Amnesty day begs the question: What the fork?

As a small, weakling freshman, I was giving hoards of advice during O-Week. But, to young Friday Friday, one piece of advice has stood out as both unexpected and lingering. As O-Week Friday Friday passed under the Perkins-Bostock bridge after wandering into the depths of E-Quad for the first and last time, I bumped into a scruffy senior, who was taking a mid-morning smoke break. As I started to profusely apologize, my overstuffed backpack hurting my spine, the senior raised his sunglasses, adjusted his t-shirt with a local brewery ad screen-printed on it, and said, “Kid, my best advice to you is this: steal as much as you can from Duke. Not big things, but small stuff. Pens, staplers, department shirts from religious studies, forks, whatever.”

This senior is probably now sitting in his price-gouged San Francisco apartment at an IKEA desk looking over files for his most recent client at Deloitte, but claims he’d leave it all behind to brew kombucha. How prophetic his words have become. 

Over the weekend, Duke Dining announced they would have a “Fork Amnesty Day” in an effort to get students to return the thousands of forks that have been taken from West Union. Students could return any number of forks they might have to West Union, no questions asked. On this amnesty day, students will be free from the usual punishment that comes from returning WU cutlery that must not be named. 

Duke Dining expects that due to this generous act, several forks, as well as spoons, knives and cups are likely to be returned to West Union. Duke Dining explained that students probably didn’t mean to take the forks, it was just another instance of highly-motivated, engaged Duke students being too lazy to carry their fork back inside after pushing through the ridiculously heavy doors of the West Campus dining hall.

With the anticipated success of “Fork Amnesty Day,” the Duke administration is planning more amnesty days in the future. Duke Facilities spokesperson, Bob Builder (no relation to Bob *the* Builder), said, “Oh yeah. We’re planning on vindicating all the petty theft students have been engaging in for years. Pens, paper, the sticky things you put on the back of your phone. We’ll have all kinds of amnesty days.” When pressed if Bob was upset about the amount of small items taken from classrooms, libraries and offices, he replied, “Sure, it’s annoying to be constantly reordering pens. Particularly the kind with nice nub ends. But, I think if we bring attention to the issue, students will be more aware and change their mentality. Can we fix [the sense of entitlement Duke students have]? Yes we can!”

Amnesty Days are extending past office supplies and kitchen utensils as well. Fraternity [name redacted after legal threats from fathers of current members] is planning on tabling next week for it own amnesty day. The president of the tabling fraternity, Chad Kristopherson, says, “We get stuff stolen from us all the time. Ping pong balls, bedsheets with crudely painted theme slogans, innocence, flags, ugh, the flags are the worst.”

Brothers of the fraternity explained that the mornings after they host mixers or parties, they often noticed their hanging flags missing. “Man, once I really got cleaned out,” one brother explained, “Both my 'Saturdays are for the Boys' and letters flag were gone. It was brutal.” He went on to explain that he sent GroupMe messages to the girls he knew in the sorority they had mixed with, but the sorority members denied having any knowledge of the stolen flags. However, the girls did mention that unfortunate things like that wouldn’t happen if the frat had gone ahead and bought Ciroc instead of Burnett’s. 

The Caretakers of Peaches Facebook page, which coordinates health care for Duke’s since-reformed feral cat Peaches, is also planning an “amnesty day.” According to a recent Facebook post, someone keeps stealing cans of cat food from Peaches’ personal supply. “Whoever keeps stealing tuna delight from Peaches, please return it,” reads the post. “You’re stealing processed cat food. That’s weird, man.” The post received angry reacts only.