Just give up

Last Thursday, I was walking to class when I saw dump trucks unloading brown piles onto our quads. For a brief second, I wondered if I was imagining this entire situation—it still was early enough and I hadn’t yet drunk my coffee. Could we really be dumping piles of what appeared to be manure onto our quads? Was this Larry Moneta and the rest of the administration’s response to recent student dissent?

The piles were obviously put there to help fertilize our quad, and I’m not entirely sure it was even manure. The problem is I believed it could have been any number of different things, and none of them surprised me. That’s when I realized Duke University, and specifically its leaders, had entered into the Tyson Zone.

The “Tyson Zone” was coined by sports columnist Bill Simmons, and is described by Wikipedia as “the status an athlete or celebrity reaches when his or her behavior becomes so outrageous that one would believe any story or anecdote about the person, no matter how shocking or bizarre.” It was named after former boxer Mike Tyson, because you honestly could say “Mike Tyson did … ” and anyone would believe whatever came after. This moniker could easily be applied to Duke administrators: “Larry Moneta just kicked a kid in the shin,” or “Duke’s administrators just allocated $42.5 million over six years to a school in China that actually hasn’t received Chinese government approval yet and had its opening delayed at least a semester” are both plausible statements that come to mind. Actually, the last one just happened. Welcome to the Tyson Zone.

The goings-on in Kunshan also bring to light that the current lack of approval from the Chinese government is, according to Provost Peter Lange, “a process that is preventing Duke from recruiting students for DKU academic programs.” Furthermore, according to The Chronicle, Academic Council Chair Susan Lozier expressed that “faculty members are not prepared to proceed with upcoming DKU proposals because they feel they have had limited involvement in its development.” Essentially, the campus has no students (or ways to convince them to come to DKU) and no serious faculty involvement from members of the Durham campus. Not to worry, however, since Duke has most of its DKU administration in place and has recently “received a $1 million gift from an anonymous donor this summer, bringing total donations to $6 million.” That donation brings the DKU’s costs to 14.1 percent currently funded by donation. Those are not very lofty goals. Again, welcome to the Tyson Zone.

The Tyson Zone stems from a person or group’s apathy towards others’ judgments. Mike Tyson probably does not care about what the public has to say about him, because he is either too apathetic or too crazy to care anymore. Similarly, President Brodhead, Larry Moneta and the rest of the members of the Allen Building do not care about current students’ opinions of them or their practices. And why should they? By the time most of us are at a comfortable enough financial state to donate to Duke, the current inhabitants of the Allen Building will be long gone.

Richard Brodhead is already in his 60‘s and closer to the end of his term as president of this University than the beginning. Larry Moneta has been at Duke longer than Brodhead, having come here in 2001 after serving roughly 10 years in a similar position at the University of Pennsylvania (and we all know how that ended). Most other administrators at the “core” of Duke—Sue Wasiolek, Peter Lange, Stephen Nowicki—are nearing their times of retirement or at the very least a reduction of their duties at Duke. I like to compare them to the stereotypical grandparent: They can say ridiculous things, be obnoxious and cause scenes because they’re not going to be around for much longer.

They’re also very smart about how they do things. Major changes are great ways for Duke to get funding from donations. Spicing up things a bit by changing the way students live their day-to-day lives is a great fundraising strategy! Just slap a picture of a black kid, brown kid (Latino or southeast Asian), white kid and Asian kid laughing together and send it out to top donors or prospective donors (looking at you, Bruce Springsteen). Who cares if current students don’t like it, since they are not likely to donate for decades to come. The current administration will have been long gone by then, and some unwitting schmucks will be left dealing with the mess. It’s brilliant, even if it is a little shortsighted!

That’s why we’re in the Tyson Zone right now. Administrators don’t care about current students’ reactions to policies because current students don’t donate back to Duke. Instead, they want stories to point to while their hands are reaching for donors’ back pockets. It’s a brilliant short-term strategy, even if it will lead to Duke’s future downfall.