From the Editors

Dear readers,

Welcome to Towerview’s 17th volume. We’ll be running the show for this year’s edition, and since we’ll spend the next 10 months or so giving you all the in-depth reporting your hearts can handle, now is a good as time as any to acquaint ourselves. Now, we’re not exactly the new kids on the block. As The Chronicle’s former sports editor (Nick) and news editor (Emma), we’ve worked together for the past three years to get you caught up on the latest campus news or basketball championship. The only real difference is that now we moved to a back office and they gave us 20 more pages to work with.

In many ways, the magazine remains committed to the same principles it has been for nearly two decades—finding creative ways to tell compelling stories about Duke, Durham and beyond. Providing hard-hitting analysis alongside illuminating features. Speaking truth to power. These things have remained constant over the past 16 years, and as your editors, we fully plan to continue them. But like any 17-year-old, Towerview is ready for a little change. This year, you can expect more from the magazine online. We’ll be using different forms of media to tell different types of stories, push boundaries and have some fun in the process.

But Towerview isn’t the only thing that’s undergoing change. As you’ll read within these pages, Duke is in the middle of its own period of growth—physically, academically, culturally. Let our annual “10 Things to Watch” feature be your guide to the myriad changes happening on campus and off. All this change, of course, could not happen without strong leadership. We take a look at the man overseeing it all with “A Portrait of a Presidency,” analyzing the good, the bad and the ugly of Richard Brodhead’s first 10 years as president of the University.

And as any project goes, this year will be one of growth for the two of us. We might mess up and miss an Oxford comma or two, but you can rest assured that everything we put on the pages will be a combination of what you need and what you want. It’s going to be a fun ride, so whether you’re a rookie reader of our magazine or a grizzled vet, we hope you’re ready for one hell of a year.