Improving Duke

Before I begin my list of suggestions, I must acknowledge the progress Duke has made since I began coming here.  When I was a freshman, I had to ride all the way through Central on the C-2 bus if I wanted to go to West Campus on the weekends (20 miles in the snow, uphill both ways, etc.), the football team won about once every 20 games, and ARAMARK was feeding us cardboard in the Marketplace.  We didn't even have Coach K in his boxers to entertain us.

Winston Churchill was once confronted by a woman who complained that the amount of alcohol he drank could fill her town's hall halfway to the ceiling, and he acknowledged that he still had a lot of drinking to do to fill the whole thing.  Similarly, Duke must not allow its previous accomplishments to obscure the fact that there's room for further improvement.

A year ago, I knew exactly what was wrong with the Duke bus system.  There were too many lazy bums getting on at the admissions office and the power plant (why on Earth would anyone get off at the power plant?!?).  Cut the number of bus stops in half and make the moochers walk fifty yards so the rest of us can get to class on time.

I should have figured that the same God who created Rosie O'Donnell and the duck-billed platypus would have a strange sense of humor, and He decided to teach me a lesson about complaining by moving my job to the Smith Warehouse and my dorm to Edens.  Now, my trips between West and East routinely involve the admissions office, the power plant, and, sometimes, both.  Having been on both sides of the issue, I'd split the C-1 route into an "express" route going directly from East to West and a regular route with all the stops intact.

Staying with transportation, it's time to bite the bullet and increase the availability and convenience of student parking.  I'm not necessarily saying build a four-story parking garage in the Blue Zone—the risk of someone falling off of it during Tailgate may be too great—but parking has been a pain in students' necks for long enough.  (Which reminds me of another great stride Duke has made recently.  It used to be that students had to evacuate the Blue Zone every Friday before home football games so every Florida State, Clemson, or Virginia Tech fan within 75 miles could park there and root against our team.  We still have to park elsewhere during football games, of course, but during the Age of Cutcliffe, some of our replacements are at least fellow Duke fans.)

During my freshman year, an epidemic struck my dorm.  Southgate doesn't have air conditioning, and for some reason I can't quite understand, we weren't allowed to bring our own air conditioners—except for one guy whose allergies required him to have air conditioning.  A plague swept through the dorm, and soon just about everyone had a doctor's note asking for air conditioning.  I'm no epidemiologist, but perhaps installing air conditioning in the remaining dorms will prevent any allergy outbreaks in the future.

Finally, just in case Larry Moneta is reading this, we can always use more plazas.

Jeff Ditzler is a Trinity senior who realizes that implementing most of these will have to wait until after the recession.