Young Trustee Endorsement

It is Young Trustee season again, which also means it is endorsement season. Although this year’s batch of finalists for the Young Trustee position are all promising in diverse ways, each also had their unique weaknesses. Thus, our final endorsement decision was a narrow and contentious one.

First, a word about how the board envisions the function of the Young Trustee:

The Editorial Board believes that the true value of a Young Trustee is not their ability to communicate with older trustees nor their ability to meaningfully shape policy decisions. Rather, a truly effective Young Trustee is one who highlights novel issues that would otherwise not be represented at closed-door trustee meetings, issues which may, in turn, spark new conversation that may shape trustee decisions downstream.

In endorsement meetings past, the board has often focused on the potential efficacy of each candidate and whether they can translate their platforms into real policy solutions. However, such considerations are ultimately irrelevant. The Young Trustee is just one of 36 voting trustees and is, as past Young Trustees have shown us, often incorporated into the slow-moving bureaucracy of the board.

With this in mind, we decided not to endorse Nikolai Doytchinov. While Doytchinov is clearly the most experienced of the three and already has years of experience serving as a DSG member of the board, his qualifications make him the status quo candidate. We worry that many, though not all, aspects of his detailed platform are existing topics salient during boardroom discussions. Moreover, while his DSG affiliations run deep, his relationships with other parts of the campus are sparse. We have no doubt that he would be the most eloquent communicator in the boardroom, though his presence would ultimately not shake the cloistered dynamic of the boardroom.

Anna Knight does bring fresh new perspectives to the Young Trustee position. If elected, she would be the first Panhellenic trustee from the Pratt School of Engineering. In a boardroom dominated by white men, her female gender identity is also refreshing. Knight’s extensive experience working within, and eventually leading, the Engineering Student Government mirrors Doytchinov’s significant DSG experiences. We also appreciate her awareness of Duke’s global position as a research university and her focus on shoring up undergraduate research resources and Pell grants. However, again, as with Doytchinov, we worry that many of the issues Knight has chosen to highlight in her platform are relatively safe issues already on the trustees’ agenda.

Meanwhile, David Robertson stands out as the only student leader outside of student government. As a director of Common Ground and other diversity-related student initiatives, Robertson, like Knight, brings an original perspective to the boardroom. His commitment to diversity, Duke-Durham relations and issues of student culture and identity are laudable even though they do not translate easily into actionable policy items. That being said, we are concerned with Robertson’s ability to communicate charismatically and persuasively in a boardroom setting. However, we believe his value in injecting a social awareness of Duke’s student body will be invaluable in creating well-informed policy.

We hereby endorse David Robertson for Young Trustee, though we believe all three candidates are strong candidates. None have dared to rock the boat as much as we would have wished, but faced with three solid choices for Thursday’s election, the Young Trustee position is now in the voter’s court.