend we wanted to jump. Not wanting to lose our nerve, we found a location Williamston that was ready to accommodate us whenever we were ready. Their website wasn’t as polished as most of the Raleigh-based companies, but when I spoke to John, the owner, on the phone, he sounded nice and didn’t ask me how much I weighed as previous companies had; I was sold.

I wasn’t nervous when I booked our ap-pointment time. I wasn’t nervous when we pulled up to what seemed like the world’s smallest airstrip. The first time I was really nervous was when I realized the plane we were going up in could only take us one at a time. I had prepared myself to jump out of a plane. That, I was okay with. But not jumping at the same time as my roommate seemed like a total shock. Naturally, she vol-unteered me to go first.

John walked us through the process of putting on our harness and reviewed all

of the safety protocol for what we would do while we were in the air. There was no need for me to wear a helmet, he said, if we fell without a parachute from 11,000 feet, there wasn’t much a helmet was going to do for us.

“Don’t worry, though,” he cautioned. “You are falling with me on your back. If you die, I die. And I really love myself, so I don’t want to let that happen.”

He was joking, of course, but it did pro-vide a sense of comfort that he had just as much invested in me not plummeting to my death as I did. The first time anyone goes skydiving, they do so in tandem with an instructor that has completed more jumps than I can even fathom. John had surpassed 700 when we met.

While we were ascending, John told me I was the smiliest passenger they had ever taken up to skydive. I hadn’t even realized I was smiling—the anxious excitement had taken over. I was focused on looking out the tiny window as the ground got more and more distorted—I had opted not to wear my glasses under my clear protective gog-gles. I felt amazed by how far I was able to see. It was a beautiful day with blue skies, a few wispy white clouds and light winds that John described as “perfect.”

John pointed out several different riv-ers that he said defined the geography of the eastern section on North Carolina. There was talk that we would see the At-lantic Ocean, but I could never determine whether or not that was a joke. I saw a lot of amazing things from that plane, but to be honest I do not remember a lot of the flying experience. This is because when you are ready to jump out of a plane, an amaz-ing phenomenon called “diver’s brain” oc-curs, which makes you forget about every-thing else going on—you just focus on the jump you are about to make.

The plane ride felt simultaneously too long and incredibly short. All my life I have been led to believe that airplane doors should only be open while we are on the ground. Plane doors that open in the air re-

STORY AND PHOTOS BY CARLEIGH STIEHM


devil moment resulted in a hot air balloon crash in Turkey. Skydiving was no differ-ent for me. A command to land on my feet fell upon deaf ears, so I concluded my dive by falling on my face. But the grass was soft and the skies were blue, and I knew I would have another chance to stick the landing someday.

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sult in people being sucked out, or so the media would lead me to believe. So, the shock of the immediate suction and pres-sure of popping the plane door open at 11,000 feet was more than jarring—it was paralyzing. But when you have a large man strapped to your back, even if you are too disoriented to move your legs, somehow you end up with your feet dangling high above the Earth.

I know there was a countdown. I know there was a moment where I gave the okay for us to go. But I don’t remember those parts. What I remember is the feeling of falling so quickly that it didn’t feel like I was falling. I remember looking straight ahead of me only to realize that we were in the midst of a fl ip, and the ground was no-where in sight. I remember the feeling of air on my face as it rushed past at 120 miles per hour while I felt like I was suspended in infi nite space.

And I remember that it ended too quick-ly. John said we fell for almost a minute, but the whole thing rushed by for me. He pulled our parachute and we accelerated upward. I immediately knew I wanted to do it again. I wanted to feel the rush of the jump and the freedom of the air around me.

My roommate said she and John had a nice conversation when they fl oated back toward Earth under the parachute. He and I didn’t—I felt like my harness was choking me, and I just wanted to enjoy my amazing view.

It would be a story of my risk taking without a surprise ending. My last dare-


STORY BY HAILEY CUNNINGHAMPHOTOS BY DARBI GRIFFITH

LORD OF THE LOOP


Smiles and shakes await Javon’s customers.

Every other Thursday, a few employ-ees and managers of The Loop Pizza Grill and a few of its regular

college customers get together to have a little tournament and play Mario Super Smash Brothers.

“We get into it, but it’s not just about the competition,” said Javon Singletary, one of the four founding fathers of these video game nights and an employ-ee at The Loop. “When you really look at it, it’s just a good vibe hangout with students. It’s our fun, our little holiday.”

The players inquire about each other’s weeks and offer advice to one another, sometimes serious and some-times playful.

“You can’t use food points on grocery bills in the real world,” Singletary said.

Singletary, the outgoing 29-year-old Durham resident, acts as the unofficial greeter and always-friendly face of the on-campus eatery. His boisterous laugh carries through the restaurant, even on the most crowded nights.

After leaving the former campus res-taurant Alpine Bagel for The Loop and a pay increase five years ago, Singletary embraced his role as the face of the campus eatery. He even jokingly signs some of his messages, “Javon, aka I am The Loop.” Although Singletary proudly touts his status as the core of the cam-pus diner, he is not alone.

“Javon is basically the face of The Loop,” said Nicholas Monday, one of the general managers of The Loop and Singletary’s bosses. “He’s such a social person—well-known and well-liked—so we like to get him out front in the restau-rant and at any event.”

For our interviews, Singletary situ-ates himself so that he can survey the restaurant’s most heavily trafficked ar-eas. He repeatedly smiles and salutes to friends across the restaurant, and his regular customers frequently come over for a fist bump or unique handshake. To these buddies, Singletary then explains who I am, to which every one of them responds along the lines, “J is the best.” He beams. Relaxed and confident, Sin-gletary is clearly in his natural habitat.

“To be honest, I love it here,” he said. “I keep telling them each and every

day, ‘I am The Loop. This [the interior of The Loop] is the body, and I am the heart.’”

Singletary identifies The Loop as his second home. While he weekly works four 12 or 14-hour shifts from noon to closing, he does not complain. In fact, he finds the bright side of his long hours—he only has to come in four days per week.

Before starting work each day, Single-tary says a brief, two-minute prayer.

“I say, ‘Dear God, please let me have a good day today,’” Singletary said. “I thank Him and pray that nothing goes wrong and everyone else will have a good day, too.”

Singletary tries to bring this sympathy into each interaction with The Loop’s cus-tomers.

“I see a lot of interesting things and a lot of interesting characters,” Singletary said. “So that’s very fun and very cool.”

Students also look forward to their con-versations with Singletary at The Loop.

“He can always brighten my day,” said junior Kolapo Aluko. “I know the same goes for a ton of other students, too.”

Singletary said that his best stories are from the festivities on Last Day of Classes.

“I get it,” he said. “You went to class for so many days, so you can finally do what-ever you want. You can finally be yourself.”

One LDOC, some students attempted to burn the chairs on the patio of The Loop’s old location. On another, he was involved in a small food fight in the res-taurant itself. Singletary enjoys telling the stories, his arms wave wildly as he pleads with the students not to set fire to the furniture and his laugh bursts through as

he describes the “great” food fight.Singletary’s most prized LDOC mem-

ories, however, do not involve crazy an-tics, but signs of appreciation from his favorite student customers.

“I love when my regular customers come in and they just tell me how much they appreciate me,” Singletary said. “I am glad they came into my life.”

In fact, LDOC marks the beginning of the worst period for Singletary—the almost empty campus during summer and the departure of his eldest regular customers.

“In the summertime, there is no one to talk to,” Singletary said. “I hate to see the people who go that I’ve become so attached to, but there is a point in peo-ple’s lives where we’ve done our thing, and now they need to go do their thing.”

The constantly shifting cliental on a college campus is the hardest aspect of his job for Singletary to grow accus-tomed to.

“[The students] tell you about their days, and you tell them about your days—then they’re gone,” he said. “I get too attached. And you’ve got these new guys coming in and you’ve got to build new friendships with them.”

Singletary discussed a wide range of topics: his favorite actors (recalling Will Ferrell’s work made him want to go home and watch Elf), his role model (his childhood best friend and “partner in crime”), his favorite food at The Loop (the barbeque chicken sandwich) and his spirit animal (after much debate and some Googling, he settled on the husky).

It does not matter what topic of con-versation I bring up, though. Singletary


“I STILL HAVE A LOT TO LEARN,” SINGLETARY SAID. “BUT, ONE DAY, I’M GOING TO RUN THIS PLACE.”

consistently returns back to the same talking point—his love for and appre-ciation of his customers. “My favorite part is that I get to make sure everyone is happy,” Singletary said. “I care a lot about a lot of people, especially you guys. I care about the students, and I want them to know that.”

Singletary said that his customers regularly come in and talk to him, detail-ing their problems. He attempts to act as a sounding board and comforter to the students. Case in point, Singletary prom-ised to call my editor if I did not receive an A+ on my story.

“I do what I can to make sure every-one is happy and gets what they want,” he said. “If not, I ask, ‘How can I help you? How can I fix this situation?’ or

sometimes I just listen.”Appropriately, Singletary will soon be a

full-fledged bartender at The Loop’s bar. He has been learning the ropes in other areas of the restaurant as well, in hopes of moving up into management levels.

“I still have a lot to learn,” Singletary said. “But one day, I’m going to run this place.”

With the help of his managers, he anticipates continuing to climb up the ladder at The Loop. Singletary admits that there is a lot of progress for him to make, especially on the business side of operations. Nevertheless, Singletary is determined to own his own business.

“I’m almost at 30,” he said. “Whoo, I’m getting scared, getting very scared. It’s about time to hang up the gloves soon. But no, I’ve got a long way to go,

and I got plenty of time. I’ve got to get this restaurant first, then I can think about [other things].”

Singletary has wanted to own his own business since high school, and he has been in the restaurant business just as long. His high school was part of an oc-cupational course and study program. To earn his degree, Singletary had to work, and he found employment at a local Dur-ham restaurant.

“It was great because the whole thing was basically Job 101,” he said. “It pre-pared me for the real world.”

In addition to this program, Singletary was involved in Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He credits JROTC with giving him a new outlook on the world—one that included discipline and reward-

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his goal is to greet each customer with his well-known smile and enthusiasm.

“I try always to be positive and happy and cheerful with everyone,” he said. “I have a big heart for everybody—even those of you guys who I don’t know, be-cause I will [know] you.”

The secret to Singletary’s almost-con-stant liveliness?

“Being yourself helps you be posi-tive,” Singletary said. “When you’re happy with who you are, you’re happy. Sometimes, I have those days, but I don’t let that get me down.”

Singletary encourages his regular cus-tomers to do the same.

“I accept you [the students] for who you are,” he said. “Thank you for just being you. I am just so grateful for that.”

When he is not working and learning at The Loop, Singletary says he sleeps, plans and dreams about his future.

“I am thinking about what’s next for Javon,” Singletary said. “I know that the next chapter includes The Loop. I just don’t want to know what the end is go-ing to be until I’m done writing. Until then, I’ll just keep being me.”ing to be until I’m done writing. Until

ing work. Although he loved wearing the badges for his accomplishments on his chest, Singletary had a difficult time at the meets for the drill team because the naturally bubbly man was not allowed to smile.

“[The judges] try to make you smile

and laugh,” he said, laughing. “And it was so hard not to give in.”

Over a decade later, Singletary has found the right outlet for his ability to smile in any situation, transforming it from a weakness on the drill team to an asset in customer service. At The Loop,


sports and state

STORY BY DANIEL CARPPHOTO BY NICOLE SAVAGE

why the government wants to fix college athletics

The sports you see played under the bright lights of the biggest stages make up just a fraction of a fraction of

athletic competition in the United States.Instead of being played in massive are-

nas, most American sports are staged on playgrounds and driveways. The actors in this drama are not highly-paid superstars, but children—fueled only by dreams.

In the age of 24-hour sports cover-age, the demand for collegiate athletics has never been higher. The children play-ing these games are far from your average American—they are elite, highly-special-ized athletes between the ages of 18 and 22, a small percentage of whom will go on to become millionaires at the profes-sional level. Today, the NCAA’s Division I is comprised of nearly 350 universi-ties with 170,000 athletes competing on 6,000 teams.

Injecting billions of dollars into these playground games has created a monster that won’t stop growing. Massive televi-sion contracts—mainly for football—have

made collegiate athletics a significant rev-enue generator for universities. In the pro-cess, it has made the already-blurry line between amateurism and professionalism all the more complicated.

So complicated, in fact, that Congress wants to get involved.

There are three active bills in the House of Representatives aimed at reforming collegiate athletics. All of them have been introduced on the House floor within the last 14 months and currently sit in various committees and subcommittees.

The oldest of the three bills, the NCAA Act, was proposed Aug. 1, 2013 by Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.). Dent first dealt with the NCAA when Pennsylvania’s congres-sional delegation was pleading to recover portions of the $60 million fine levied against Penn State in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. The representa-tive of the Keystone State’s 15th district did not hesitate to openly criticize college athletics’ governing body for its handling of recent investigations into violations by

Penn State, Miami and North Carolina. One of his bill’s four primary tenets is guaranteeing due process for athletes in-volved in investigations by their school or the NCAA.

Dent argued that his bill was not one primarily concerned with collegiate athlet-ics, but with the NCAA’s commitment to higher education.

“I question their commitment to schol-arship,” said Dent, who is currently serv-ing his fifth term as a U.S. Congressman.

The biggest piece of Dent’s legisla-tion concerns the length of collegiate athletic scholarships. Most NCAA scholarships are one-year agreements that are renewable for the duration of a student-athlete’s eligibility.

Dent believes that every collegiate scholarship should be guaranteed for four years up front, and argues that it would prevent student-athletes from losing their scholarships due to poor performance on the playing field.

“[A school can] can take that scholarship


SPORTS

sports and state

why the government wants to fix college athletics

away, not based on academic performance or behavioral issues, but based on your not be-ing as good an athlete as maybe they thought,” Dent said. “Frankly, it’s dismaying to me that university presidents reportedly concerned about the education of their students would not want four-year scholarships.”

Four-year scholarships do exist in NCAA athletics, but only a handful of schools use them. Ohio State has long been one of the most prominent proponents of four-year scholarships but offers just 71 full-term scholarships—the remainder are one-year renewable. Arizona State, Florida and Florida State are among those offering four-year deals as well.

Scholarship length has been a hot-but-ton issue for institutions since 2012, when the NCAA decided to allow them. It is an issue that has picked up steam as of late, with South Carolina and Southern Cali-fornia both adding four-year scholarships since June.

Duke does not offer four-year scholar-ships to student-athletes, but it has been

a long-standing practice by the Univer-sity’s athletic department to renew an athlete’s scholarship every year. Cases of non-renewal have exclusively stemmed from misconduct by the student-athlete, whether criminal or academic, Jon Jack-son, Duke’s senior associate athletic di-rector for external affairs, wrote in an email. Duke athletes whose careers are prematurely ended by injury are allowed to keep their scholarships.

Dent’s legislation ties the issue of re-newable scholarships into the prevalence of concussions in contact sports. The NCAA Act would require all collegiate athletes to undergo baseline concussion testing at the beginning of every season.

“The reason I wanted to tie the con-cussion issue to the scholarship issue is because if a guy takes a real bang on the head playing football, he’s going to be hesitant to report that injury to his coaches out of the fear that he’s going to lose his scholarship,” Dent said.

Once an afterthought decades ago, baseline concussion testing is now rel-atively commonplace throughout the landscape of collegiate athletics. Duke conducts baseline concussion testing for all sports. Additionally, athletes playing contact sports undergo neuropsychol-ogy testing administered by Deborah Attix, director of Duke Clinical Neuro-psychology.

Due process, scholarship length and concussion testing are also the three pri-mary focuses of the Collegiate Student-Athlete Protection Act, proposed Nov. 20, 2013 by Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Ca.). The legislation provides a detailed explanation of what schools must provide for student-athletes who are dismissed from teams for

non-disciplinary reasons or are injured and cannot compete—athletically-related stu-dent aid for up to five years or the comple-tion of their undergraduate degree, which-ever comes first.

“This isn’t about revenue sports. This isn’t about football and basketball only,” said Paul Kincaid, who serves as Cardenas’ press secretary. “It’s about all the sports, making sure that what the NCAA prom-ises—that 99 percent of the kids are go-ing to go pro in something else—that they legitimately have a chance to go pro in something else.”

Kincaid added that Cardenas views an athletic scholarship as a contract between a coach and a player—if the player puts forth the full effort, he should be able to earn his college degree.

“A one-year grant-in-aid does not fulfill that contract—plain and simple,” Kincaid said. “Whether it’s an implicit contract or an explicit contract—it’s not fulfilled by a one-year grant-in-aid.”

Each bill has its own additional stipu-lations as well. The NCAA Act allows institutions to pay stipends to athletes to cover the full cost of attending school. The Collegiate Student-Athlete Protection Act would require schools to process a stu-dent-athlete’s transfer application within seven days.

The third, and most recent, piece of legislation to be introduced was the Stan-dard of Collegiate Oversight of Revenues and Expenditures Act (SCORE Act), which was introduced by Rep. David Price (D-NC.) July 14. The bill would re-quire transparent financial reporting by all schools—public and private—as well as the NCAA, conferences, bowl games and the new College Football Playoff. The U.S.


Department of Education would then be able to make available detailed, sport-by-sport revenue and expense data each year.

Private institutions like Duke are forced to report budgetary figures every year under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act. The NCAA makes revenues and expenditures for each school’s teams publicly available every year but receives additional information it keeps private. Price’s bill aims to make public reporting more detailed and easier to analyze.

Paul Haagen, co-director of Duke’s Center for Sports Law and Policy and professor of law, said that collecting comprehensive budgetary data from private institutions would be difficult due to a lack of standard accounting practices. He added that the passage of Price’s bill would likely be met with resistance by presidents and athletic directors at private schools.

“Do I think schools will resist it because in part they’re doing things they don’t want the public to know about? Yes, I think that’s true,” Hagen said.

Price has served as professor of public policy and political science at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy since 1973. He took leave in 1986 to run his first congressional cam-

paign and taught again from 1995-96 during a stint in which he had lost his congressional seat. Price has served a total of 13 terms in Congress and declined multiple requests for comment.

Congressmen aren’t the only policymak-ers that have dealt with college athletics in the past year. Three major decisions have significantly altered the topography of the college sports landscape.

In March, the National Labor Relations Board granted a request by the Northwest-ern football team to unionize. The ruling is still under appeal by the NCAA and North-western, but if upheld would make foot-ball players Northwestern employees. Five months later, on Aug. 7, the NCAA voted to give its five biggest conferences—the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC—au-tonomy to create its own set of policies. The next day, former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon won a class action lawsuit against the NCAA arguing that upon graduation, college athletes should be entitled to some fi-nancial compensation for the NCAA’s com-mercial use of his or her image.

These three rulings have effectively defined the NCAA’s role in the sporting

world as an institution with athletes that aren’t quite professional but are so far from being amateurs.

Autonomy poses a potentially ground-breaking shakeup to the status quo, giving the member institutions of the nation’s five biggest conferences the ability to pass their own legislation independent of the rest of Division I. As was expected, a number of the conferences’ primary concerns align them-selves with the provisions in Cardenas and Dent’s legislation.

The Big Ten announced Oct. 8 that all of its institutions would grant four-year scholar-ships and that it will allow some athletes who leave school to use their scholarships to com-plete their degrees at a later date. Scholarship protections—as well as the provision of full cost of attendance—were among the priori-ties submitted to the NCAA by the ACC.

Even as institutions and conferences adapt, Congress is still not convinced that autonomy will solve these issues.

“The voluntary adoption of these standards by conferences or schools does not supercede the need for legislation,” Kincaid said. “They’ve had the opportunity to voluntarily make these


changes for years.”Legislative proposals to fi x NCAA athlet-

ics are coming at a time when Washington is in a state of complete political gridlock. As of Oct. 14, the 113th U.S. Congress had proposed 10,171 pieces of legislation since it was sworn in in 2012. Just 184 bills—less than 2 percent—became laws.

“It’s bad. It’s worse than it’s been in a long time,” said John Harwood, Trinity ‘78 and na-tional political correspondent for CNBC and the New York Times. “The only way to break it is when one side—at least temporarily—can muster the type of political strength in num-bers to impose their political agenda.”

The root of this gridlock is partisan politics, which has brought progress in Washington to a virtual standstill. But sports seems to be one of the only things that Democrats and Repub-licans in Congress can agree on—two of the three proposed bills are bipartisan, a rarity in today’s political climate.

With America still recovering from its most recent economic recession, facing ma-jor issues with health care and education and a new terror threat brewing in the Middle East, Dent scoffed at the idea that policy-re-lated legislation aimed at NCAA reform was a waste of Congress’s time.

“I can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said.

So why is Congress spending its time—and taxpayer dollars—debating college sports?

Part of the answer may come from the interest of each representative’s constituen-cies. Dent’s district in Central Pennsylvania is dense with Penn State football fans and sits less than 150 miles from State College. Nestled in the San Fernando Valley, Carde-nas’ California 29th district is a stone’s throw from USC and UCLA. Price’s con-gressional district used to contain Duke and still has North Carolina and N.C. State.

Haagen noted that with two-year terms, these Congressmen are in a constant state of campaigning for their next election. The combination of hot-button issues and con-stant media coverage provides the perfect soapbox for some free airtime.

“If your constituents are getting fed up with what they think are excessive coaches’ salaries or they’re getting agitated about concussions, this is an opportunity,” Haa-gen said. “Because it’s being discussed now, you can probably get on television.”

But it would be overly simplistic to write off three pieces of legislation with pure cynicism. Haagen was quick to point out

the ways in which the 24-hour news cycle has helped to fuel positive conversations that transcend athletics.

“Sports is one of the places in society where a whole series of moral and legal is-sues get debated by members of the general public,” he said. “You don’t get very expan-sive discussion of antitrust by members of the public except for in connection to the NFL lockout. Arguably, we got more debate about race out of Donald Sterling than we got out of Ferguson.”

Whether or not any of the three bills comes to a vote before the next Congress is sworn in this January, a number of their demands could be met by most—if not all—Division I institutions in the coming years. As future debates concerning stu-dent-athlete rights continue to materialize, the threat of congressional oversight will hang like a symbolic cloud over the NCAA.

“They’re inviting the league or the institution—in this case the NCAA—to act itself. And the more that they act, they eliminate the momentum and the fuel for legislative action,” Harwood said. “Even if Congress isn’t the one that ultimately contrives the solution, they can contribute to the solution.”

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beer and space invadersSTORY BY GEORGIA PARKE

PHOTOS FROM CHRONICLE ARCHIVES


“You could walk by and there were at least a half a dozen people standing in line—not to drink beer, but waiting to play Space Invaders.”

When the new West Union opens in Spring 2016, it will feature a pub to serve as the central location for stu-

dents to drink and hang out on campus—a need that has been filled for the past several years by the Armadillo Grill and, more re-cently, The Loop Pizza Grill. But not too long ago, students had a less mainstream way to kick back with each other after a long stint at the library or to celebrate a basketball victory.

Back in 1978, the space below Page Au-ditorium was converted into a dive bar by a group of business students with a novel idea. Complete with pool tables, kegs and the Space Invaders arcade game, the bar was completely student-owned and run for more than 20 years.

It came with its own edge and quirkiness not present at The Loop Bar or elsewhere on campus, as well as a habit for irritating the ad-ministration. It was a hidden gem under lay-ers of students’ graffiti on the walls, lovingly tended to by a medley of undergraduate and graduate students throughout the years.

GRACE KELLY AND CLIMBING TREES

The bar was born out of a space called the Games Room that was located below Page in 1977, which sported a bar, five pool tables and a ping pong table. After only a year of keep-ing the space open, however, administrators realized it had turned into a money pit and the Games Room closed in 1978. The space remained open for campus groups to rent out and host social events and parties—until something better came along.

A group of six MBA students at the Fuqua School of Business were at one of the social

events held in the Games Room and decided it could be put to better use. They approached administrators with their idea for opening a bar, and were told that having a faculty spon-sor would help their idea make its way.

They approached Robert Taylor, a Fuqua professor at the time, who said the decision to get involved was a “no-brainer.” The stu-dents then formed a corporation called the Graduate School Concessions Group, gath-ered enough capital to sign a lease agreement together—$15,000 to start—and took over the space.

“When we got the space together, it sure as hell wasn’t a bar,” Taylor said. “But there were extraordinary circumstances that made it work.”

The first of those circumstances was that a friend of Taylor’s owned and planned to sell a bar on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Taylor and the students bought out the bar’s assets—the chairs, the tables, the coolers and games like pinball and electronic bowling. While they were loading up the truck, Taylor said, they spotted a sign reading “The Hideaway” on a street pole and tore it off, thus christening the new campus bar.

At the same time the Hideaway got its

footing, the arcade game Space Invaders was released. The owners purchased the game to add to the pinball machines, which frequently broke, and let it do the work to draw a crowd to the new establishment.

“You could walk by and there were at least a half a dozen people standing in line—not to drink beer, but waiting to play Space Invad-ers,” Taylor said. “It really went very, very well with those games.”

Space Invaders’ popularity was soon fol-lowed by the addition of Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man to the Hideaway at later dates. Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek said she first learned how to play Pac Man by spending time at the bar when she attended Duke as both an undergraduate and graduate student in the 1970s.

The Hideaway made its mark on campus social life beneath Page during the next four years, seeing both the good and bad sides of coexisting with an auditorium. It also enjoyed some distinguished guests, including the Prin-cess of Monaco Grace Kelly who stopped in the Hideaway for a beer when Duke University Union’s performing arts committee brought her to campus in 1980. Patrons and perform-ers would grab refreshments at intermission—

CULTURE


pared to depart Duke to become president of Southern Methodist University, one of his last executive decisions was to move the Hideaway to a new location. The change was made with-out consulting Taylor or the owners of the Hideaway and put them in the bottom level of the West Union building.

“Eventually the space became a problem because a beer hall, with pinball and ping pong and pool tables, next to Page Auditorium was a sound problem with performances going on,” said Peter Coyle, former associate direc-tor of student activities. “It got to the point where it made sense to move it.”

In the new location, which was a smaller space, the owners downsized its amenities to leave one pool table and the arcade games and installed heating and air conditioning. The bar also now had a patio with picnic tables and ad-ditional space outside for people to linger, but all of it was sheltered underneath the walkway leading to and from the West Union.

“You felt like you were going off to some secret part of campus,” said Michael Gus-tafson, associate professor of the practice of electrical and computer engineering, who

attended Duke as a Pratt undergraduate and graduate student in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “Until people arrived and were pour-ing out onto the patio, the Hideaway was very much in line with its name—very discreet.”

The bar also invested in a big-screen tele-vision in the winter of 1986 at the urging of one of the MBA student owners—a 60-inch Panasonic “the size of a Volkswagen,” Tay-lor said. Duke men’s basketball had reached

a practice Taylor said required them to start stocking bottles of Perrier and snacks in addi-tion to the kegs beneath the bar.

Other guests were less poised during their visits to the Hideaway. Taylor said that a for-mer basketball player had too much to drink one night and decided it would be a good idea to start trying to climb the pine trees next to Page. He made it nearly to the top, to the amazement of the bar staff, but got stuck and was not able to get down until very early the next morning.

But having a raucous college bar adjacent to the largest performance space on campus wasn’t always pretty. Noise was an issue, and both spaces shared the same restrooms.

“That was kind of a dicey thing,” Tay-lor said. “We hired a student to sit and do his homework in the men’s room, make sure we weren’t offending the auditorium or the patrons.”

But business ran smoothly for a few years as local bands performed in the space multiple times per week and students would flock there to watch basketball games.

In 1982, as Chancellor Kenneth Pye pre-


the Final Four and the Hideaway was one of the only establishments with a big-screen TV within 10 miles of campus. In order to accommodate the rush of people, the screen was moved to the back corner of the bar so that as many people as possible could watch. People standing on the walkway angled them-selves to get a glimpse of the game as well, even from outside the Hideaway’s walls.

“We were selling beer so fast, we brought a truck full of kegs. People were lined up all along that walkway. It was just incredible,” Taylor said. “Talk about a fortuitous time to buy a big-screen TV.”

The Hideaway served as a central gather-ing space for students to hang out togeth-er—whether it was a Friday night sorority mixer or a pit stop on the way back from a weekday library binge, alumni recall it as the neighborhood corner dive bar.

Ownership of the Hideaway would change hands each year as student share-holders graduated, and younger students would buy in. One of the requirements to bearing the “badge of honor” of being an owner was to work at the bar, and so the stu-dent owners would take shifts in serving a “demanding” crowd of Duke students, said John Hudson, Trinity ‘02, who bought in his sophomore year and learned how to tend bar on the job.

The best nights at the bar, Hudson said, were on the first nights people were back on campus but before classes had started. Stu-dents didn’t know who had arrived back at school yet, but the best way to find out was to go to the Hideaway and run into everyone you wanted to see.

“During a couple of snowstorms we had, the entire campus—or everyone who was 21 and up—headed over to the Hideaway,” Hudson said. “I remember people hanging

out all night and then heading out to the quad and having a giant snowball fight.”

21 AND OVERA significant change in function and pa-

trons for the Hideaway came in 1984, when the national drinking age was raised to 21. On a campus where approximately 75 percent of the undergraduate population was suddenly disallowed from imbibing, the denizens of the Hideaway and its purpose on campus shifted.

“The age restriction was a problem,” Coyle said. “It became much more graduate-student oriented.”

Even before the drinking age was changed, student legality was sometimes fuzzy or slipped through the bar unnoticed. Taylor recalled one Duke basketball player who had been a regular at the Hideaway for several months during his freshman Fall and knew the owners. Later in the semester, he held his 18th birthday party at the Hideaway, to the surprise of Taylor and the student owners who had assumed he had been legal

the whole time.“I could imagine a student going to the

Hideaway and presenting an ID that looked very valid, and maybe one of the student owners who had been there at the time might have known that the student was not of age,” Wasiolek said. “The Hideaway challenged a lot of values.”

Taylor said that not many students took advantage of printing fake IDs, but just in case, there was a book underneath the bar with examples of IDs from all 50 states.

Student-run bars were not common en-tities around the country around the time that the Hideaway started, nor did many—if any—sprout up in the time since. Administra-tors were faced with allowing a valued student tradition to continue while placing faith in stu-dents’ abilities to hold each other to the Uni-versity’s standards.

“If they wanted to be trusted by the ad-ministrators and the University, then we need-ed to see they were going to demonstrate that they would take this responsibility seriously,” Wasiolek said. “When you have students run-ning a bar and students as the patrons, it’s an almost impossible situation.”

Prior to the early 1970s, it was illegal under North Carolina law to sell alcohol on college campuses. Former North Carolina Gover-nor and Duke President Terry Sanford, who enacted laws allowing alcohol sale on college campuses, was concerned about the number of students who were causing problems and endangering themselves by going off campus to drink.

Taylor, who called Sanford a “student’s kind of president,” said that Duke—for the most part—recognized that the Hideaway was not trying to encourage or support irrespon-sible drinking. Rather, the Hideaway provided


nant of a bygone era as a result of alcohol policy changes—including, but not limited to, the banning of kegs on the quad, registering parties ahead of time and increased scrutiny by the Durham Fire Marshal over facility and hallway capacities.

“Duke, like many universities, is under a cer-tain microscope with respect to what they allow on campus, whether by policy or by practice,” Gustafson said. “The Hideaway was a vestige of when the drinking age was 18…. Something by nature of what the Hideaway ended up be-ing a couple steps outside of what the Univer-sity would be able to reasonably allow now.”

END OF AN ERA

Over time, the number of owners of the Hideaway ballooned up to cause difficulties in the business model and relationship with ad-ministration. In 1999, the University took steps to get things more under control by downsizing the number of Hideaway shareholders from more than 60 to nine—an odd number so that votes among the owners wouldn’t result in a tie.

“The ownership structure didn’t make sense. Decision-making was impossible,” Hud-son said. “There was a total lack of oversight of the business and Duke felt like it got a bit

out of control.”Hudson said the owners had frequent

conversations with the administration about the business and the way it was operated, and through those conversations they determined that it would be in both parties’ best interests to have fewer owners involved.

In 2001, during the process of renegotiating the lease with the University for the following year, the owners decided that increases in rent made it no longer economically viable to keep the Hideaway open. Additionally, the Hideaway had been starting to see competition for the first time as Duke expanded on-campus dining into other venues—the Armadillo Grill bar had opened and become another place for students to hang out and drink. The student owners terminated the lease and the Hideaway closed after the 2000-01 school year.

“People were devastated,” Hudson said. “It wasn’t the nicest place, but it was our place. It was the Duke students’ bar.”

Allegations of embezzlement by one of the student owners tainted outsider percep-tion of what really caused the bar to close. Hudson, a junior at the time of the closing, said that one of the owners had been dis-covered to be embezzling money from the all-cash bar. After being caught, the owner

a way to keep student drinking in one place on campus, preventing students from driving off campus and getting into dangerous situations.

Difficult situations and damaged property still occurred from time to time, Gustafson said, but it was considered a safe spot on cam-pus for people to drink if they wanted to.

But Wasiolek recalled that, for administra-tors, having the Hideaway on campus was a challenge. The owners involved were not un-cooperative or difficult, she said, but the cul-ture of the Hideaway was not necessarily fully aligned with “the notion of responsible drink-ing that [Duke was] pursuing.” Noise would be an issue as people spilled out of the Hideaway onto the loading dock under West Union, mak-ing its way to the dorms nearby. People would block vehicles trying to come in and out, and underage drinking was hard to monitor.

“It was very much influenced by student culture that certainly didn’t want to do harm or create an unhealthy drinking environment. That was never its intent,” she said. “But it also would have preferred that it didn’t have to adhere to many of the rules and regula-tions that city government and the University had in place.”

Whether the Hideaway’s drinking culture was ultimately harmful or not, it is now a rem-


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ultimately paid back what was known to have been stolen, Hudson said.

“About a year later, people found out about the embezzlement and started blaming that sit-uation,” Hudson said. “But there were multiple players involved.”

The incident was not an immediate factor in the decision to close, though it did catch the attention of then-President Nan Keohane.

In an Academic Council meeting in Octo-ber 2001, Keohane addressed an anonymous question about the nature of University’s ac-

tion against the student who allegedly embez-zled from the Hideaway. Duke had ordered the student to pay a restitution of $15,000 and the student had paid $8,300. Duke did not pros-ecute him criminally, which some saw as the University having a “no-fault” policy in the situation. Keohane explained that the case was unique because the student in question had already graduated and it would have been un-usual to prosecute a non-student. Additionally, the other Hideaway owners did not intend to prosecute the alleged embezzler, and so the

University wouldn’t have their collaboration in making the case.

After the closing, Duke community mem-bers to whom the Hideaway was beloved called upon the administration to take over the bar’s ownership and keep it open. But the University was not interested.

“There were some people who wanted the University to take over and operate it,” Wa-siolek said. “I don’t think the University neces-sarily wanted to hang its hat on a bar that wasn’t connected to anything programmatically…. After the embezzlement and exposure that the Hideaway was an empty shell, people were not as inclined to buy it.”

While the Hideaway’s owners and regulars faced the loss of their central social gathering point, many others—especially younger stu-dents who would not have been permitted to drink at the bar—were unfazed by the closure.

“It was one of those things where people didn’t realize what they had until it was gone,” Gustafson said.

However severely the campus felt the loss of the Hideaway, the bar has gone down in the annals of Duke’s social culture.

“It was one of those unique pieces of Duke that had its own character,” Coyle said. “I think in that sense, something was lost.”


SOPHIA DURAND NICOLE SAVAGE

autumn

{scenes from fall break}

is in the air

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SOPHIA DURAND

EMMA LOEWE

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ELYSIA SU{scenes from fall break}


STORY BY JESSICA LANCE AND JACLYN ONUFREYIMAGES COURTESY OF RUBENSTEIN LIBRARY

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library is home to more than just dusty books. Behind a glass wall lie

rows upon rows of fi ling cabinets containing artifacts such as documentary fi lms, ancient medical tools, comic books and sheet music dating back to the Middle Ages.

With 350,000 print materials and more than 10,000 individual manuscript collec-tions, researchers from all over the world visit Duke to use the Rubenstein. Several

dense collections ranging from Women’s History to the Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History—one of the most extensive archives for advertising in the United States—are not only incredibly valu-able resources for research, but also incred-ibly interesting to those who might stumble across the collections serendipitously.

What’s more is that undergraduates, graduates and community members alike are free to request access to these

collections at any time.Towerview journeyed to the Ruben-

stein’s temporary location on the third fl oor of Perkins Library to fi nd some of the most unique and interesting pieces from the library’s collections. But this is merely scratching the surface of all that the Rubenstein has to offer. The materials lie waiting to be uncovered, whether to be used for a paper, a project or to satisfy a history junkie’s curiosity.

Exploring the Rubensteina peek at some of Duke’s rarest manuscripts

Zines—a small circulation of works that contain images and texts, usually reproduced via a photocopier—became popular in the 1980s and ‘90s as a way to distribute feminist thought. Here, “Action Girl” takes on the idea of what a female superhero would be like.


Zines—a small circulation of works that contain images and texts, usually reproduced via a photocopier—became popular in the 1980s and ‘90s as a way to distribute feminist thought. Here, “Action Girl” takes on the idea of what a female superhero would be like.

Above is a copy of one of Langston Hughes’ famous poems “Shakespeare in Harlem” corrected. This copy

is thought to have been used in public readings.

Henry David Thoreau made a major contribution to the Transcendental

movement when he wrote “Walden: Life in the Woods” after staying in

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cabin near Walden pond for two years. Go to

the Rubenstein to see the front page of Thoreau’s first edition copy

of “Walden.”

Special to the first edition printing of “Walden” is this map created by Thoreau of the area

where he explored the woods.


50 years

STORY BY JILLIAN APELPHOTOS BY ANTHONY ALVERNAZ

through the eyes of Victor Standberg

at Duke


Sitting down with Professor of English Victor Strandberg, the first thing I noticed was the massive bulletin boards behind

his desk covered with newspaper clippings and images dating back as far as the 1950s. His office speaks to his love of tradition and his-tory—though Duke has changed immensely in the past 50 years he has taught on campus, Strandberg aims to keep the classics alive.

“The academic disciplines have undergone dramatic change, thanks in part to new tech-nologies in the natural and social sciences and to a new fixation on ideology in the humani-ties,” Strandberg said. “In my own department and in the humanities at large, I understand that mutability is the iron law of the zeitgeist, but I believe we are also the chief custodians of tradition.”

Although there are some aspects of Uni-versity life Strandberg would prefer to keep the same—like an emphasis on teaching clas-sic literature—his professorship is one that represents transformation. Strandberg has worked under five different Duke presidents, witnessed the expansion of Duke’s campus and seen a major curriculum change. His five decades at Duke allows him to talk about the University writ large—the good, the bad and the ugly.

STRANDBERG THE MAN

A self-proclaimed “full fledged Yankee,” Strandberg was born in New Hampshire in 1935 to a factory-worker father, a mother and two older brothers. Due to his mother’s struggle with mental illness, Strandberg and his brothers were sent to foster homes for the first few years of his life. As a result of this, Strandberg did not meet his parents until he was four and a half.

Although his vocabulary largely consist-ed of swearing because of his time spent in foster homes, Strandberg was extremely interested in literature as a young child.

“As a boy I read adventure stories,” Strand-berg wrote in an email following our interview. “In adolescence I moved on to some classics such as Huckleberry Finn, and in college I reached a mature level of taste with Whitman and Faulkner, whom I still consider our great-est American writers.”

Strandberg became an avid Faulkner read-er at Clark University, which was a local col-lege serving the working-class youth of his hometown, Worcester County, Mass. As the first member of his family to attend college, Strandberg did not envision himself going to

graduate school, which was also partly due to his difficult financial situation.

Strandberg’s talent and passion in the field of American literature, however, encouraged one of his professors at Clark to not take no for an answer.

“One day he stopped me in the hall with, ‘Victor, I wrote a recommendation for you to my friend Hyatt Waggoner at Brown. You did apply, didn’t you?’ So I hastily applied to Brown,” he said.

Strandberg said he believed he would flunk out of the Ivy League institution. As you could probably guess, he could not have been more wrong. Instead, Strandberg was a standout student and received a fellowship that paid all of his expenses. This allowed him to leave Brown in 1962 with his Ph.D. in hand, free of debts.

Strandberg’s own struggle with finances as a student has made him passionate about financial aid at Duke.

“I have had several students in the last few years who have left Duke owing around $100,000, and there must be many more I don’t know about” Strandberg said. “Presi-dent Brodhead, to his credit, has focused sub-stantial fundraising efforts on this problem, but there remains too much financial distress out there.”

Strandberg has done what he can to alle-viate the financial pressures of students who want a higher education. In 2012, he filmed 25 lectures on the poetry of T.S. Eliot to be published on the internet by Udemy, an on-line course website. The lectures, free to view, are now available to students worldwide who cannot otherwise afford college.

CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO


Before coming to work at Duke, Strand-berg spent four years as a professor at the University of Vermont, where he published multiple academic essays and his first book, A Colder Fire: The Poetry of Robert Penn Warren. A unique set of circumstances al-lowed Duke to bring Strandberg down to North Carolina to work as an English pro-fessor: “A senior professor was swamped under a pile of master’s theses, and an emi-nent colleague in his field committed suicide by jumping out of a downtown hotel win-dow,” Strandberg said.

In the years since he arrived at Duke, Strandberg has created a stable professional and personal life for himself as a distin-guished professor. He was married in 1961 to his wife, Penny, and with her has raised two daughters, Anne and Susan, alongside a me-nagerie of pets—including a duck, a skunk, a rat named Rat, three ferrets and many more. Aside from his variety of household animals, students who inquire about Strandberg’s per-sonal life are often most surprised to learn about his favorite hobby: pouring concrete.

“For 20 years such work during the summer helped support my family; there-after, I poured concrete for friends or for charities such as Habitat for Humanity,” Strandberg said.

Strandberg learned the craft from his fa-ther as a child and has continued doing it to this day during summers or stretches of free

time. With his many sabbatical leaves to dif-ferent locations around the globe, however, Strandberg does not spend as much time at home as one would think.

Since beginning his career at Duke, Strandberg has pursued cultural enlighten-ment by teaching American literature in Sweden (1973), Belgium (1980), Morocco (1987), Japan (1994) and the Czech Repub-lic (2001), to name a few. These sabbaticals allow him to experience new cultures and share his passion for William Faulkner with students across the globe.

Although Strandberg loves his trips work-ing away from Duke, his 50 years spent as a professor show his extreme commitment to the university. Throughout his time here, he has inevitably witnessed many changes within both the campus and academic student expe-rience as a whole.

STRANDBERG THE ACADEMICStrandberg said the most visible change

to University life has been the expansion and renovation of the campus, especially the athletic facilities, which can be exempli-fied through the construction happening on West Campus in the next few years.

As for the students, Strandberg said they have remained generally unchanged. He has observed them year after year in his classroom and believes they have the same academic ability and work ethic, but lately have exhib-

ited an increased commitment to community service. The most common trait the students exude, however, is their love of learning.

“The best part of a teaching career is what happens in the classroom, sharing intellectual enthusiasms with people who have all volun-teered to be there” Strandberg said. “Like, I would guess, most faculty, I consider myself blessed with an ideal job.”

Students in Strandberg’s class thrive on his knowledge and passion of the subjects he teaches, often citing his courses as one of their all time favorites from college.

“Professor Strandberg’s Classics of American Literature class helped me realize how much I love American Lit,” junior Max Stayman said. “He lectures about the books as we read them, including information about the author and historical context. He has an incredible wealth of knowledge… and he presents it in a way that makes sense. And if all that weren’t enough, his teaching style is fantastic; his voice is so unique and fun, and his passion is contagious.”

Lauren Abell Windom, Trinity ‘05, said taking Strandberg’s course as a student in-spired her to become an English teacher, and that she has incorporated many of his lessons in her classes as a high school teacher today.

“His passion for the works we studied was so contagious that I found myself taping each lecture he gave so that I would not miss one word. He is not only brilliant, but also witty,

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charming, and kind,” she said. “Even though he often taught larger lecture classes, he took the time to meet with every student to learn more about him or her, and I was always grateful for his genuine interest in what I was doing and the path I was taking.”

Although Strandberg believes students’ such as Max’s academic passion have not changed much throughout the years, the content they learn has altered signifi cantly.

Strandberg is a champion of traditional education, and dislikes how it is often un-dermined in research universities such as Duke. He blames the attitudes of research universities as a collective for this bias against tradition, as in recent years they have begun to prefer professors who inno-vate to gain professional rewards to those who try and preserve customs of the past.

“As a believer in General Education, I would like to see more emphasis on tradi-tion, perhaps (in the Humanities) by requir-ing a course in classical music or American history, for example,” Strandberg said.

Curriculum 2000, the set of require-ments established in the year 2000 that all Trinity students must complete before graduating, has not helped preserve the tradition that Strandberg values.

“In my judgment, the actual contents of these courses have often been too nar-row and specialized to compensate for the lack of General Education,” he said. “The reforms currently contemplated by the Arts and Sciences Council may improve the curriculum somewhat, but serious movement toward General Education will come slowly, if at all.”

Strandberg has different views on how each Duke president has handled academ-ic situations such as this one. Although he values each president’s additions to the university, he believes that none are in the “superachiever class of Nan Keohane and Richard Brodhead. The billions raised by the... two and their effective use of that money places them on a level with Wil-liam Preston Few, the founding president of Duke University.”

Strandberg even chaired the committee that assessed Brodhead’s qualifi cations to membership into the English department.

After the committee assessed Brod-head’s scholarship and deemed him a lead-ing scholar in American literature, Strand-berg took one step further in helping the Duke English department.

“At my request... [Brodhead] has put

his scholarship on line, freely available to whoever is interested,” Strandberg said. “Anyone can just type in his name and follow the links for a rewarding reading experience.”

Strandberg views Brodhead as not only an incredible addition to the English Department, but to the leadership of the school as well. Even with a complicated start to his term—the possibility of head men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzweski going to the NBA in 2004, the lacrosse scandal of 2006 and the recession in 2008—Brodhead has proven himself as a worthy president, Strandberg said. He said specifi cally that he admires his ability to fundraise, and is curious to see how the newly opened Duke Kunshan University will affect Brodhead’s legacy.

“Unlike these crises, which were thrust upon him, the Kunshan project in China could become his greatest crisis because it is one of his own making, but it could also become the greatest achievement of his time in offi ce.” Strandberg said. “Let history, or destiny, be the judge.”

History has been the judge of Strand-berg’s tenure at Duke, and it has proven him an irreplaceable member of the faculty.


julian salazar the final exam

The Chronicle: How did you fi rst get into pottery?Julian Salazar: My high school offered an intro to pottery class and then an AP Studio Art course. So I took the intro class my senior year and totally fell in love with it. I caught the pottery bug. I spend all my free time in there. But in order to graduate I had to do a senior project. For my senior project I decided to go downtown to talk to my art teacher’s husband, who owned a pottery studio. It was really only supposed to be for a couple days or one week, but I extended it to two weeks. I had to have a week of making everything and then I had to have a week of fi ring everything, getting things ready for glazing and putting the fi nal touches on everything. I spent two weeks working in the studio in downtown Augusta and when my project was over, the [owner] said, ‘Do you want to come and work in the studio and help us out?’ I was like ‘Absolutely. This is the cool-est thing ever. I would totally do that.’I spent a summer working with them…. I mainly focused on functional pottery, the kind of stuff you see in a kitchen or out in a gar-den… pitchers, vases, mugs, bowls, plates, cups and then a few more decorative things. I spent the following three summers working there. I didn’t get to go this past summer. I have my wheel here in Durham and I have some clay, but I don’t always have time to throw because it’s a big time commitment.TC: What’s the most complicated piece you’ve made?JS: I’m always trying to push my boundaries. Obviously it’s easier to move smaller amounts of clay. The larger the block of clay, the more force you need from your wheel. You need to have the strength and the know-how to move the clay, to center it properly and get it set up. So it’s tough to say what the most diffi cult piece I’ve worked on is. The ones that are larger tend to be more dif-fi cult. It’s also very time consuming. You have to let a piece sit for a bit so you can add to it. There’s

a lot of waiting and timing is super important. Some glazes work better if I dunk it and let it dry for two seconds and then dunk it in another glaze. But if I let it sit for too long… bad news.TC: How do you create pottery and fi re things while you are at Duke?JS: It’s tricky. There’s a ceramics studio on Fos-ter Street [called Claymakers]. They have a great space—a gallery up front and in the back about eight or so wheels on the ground fl oor and a studio space for you to come in and rent the wheels for however long you want to throw. On the second fl oor they have studio rental space where you can rent square footage. But I looked into it and decided it wasn’t for me. I would rather bring my wheel and work out of my own space and I would take my stuff there to fi re it.TC: How frequently during the year are you able to throw?JS: I try to throw at least once a month. Right now my wheel is sitting really sad in the corner of the room. It’s a little neglected. I’m think-ing about moving it outside because it’s a messy process. The clay, if it’s not cleaned up im-mediately, it will dry into a dust which in high quantities can be pretty dangerous to live in. Clay is made up of alumina and silica and if you breathe it in it will react with the oxygen in your lungs and it will form glass… but it takes years and years of exposure.TC: Do you sell the pieces that you make or give them away?JS: I worked at [Tire City Potters] as an ap-prentice. Sometimes I would get my meals pro-vided, sometimes I make a cut of what I make for the store. But often what I put in and the money that is generated by the work I do goes right back into the studio so that they can buy the supplies they need.TC: Do you plan to continue working in

pottery after graduation?JS: I would love to continue having pottery in my life, whether it’s a hobby or if I pursue it as a career. At the moment I probably wouldn’t pursue it professionally. I feel like I do have a lot of knowledge about pottery but I’m nowhere close to being able to open my own studio and have my own business. I could continue work-ing as an apprentice but it’s diffi cult to make a living. The art business is tough because people would rather spend the money on the essen-tials. They don’t really have the money or the desire to buy pottery, which is unfortunate but it’s the reality.TC: Do you think that Duke has enough re-sources for people interested in pottery?JS: Yes and no. When I came to Duke as a fresh-man there used to be a room under Southgate that was a pottery studio where students could go in if they wanted to throw. They got rid of it at some point. When I got to Duke I was really into [pottery]... and I emailed a couple people and I didn’t really get much of a response. They mostly pointed me toward Claymakers. I wasn’t really feeling it my freshman year so I left it and that was kind of the situation for the following three years.

Then the year before last, the Arts Annex got its big hurrah and last year they added a pottery studio… They have three really nice wheels, top of the line for a hobby or profes-sional [use]. I trained the staff that gives the rundown of safety and the basic things that anyone in the studio needs to know. I gave a couple demos last year, which is a lot of fun. I’ve had a couple people approach me saying they would be interested in taking a lesson or two. The Arts Annex would be a great place to do that. It’s the perfect environment and every-thing’s free for students. It’s a fantastic setup if you have done it before or just trying to start.

Senior Julian Salazar has one of the rarer hobbies found at Duke—throwing, fi ring and glazing pieces of pottery in his spare time between majoring in math-ematics and art history. The Chronicle’s Georgia Parke sat down with Salazar to discuss making pottery and the role it has had in his life since high school.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JULIAN SALAZAR

BY GEORGIA PARKE

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