AB scholars took the reins of DSG and they don't plan on giving them back

Paul Slattery wears many hats. Literally.

The senior's headpiece of choice, a beret, can barely contain his Art Garfunkel-channeling afro. Most days, curious Plaza-crossers can see Slattery sitting outside the Gothic Bookstore, smoking Camels like he's in Greenwich Village and shooting the shit with administrators or students.

But those who catch a glimpse of him on the way to class know that, 'fro aside, Slattery means business-he's Duke Student Government President and an AB Duke scholar.

So was his DSG predecessor, senior Elliott Wolf. And his successor might be as well.

The Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholarship, along with Duke's other merit programs, splits the student body into disparate castes within an academic aristocracy by anointing a group of students above all others. In many ways, these programs at Duke are Harvard-Yale-Princeton enclaves, bastions of wunderkinds who stand out even from their overachieving, 2,400-scoring, $48,000-a-year-paying peers. As Slattery describes it, the AB scholarship is the "steal-students-from-other-schools program."

What is remarkable about the scholarship, however, is not the award but the accomplishments of the scholars themselves. Even though it provides research grants and summer travel opportunities on par with the other six merit programs at Duke, ABs have consistently outperformed their fellow scholars-and the general undergraduate population-in winning the most prestigious post-graduate scholarships. In the past 20 years, the lion's share of Duke's Marshall, Mitchell and Rhodes winners have been ABs.

But the AB-DSG connection is a new one. Prior to the Wolf-Slattery era, DSG was dominated by "big men on campus"-the top dogs of Duke's greek scene. Wolf's predecessor-Jesse Longoria, Pratt '06-was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order. Of the four presidents before Longoria, three were fraternity members.

The abrupt change in leadership is surprising. Any snot-nosed kid who's lost a race for middle school class representative has been told by his mom the one thing everybody knows about student government elections-they're just popularity contests. Wolf-a math whiz known around campus for his video-swapping server and the ensuing scuffle with the administration-was an unlikely presidential candidate. But he managed to jump off The Chronicle's editorial pages-where he wrote a weekly column-and onto the DSG ballot. Unlike Longoria, he was not a member of a greek organization. He was a brain who busted up the beauty pageant, wanting to "move DSG away from the fratastic, recommendation-seeking leadership that it was in previous years," he says.

And for those applicants tapped for the AB Duke, the perks are particularly impressive: special access to professors, a free summer of study at Oxford, $5,000 research grants, and the elevated status of "scholar" on a campus where most students graduated near the top of their class. Not surprisingly then, ABs were once seen as students who had chosen to hole themselves up in Perkins and hammer out pages of grad-level research, day after day. But changes in the last two years have altered the program's mission to motivate scholars to be not just intellectuals but public intellectuals, says sophomore AB Var Shankar. Still, there is no expectation that scholars will assume prominent positions in campus groups.

"From the perspective of the scholarship itself, we are not a leadership organization," Wolf says. "I am a math major, that's what I do at Duke, and everyone is ultimately here as a student. To that end, the organization did not encourage me to get involved in DSG."

But when Wolf went up against Hasnain Zaidi and his 1,000-plus Facebook friends, he found a way to beat the do-gooders, the hand-shakers and the Facebook-frienders at their own game, winning over voters and clinching the victory after a runoff election. And with newfound power, he assembled his cabinet by choosing ABs Slattery and junior Kevin Troy to take on the positions of chief of staff and public relations director, respectively.

"When any of us are in a position to select other people as our advisers, we tend to do so from preordained communication," says Troy, who currently serves as DSG executive chief of staff under Slattery. "Elliott, Paul and I belong to the AB community, and so [appointments were]. in all likelihood going to come from a community in which [we] belong. In this instance, it's been ABs."

Wolf stresses that he made a point of not placing DSG insiders on his cabinet, claiming that he needed someone in the chief of staff position "he could trust." He and Slattery had worked together in several capacities, including a summer spent studying at Oxford and an involvement with AB recruitment boards, Wolf says. But even more salient than their common status as ABs was their common goal-a shared "approach to what student government should be," Slattery says-of changing DSG to a productive and prolific policy-based organization dedicated to pursuing their interpretation of what students want.

"DSG is not a leadership organization," Wolf says. "There is not a single person on this campus who looks to DSG for leadership. No one asks, 'What would DSG do?' DSG is a policy lobby. We lobby the administration to facilitate progress beneficial to the student body and disbursing student funds. This is not Kumbaya inspiration. This is getting stuff done for students."

Senior Katelyn Donnelly, president of the Duke University Union and a member of the AB-saturated Duke Debate team with Slattery and Troy, insists that the era of ABs on DSG-just like the previous era of frat kids-will pass.

"This is sort of an anomaly, the Elliott and Paul years," Donnelly says. "The only reason it ever started was that Elliott had that silly server. Change needs to come from the people who are interested. Anyone can do it."

But Troy says that, in general, a student government is best characterized as a group where a few top officers push for policy changes by sending memos to administrators-a system which favors logistical prowess more than social savvy. Wolf agrees: "Once we redefined [what DSG is] last year, the mission of DSG was more conducive to academically minded people," he says. "As far as I can tell, this seems to be a successful model."

When Slattery decided to run for president, the Wolf-approved campaign promoted a platform of continuing to "get shit done." But Executive Vice President Jordan Giordano-a junior and a DSG journeyman who is currently in his third year of service to the organization, his second as a VP-said Slattery achieved efficiency only by marginalizing the Senate in favor of the Executive Board, allowing him to expand on his outsider status in a potentially dangerous way.

"I think Paul has good intentions in that he does want to get things done," Giordano says. "But somebody who hasn't spent time in the Senate or Exec can't appreciate the work. It's hard to see that if you haven't been in that position."

But with Slattery's presidential victory, the outsider was once again ushered to the inside. Wolf claims it's no coincidence or conspiracy-it is simply an example of change coming from people capable of making it. And although he stresses that the students elect the president, Wolf also acknowledges that AB scholars appointed to the top of the DSG echelon are in prime position to make a presidential run.

"What's happened with DSG is that it has been opened to constituencies who have before felt left out," he says. "That doesn't mean that we've started naming AB successors to every position on DSG. The ABs have certain qualities that are conducive [to working on DSG]."

The future status of ABs as DSG presidents is ultimately up to the students who vote for them, but Wolf stresses that Troy-a two-time national high school speech champion-is capable and credible enough to overshadow much more experienced DSG members such as Giordano, even though the latter was elected to his position.

"Say you've got your slate of random people from DSG and you put them up against Kevin," Wolf says, before offering up a pointed question. "Kevin's not more qualified because he's an AB-Kevin's just extraordinarily talented. Who would you rather have in the room with [Provost] Peter Lange? Would it be Jordan Giordano, who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, or Kevin Troy, for whom I pity anyone he ever gets in an argument with?"

The success of ABs in DSG leads to broader questions about whether scholars' advantages give them a leg up on the average Duke student. Alex Rosenberg, director of the AB program and R. Taylor Cole professor of philosophy, is quick to point out that even though most undergraduates can't have dinner with President Richard Brodhead in the Faculty Commons, they can approximate the scholar experience if they chase it hard enough.

"If you're not an AB Duke, everything that is available to an AB Duke is available to you as well," Rosenberg says. "You just have to be a little more proactive about it." In particular, he cites DukeEngage-which provides full funding for a summer- or semester-long service project-as the sort of opportunity that's often given to scholars, but also available to all Duke students.

Just like airplane passengers who've paid different fares for the same ride, merit scholars can be reluctant to turn to the person next to them and acknowledge they're flying for free, or close to it. They're also reluctant to admit that there really is a difference between flying first class and coach.

"If you're not in one of Duke's privileged scholar groups, you have to work hard or carve your own path," Donnelly says. "Why do we call some people scholars and some people not-because we're clearly all scholars."

Nonetheless, the unparalleled exposure that ABs gain to the school's administrators, professors and policy makers early on allowed Wolf and Slattery to develop a rapport with Duke's top brass that made their lobbying-based approach to DSG as effective as it's been.

"I knew President Brodhead from the AB program from my freshman year," Wolf says. "As far as getting stuff done with DSG, you need to have relationships with administrators."

AB sophomore John Harpham-a member of The Chronicle's editorial board-points out that more than any other scholarship program, the AB Duke has a mission statement parallel to that of the University-but amplified. Harpham says such similar goals makes the AB Scholars ideal candidates to serve the University publicly.

"An AB Scholarship implies certain qualities such as work ethic, discipline, focus and intellectual curiosity, that are by no means the unique possession of the scholar, but can be nothing but beneficial to someone who wants to run a student organization such as DSG," he says. "It's no power grab; it's no conspiracy that the ABs are taking over. It's a decision by a few people who really want to see this organization do better-a few people who think they can do the job."