Diverse student programs a top priority for next DUU President Oliver

The Chronicle’s Grace Mok spoke with junior Christina Oliver, the incoming president of Duke University Union, to discuss the organization’s goals and plans for campus programming during the next academic year. Oliver succeeds senior Pranava Raparla as president.

The Chronicle: Can you tell me about what Duke University Union does?

Christina Oliver: DUU provides a lot of programming and media on campus. We serve the entire student body through 13 different committees. Each committee has a specific focus or role on campus, so we do a ton of programming. A lot of people know about our bigger events, like the speakers we bring or the concerts we host, but we also do smaller events at the Coffeehouse, we do Jazz at the Mary Lou [Williams Center for Black Culture], we show movies and we also produce a lot of media content.

TC: As the incoming president, what are your goals for next year?

CO: I have three main goals. The first one is executing a lot of the changes that we made this year. We made some improvements internally by combining a committee, adding a new committee and also adding a new position on the board. One of the main things we focused on this year was planning for the West Union and how DUU was going to program in the new [Devil’s] Krafthouse space, the Union itself and on the plaza once it opens. With our new committee, Downtown Duke, we will be focusing on how to program in those spaces, as well as Penn Pavilion and all of these spaces in what’s being called Duke’s campus center.

A second is focusing on the opening of the arts building in 2017 in a similar way to how we’ve planned for the West Union opening. Since about half of our committees are related to the arts in some way, we’re going to have a lot of attention on how we’re going to use the arts building, how our committees can collaborate in there and how it can benefit them.

And then thirdly, we would like to be focusing on some collaborations. DUU does a ton of collaboration, but we definitely want to continue that for the coming year, working with different student groups to provide more programming for students and working on cooler programming and a better working relationship with as many groups as want to collaborate.

TC: Aside from those three main goals, is there anything else that you’d like to change or reemphasize?

CO: We’re always working on improving things internally, so that’s something we’ll continue to work on—what each of our committees do and how we motivate our members and get them more involved. Also, I want to work on creating more unifying programming. DUU has always focused on the inclusivity of its programming, reaching a lot of groups and unifying the student body, but that’s a little bit harder.

For this year, I want to try and focus on having programming that brings people from all different areas of Duke together in a more intimate way than a big concert. So when a big speaker comes, having discussions after that or really publicizing our smaller programs where students can get to know each other and have fun in a comfortable, safe environment on campus.

TC: Do you have any ideas for what those programs might be?

CO: Yeah, one idea is having programming where students can get together and talk about issues that are affecting the student body. We hope to have programming that’s constantly evolving with what the students need.

TC: What would you like to stay the same?

CO: I think DUU does a really good job of providing consistent programming. Over the past few years, we’ve been focusing on having students being able to count on the DUU program, a few of them a week. So we want to continue regularity of our programming: having every Wednesday having the same Jazz at the Mary Lou, every Friday and Saturday having movies with Freewater [Presentations] in the [Bryan Center]. We just want to continue that so that Duke students can have programming provided by Duke and provided by students that they can depend on and can be a vibrant part of their social life.

TC: How has DUU been involved with reaching out to the Durham community?

CO: Our visual arts committee works a lot with the Durham community because they work with Durham artists, so we have some connections through that. Additionally, the WXDU radio station also has DJs who are members of the Durham community. Among our different committees, we do try to reach out to the community.

We also do some events that are open to any member of the Durham community. Our free movies, for example, are open to the community. We try to keep those avenues open and keep publicizing to get the Durham community members involved in any way we can.

TC: Do you have anything else that you’d like to add?

CO: DUU is always open to student feedback, and I am always open to hearing students. I try to talk to as many people as I can during events, at events and after them, to hear what the students want and need, because so much of what DUU does is just responding to what students want to see on campus.