Ben Shelton's Jan. 7 column, "Just add fried chicken," is very close to making a good point about campus culture, but just narrowly misses the important bit. His definition of "culture" is a little narrow-as best as I can tell, most administrators would define "alternative culture" as anything fun with multiple people that doesn't involve some combination of heavy drinking, sporting events or popular concerts. But his Prisoner example qualifies, so he's still on track.
Where he whiffs is identifying the obstacle. It's not red tape, or initiative-I've done stuff like this, and I know what it would take to run exactly the event he describes. If you have a student group that's even vaguely related to what you want to do, and you have an event that can fit in a classroom or a commons room, getting it to happen is the easy part (admittedly, adding the alcohol does make for a few hoops).
The tough part is getting people to notice and getting people to come-and free food and free booze doesn't quite do the trick. Duke doesn't have a good way to get the word out about anything without having the manpower to post hundreds of flyers around campus. Yes, OSAF's just set up a new calendar for student groups to promote their events, but it'll go the way of eFlyer if students don't look at it. And when they already know how to find all the drinking, sports and concerts that they need, why would they? The answer is that that's not all students want, and the ones that know about the other opportunities out there (or maybe just me) are fed up with everyone acting like section parties, Tailgate and Journey are all there is, because it stops people from looking for the good stuff.
The real problem isn't that this stuff doesn't happen, but that we pretend it doesn't. Why?
Greg Filpus
Pratt '09
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