Administration's 'public' is a narrow one

Duke University administrators’ characterization of the Center for LGBT Life and the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture as “private groups” undeserving of a place in the public space is a sad and regressive step for the University. These centers exist to bring marginalized groups on campus into the public sphere, by providing a visible and accessible space for social interaction and open discourse. For many students, these centers are a means of safe and comfortable access to the mainstream campus life that others are able to achieve so easily.

By singling out LGBT and black organizations as those which are unsuitable for inclusion as “public” (and for the apparent additional consideration that deserves) groups, the current administration is redefining the Duke public itself as belonging to the majority—as a public that is certainly not queer and not black. Excluding the students who form these communities from the public only perpetuates and entrenches the disenfranchisement that the centers were created to oppose.

Removing the Mary Lou Williams and LGBT centers from their current locations for such arbitrary and shameful reasoning is an insult to the entire Duke student body and to the respectable, unified campus culture that this administration so loudly seeks to create.

Matti Darden, Trinity ’14