Wanted: Good hunting dogs

Agenda setting has been the purview of outside forces so far this year, much to the chagrin of student leaders.

In the most overarching sense, our student leadership is still reacting to the University’s continued fiscal challenges. Throwing money at problems is not an option this year—the University doesn’t really even have a pot to pee in. In any year when budgets become central to the wider agenda, student leaders become less central because of the very limited space they occupy in the University’s budgeting processes.

Added to the financial challenges have been other, unwanted interventions: first the DCR-Robinette et al. discrimination/harassment discussion, then we all read Ms. Owen’s funny PowerPoint, after which the fraternity party invitations and subsequently the teenage Tailgate incident, leading, ultimately, to Tailgate’s cancellation. These incidents led to a missive from President Brodhead and a Summit on Gender Relations. These incidents have been setting the agenda, but they are dogs that don’t hunt.

Precisely because budgeting and campus culture are central to life at Duke, it’s really unfortunate that student leadership has had to be so reactive.

Compounding these problems, your current DSG leaders don’t have that much time left in office. It’s not that they only have a semester left. It’s that they have much less than a semester in which to deliver. In practice, the current government really has about eight weeks left. (Two weeks are left this semester and six between our return to campus in January and the beginning of campaign season and attendant lame duck-ness in March and April).

I suggest that student government move forward with four initiatives which will help set the University agenda for the remainder of this year and which could set the agenda for some time to come. These four initiatives are: a five-year strategic plan for DSG, a strategic plan for dining at Duke, a review of Curriculum 2000 and a revised statement of the economic impact of Duke on Durham and North Carolina. The University simply does not operate on the one- (or even four-) year schedule of student government. To muscle our way into a seat at the grown-ups’ table, we’ve got to start acting like mature University stakeholders.

DSG President Mike Lefevre should convene and chair a student commission to write a five-year DSG strategic plan. It is time that students enjoy a level of consistency in their student government from year to year. Such a plan will allow the effective completion of multi-year initiatives, strengthening our government’s ability to participate in the budgeting process and in academic policy formation. The process should also reduce overlapping positions in student government, define areas of responsibility and increase collaboration among student groups, all of which will reduce waste in both time and resources. This process entails the expenditure of almost no political capital on anyone’s part and so should not be severely disrupted by the Spring elections and transition period.

Dining offers another opportunity for students to take the initiative. Given the Nov. 15 announcement by Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta that students should expect fairly significant changes to Dining by 2012, the fact that Dining still faces a deficit despite a rather authoritarian “emergency” fee levied on students, and the fact that in Lefevre students have a DSG president with unparalleled experience in Dining policy, the time is ripe for student government to work with students and administrators to author a long-term plan for dining at Duke. Where should Duke Dining be in 2020? Is the food worth what we pay for it? How can we use Dining to solve issues of campus culture? What is the daily place of food in student life? These questions must be answered. A good plan might remedy not only the fiscal deficit but also long-standing cultural problems.

The world has changed since 2000. So has Duke. Without a review soon, our curriculum risks committing serious sins of intellectual omission because it will be out of harmony with the University’s 2006 strategic plan and the post-9/11 and post-Great Recession challenges facing our world. With this review, student leaders should work to strengthen student representation in academic governance. Current DSG Chief of Staff Andrew Schreiber is already making headway in this endeavor, but a one-man effort is simply a tilting at windmills. Student leaders should solicit and encourage the meaningful involvement of faculty and the provost’s office.

Finally, DSG should request a new economic impact statement of Duke on Durham. The last available EIS of Duke on Durham is from 2006-2007, before the recession. At that time, Duke employed 19,755 Durham residents and had a total impact in the community of $3.4 billion. We need a new report to assess the effects of the recession on the Duke-Durham economic relationship. A revised report would be a meaningful, factual contribution to the ongoing conversation in student government about how to improve town-gown relations.

These four initiatives­—a DSG strategic plan, a plan for Duke Dining, an evaluation of Curriculum 2000 and a revised EIS—set agendas.

These dogs will hunt.

Gregory Morrison is a Trinity senior and former Duke Student Government EVP. His column runs every Tuesday.

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