“This Week in Chronicle History” is a weekly feature that dives into the depths of The Chronicle archives to recount what was going on then—now. This semester Caitlin Johnson will be writing this weekly feature.
I feel like I’m in Back To the Future! Well, ok not really . . . but I do like that movie, and I am going back in time (even if it’s only metaphorically) as I peruse through The Chronicle’s archives. I am looking for 1985— the year Doc invented time travel! Duh! — and I am failing miserably.
Ok, plan B. I see 1986 on the shelf, and I grab it. I thumb through the pages, which have started to yellow around the edges, until I get to Jan. 30. I read; I pause; I read again and I take it in.
Twenty-five years ago, this week, Duke’s campus was still struggling to come to terms with the Challenger disaster and the death of a Durham man at an on-campus party. At the same time, a visit from Adolfo Calero, the nominal leader of the CIA-organized counter-revolutionary forces—the Contras—in Nicaragua, sparked student protests and a series of editorials.In a front page article on Thursday, Jan. 30, Alex Roland, former NASA historian and associate professor of history, said that NASA uses the space shuttle program primarily as a “stunt to bolster its image.” In the wake of the Challenger disaster, he believed it should be reconsidered.
“Roland claims manned spaceflight is too costly, both in the danger to the people involved and financially. ‘It’s simply more expensive to conduct our space activities with a crew aboard than to conduct them by machine,’ Roland said.”
Letters to the editor about the disaster and space program were featured almost daily. On Tuesday, Feb. 4 in a letter to the editor titled “Reach for the sky,” Mark Geesey, a Botany graduate student began his letter to the editorial board:
“I find it exceedingly difficult to understand how any forward-thinking person could possibly call for an end to our country’s manned space program as Alex Roland has. Any exploration of significance that mankind has undertaken has cost the lives of the dedicated explorers.”
On Monday, Feb. 3, a letter from Assistant Mathematics Professor Dana Nance, titled “Lessons from space,” addressed the struggle to come to grips with what had happened in a poem:
Another tragedy struck Duke’s campus on Jan. 24 when Eric Nichols, a 22-year old man from Durham, was shot and killed after refusing to pay entrance to a party in the Mary Lou Williams Center. The suspect was another man who was neither a student nor an employee at the University. A Jan. 27 editorial, “Stain on the ivory tower” accused students of being indifferent because the victim was not a Duke student. On Thursday, Jan. 30 Missy Madison, Trinity ‘86, wrote in response:
“Murder is scary. If some students prefer to avoid the reality of the incident, it is more an example of them acting like human beings than of being apathetic about Duke’s relationship with Durham.”
But students did come out in hoards to protest a visit from Adolfo Calero, the nominal leader of the CIA-organized counter-revolutionary forces—the Contras—in Nicaragua. In an unsigned editorial on Tuesday, Feb. 4, a writer described how the “Protest overstepped bounds”:
“Yet the concept of free speech is based on allowing both sides to be heard. Some of those protesting Adolfo Calero’s speech Tuesday – even after writing letters, handing out flyers and demonstrating vocal opposition to Calero’s practices by dressing in black, wearing armbands and picketing – refused to let him speak for less than an hour without interrupting point by point. . . . Not allowing the public to listen to Calero, or even see him, which happened when hundreds stood throughout the speech, hardly made a case for the protesters. While the demonstration undoubtedly displayed the strength of the protestors’ convictions, it did nothing to show the strength of their argument.”
In lighter news . . . Things that apparently never change
-Thursday, Jan. 30: Students scrambled to spend food points since they would not be refunded the full amount of what was left at the end of the year. In 1986, you were refunded 100% of your money for the first $50, this year a new policy was instated that left students without refunds.
-Thursday, Feb. 6: Parking tickets and getting your car towed, nothing has changed. An article was written describing, “How money is extracted from your pocket.” Sticklers, then and now.
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