Intangible contribution

Having spent several hours a day, five days a week sitting in this office for the past year, I often struggle to locate and label my contribution to The Chronicle. I have never written and reported a story. I have never written a column. I have never even written a letter to the editor or commented on the website. With no tangible product to point to, no physical evidence that I was here, it sometimes feels like I have done nothing.

This year, The Chronicle has enjoyed a phenomenal opinion section. From Concerned Global Citizen to the Socialites, from guest pieces about the MMS program to personal accounts of gender violence, it has served as not only a source of entertainment for students, but also as a center for campus dialogue and debate. We published essentially every guest piece The Chronicle received, something I am proud to be able to say. I might not have agreed with everything that was said in these pages, but I strongly believe that all of it was said for the good of Duke. Even the most ludicrous and controversial statements remind us that as a community we are not of one opinion, that we still have a lot to talk about.

The opinion section diversified the type of content it offered to readers and increased community access to print and online space. I also hope some of the columnists learned more about writing—this is a teaching institution after all, something I think readers often forget.

Somewhere between 97 and 99 percent of the section’s success (I have never been skilled enough at math to give an exact figure) comes from the students who committed themselves to writing and editing and the community members who chose The Chronicle as the outlet for their opinions. I like to think the other 1 to 3 percent is because of the time I devoted, but even this might be too high an estimate. Yes, I have managed this section of the paper. I selected all of the writers and made schedules and rules and read every piece of writing that ran in these pages. I checked facts and changed commas. I arranged content when writers balked at the last minute. But this was a functionary position.

In a few weeks, The Chronicle is going to give me two giant books that contain every edition of the paper that was published in the 107th volume. About 140 of them. More than 500 columns, guest pieces and letters to the editor. Maybe this aggregated mass of pages and words will fulfill my hunt for physicality, but I doubt it. More likely, the tomes will sit on my bookcase, reminders of the time I spent sitting in 301 Flowers. Even more so, they will be a reminder of all the writers and editors who committed their time and energy to make my job possible. It will also remind me that The Chronicle has given me more than I could ever return.

This is going to sound cheesy, but I am sure any of you who have devoted your time to a campus organization can understand. Having the opportunity to be held accountable for getting something done every day, to manage a staff and to coordinate a complicated project, has taught me my most valuable college skills. Also, surprisingly enough, having your email address be the one that almost every piece of criticism—online comment, letter to the editor or just angry email—goes to, has toughened my skin.

In September, an angry email saying I should be fired or calling me a racist/bigot/misogynist for letting Monday, Monday make a joke about ... there were a lot of these so I can’t remember a specific one, would have made my heart beat a little faster. The email would have stayed in the back of my mind all day, making me throw up my hands and gripe about how readers don’t understand anything. But by December, a threat to sue the paper for libel because an online commentor had called a columnist misinformed (yes this is a true story), merely made me raise my eyebrows. Now, these kind of things just mostly make me laugh.

For this, I thank The Chronicle and the people that volunteer their time to make it wonderful. All of you have made me a better editor and a stronger person. (I do still try to avoid Larry Moneta though. Ever since Monday, Monday wrote that CGC had sex fantasies about him, I really just can’t see him on the stairs in Flowers without feeling uncomfortable.) I hope my time here, in some small way, made this section or this paper better, even though I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to point to anything and say, “Yes, this is it. This is what I have contributed.” But that’s OK. I will just be able to read the edit pages and feel proud to know that for a short time, I had something to do with them.