A year ago, after the Wake game, I went out to my car and discovered someone had backed into it, then drove off. I didn't get very upset, although it was a pain. It cost $1,000 and a week without my car. Cross my heart, I really didn't get all that angry. Some students do dumb things, especially when drinking, then are too immature to do the right thing. It was no use to make it a Federal Case. It could have been anybody, not necessarily an Alspaugh student. That was last year; a different set of Alspaugh students.
Let's tally Alspaugh Residence Hall so far this year: puke on the floors---all over the bathroom, semen on doorknobs and a fire alarm at 2 a.m.--100 people in 20 degree weather losing sleep. The travesty was not safety but that one person (or a few) did this to the people they live with... And care about?
Which brings me to tonight.
I thought I heard voices outside my door last night. No one was there. But someone had used my leave-a-message pen to deface the poster on my door. I used windex to get it off, but the poster is damaged. I do not want to know who did it. I'll get back to what I do want after a digression. Let me explain a little about why I'm upset about the poster.
Steve McCurry took the poster photo in Pakistan in 1984. A neighbor and friend worked at National Geographic and knew him. We were awed when that photo came out on the front cover of National Geographic, on refugees in war-ravaged Afghanistan.
Go to 1988. As the Iran-Iraq war was ending, Saddam turned to the Kurds. Thus began the Anfal genocide campaign. A poison gas attack on Halabja in March 1988 killed thousands, then came attacks on Kurdish villages in August 1988. Those precipitated a massive refugee crisis. Kurds fled into southeastern Turkey and Iran. I went to refugee camps with two other physicians in October, as part of a multi-ethnic team. One was a Kurdish emergency room doctor from Detroit, one a Chinese-American epidemiologist from Harvard, and me, about as Honky as you can get.
We met Aagiza, an 8-year-old girl, in the refugee camp in Mardin, Turkey. She had been in the camp for 5 or so weeks. She had remained mute since leaving her village, Ekmala, in late August. The grandmother walked Aagiza and her surviving brothers and sisters through the mountains of northern Iraq for ten days to get into Turkey. For some reason, Aagiza started to talk when we came. She was a beautiful, velvet-voiced, sweet child. She was tending sheep when a bomb hit near her home, and she ran toward it. Aagiza watched both parents and her older brother die, her grandmother restraining her, knowing those dying were contaminated with poison gas (which is actually not a "gas," but an oily, toxic mix). Quick death told us it could not be mustard gas, which maims slowly and rarely kills, but perhaps nerve gas of some kind. Turns out Saddam's planes sometimes dropped bombs with sarin and tabun, nerve agents, as well as mustard gas. Aagiza was the cover of our report, "Winds of Death." If she is still alive, she is 24, a few years older than most of you.
I went back to Kurdistan in 1991, after the first Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein again attacked the Kurds, this time because they heeded President Bush I's call to rebellion after the war. This provoked another refugee crisis in Turkey and Iran. The camps were in Iraq this time. In one camp we heard landmines go off. Death came from mines, exposure and diarrheal disease, not poison gas. We estimated the camp population, then how many refugees were sick. We noticed men burying the dead, and asked the gravediggers for that night's body count (mostly infants). We made a mortality estimate, which became one set of figures our government used to trigger a massive relief effort and to establish the "no fly zone."
We drove back to Ankara and caught a plane to Washington. While driving from the airport to our first D.C. briefing, we heard our numbers on the radio, from our Ankara press release. We briefed the (staff of the) Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, the House Appropriations Committee in the Capitol and held a press conference at the National Press Club. In one long day, from refugee gravesite to pinnacles of power.
Around that time, National Geographic did an exhibit of some of its most arresting photographs. The exhibit poster was the Afghan refugee girl. I bought copies. My wife bought me a print of the original photo. That's how we learned McCurry initially called it "Kurdish Girl, Pakistan, 1984." (He tracked her down in 2002; she is Sharbat Gula, actually a Pashtun not a Kurd.) Aagiza always reminded me of the Afghan refugee photo, and vice versa. It wasn't just me. My newfound Kurdish friends also loved that photo.
I had the poster on my office door for years--the one still on my door tonight, the worse for wear. An African American security guard asked me to close my door at night, not for security but because the photo Gula kept him company, and it scared one of the other guards he liked to tease.
I already ordered a new poster. You can do that at 2 a.m. on the Internet. This one is signed by Steve McCurry, and it should be here soon. It will replace the one on my door. I don't want to have a reminder of tonight for the rest of the term. That's what I don't want. Here are a few things I do want.
For the person who did it.
I don't know why you defaced the poster. You probably don't either. Alcohol was probably involved, as usual.
Redeem yourself. You can do something. Stay away until you're at this University for the right reasons. Here's how you'll know. You won't be doing stupid, gratuitously destructive things in a drunken stupor; you'll be doing things for other people. College is about being a student: about learning and mutual respect. My tolerance is at its breaking point tonight. I don't want an apology. I don't want to know who you are. I want to not know. For the next few days I won't be in a place where I'm ready for an apology, and after that it won't matter. It truly is not a Big Deal. The new poster will inherit the old one's history, including this new story.
I do not want to talk to you until you've not only learned, but done something about it. What I'm talking about can't be done in a day or two. It takes building relationships and long-term commitment to other people; it means genuine humanity growing out of trust. This is not about me or the poster. It's about you and how you behave.
I'll be happy if you walk up to me someday to tell me what you learned. I'm not holding my breath, but it could happen. Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, a great day for moral courage. Make me proud of you, and we'll have a happy moment together, starkly different from how I'm feeling about you right now.
Either way, I hope you remember this story. Stupid behavior hurts people. I have that poster on my door so I can tell students the story behind it. Now it's in the school paper. Perhaps we'll use this missive with the incoming students next year, to prevent future Alspaugh Syndromes. Thanks for the opportunity. But I'll pass on the repeat.
For the residents of Alspaugh.
I've had enough. Have you? Please start treating one another with the respect you deserve. No more vomiting in public places, fire extinguishers at 2 a.m., defacing of posters on doors. No more skateboarding indoors. No more Entitlement Mentality that leaves the common room trashed and the hallways littered. I bet you're not thinking "race" when you trash the place; but I'll bet good money the African American cleaning crew thinks of it sometimes when they clean up the mess Monday morning. Let's ask them. This is Duke University. That's what we're against, not what we do.
You should hear what your RAs say about you. They like you; they trust you. For most of you, that's good and right. For some it's wrong, and you few don't deserve them. Please earn your RAs' respect.
You all, as a group, may already know who did this. Dorms are gossip mills, and the truth is usually not long in hiding. I really do not want to know. But the behavior has to stop. Here's the problem. For all but a few, it's not your fault. Yet bad things keep happening as long as good people do nothing; that's a hardy perennial lesson of history. Doing something here may just mean talking about it enough that it stops happening, because you set a norm. Alspaugh has set a norm--that you (that is, we) will tolerate what's been happening. Time for a new norm. We are Alspaugh.
For my FOCUS students.
I was upset about this far beyond reason. I don't fully know why. My faith was shaken, but it was nice to be among Duke students I love, admire and respect. Thank you.
Robert Cook-Deegan is the Alspaugh Faculty-in-Residence.
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