This morning I received an e-mail from the Duke Annual Fund. The subject line read: “Help Duke be #1.”
I was wondering what the Fund thinks helps Duke be No. 1. The letter didn’t mention Duke’s academic strength, research programs or extracurricular life. Instead it solicited money so Duke could maintain its No. 1 rank in the ACC Challenge, a competition among the conference schools for the highest young alumni participation. I had somehow hoped for something inspirational. Instead the Annual Fund tried to stir my urge to succeed in a competition the schools drew up to mutually help each other raise cash. In appealing to my competitiveness, the Fund could have mentioned programs that distinguish Duke. Instead it urged me to contribute to “ensure victory!” because “we must maintain our dominance of our conference foes.” Evoking war metaphors seems unrelated but also reflects poorly on prevalent thinking at the University.
Instead of tickling my philanthropy it appealed to my selfishness. I should give so I can say: “Ha! I won the ACC Challenge, and you didn’t!”
I was compelled by one sentence. My contribution “no matter the size” would “ensure that the Duke Experience will remain a reality for those students following in [my] footsteps.” I fondly remember the barbeques in Few Quad with about 15 attendees. My “juice mug” still adorns my fridge. I haven’t had to buy any T-shirts since graduation because of all the free Duke shirts I received. I wouldn’t want any student to miss these benefits.
I decided to donate a symbolic dollar. Unfortunately the author of the unsigned letter intended but failed to instruct me on the process. S/he told me to “Please go to [sic] and click on ‘Make A Gift Online.’”
In short, the Duke Annual Fund wrote an impersonal, ineffective letter to alumni to amateurishly solicit money. If you nevertheless feel compelled to donate, you can go to http://annualfund.duke.edu. I’m sure you can figure it out from there.
Holger Siebrecht
Trinity ’01
Duke must overcome racial divisions
As I read “Students see racial divisions” [May 2, 2005], I was troubled to observe a looming barrier to the advancement of race relations at Duke: the reluctance to challenge oneself and take personal responsibility for racial divisions. When we are not attributing social segregation to “specific cultural groups,” we blame “Greek life,” the absence of an explicit “invitation” or the failure of the Center for Race Relations.
The acknowledgement of pervasive “social segregation” should push us to understand the root of its existence, not its manifestations. Instead of presuming that minority students gravitate to respective minority group members in order to “befriend them and learn about their history,” we should accept the possibility that spaces dominated by non-minorities are not entirely embracing. If you interpreted the Alphas’ experience or the blackface account as isolated incidences, then consider a nationwide study that found widely held negative stereotypes for minorities among whites; a majority of Whites rated Blacks as less intelligent (54%) and lazier (62%) than Whites. Despite this admission of prejudice and research confirming an abundance of contemporary racial discrimination, disbelief about the status of race relations abounds.
Instead of becoming defensive about our potential roles in perpetuating racism and immediately invalidating minority experiences of prejudice as hypersensitive, we should be self-critical of our attitudes and their effects on behavior. A psychological study of college students has found that while Whites based their perceived friendliness towards Blacks on their verbal behaviors towards Black participants, nonverbal behavior contributed to the perceived unfriendliness noted by Black participants and outside observers. If we truly believe in the equality of races, then we should challenge ourselves to overcome our fear of discomfort.
Olivia Fu
Trinity ’06
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