By Justin Robinette

It was reported Wednesday that the Board of Trustees will soon be presented “a proposal…asking for $75,000 to study the feasibility of a 150-bed addition to [Keohane] quad” by “several top administrators.” The article cited Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education Steve Nowicki, and asserts that “adding residence space” and potential dining options to Keohane Quad will be funded in the following manner (Follow this logic!): “Duke would likely borrow money to construct the dorm and repay it over time using housing revenue, Nowicki said. If the project is paid for in this way, Duke’s moratorium on new construction projects will not apply. The construction moratorium only applies to building projects that require new money to be generated from sources such as the endowment or charitable giving.

We are particularly confused by the notion that the moratorium on new building spending does not apply to projects such as this.  Any new project is constrained by the moratorium; it is cheating to suggest otherwise.  Repayment in the form of future “housing revenue” becomes the students’ burden—read: Board fees, quad dues and possible tuition hikes to offset discrepancies will, as Nowicki admits by prohibiting the use of donations for ambitious building projects, shoulder Keohane’s construction.  Especially given the current state of affairs in Duke finance, and following the virtually coerced retirement of 295 employees as of June, we question the very suggestion that additions to one of the campus’s newest dorms is necessary in order to “really bring out the potential of McClendon Tower.”  This is particularly offensive on a number of fronts: firstly, to any semblance of responsible budgeting.  Secondly, any of those 295 “retired” employees (many of them housekeeping) would hardly agree with the compassionless claim that a space’s marginal “potential” comes at the expense of their job.  Students forced to live without housekeeping on weekends would also question whether their campus’s future “potential” outweighs their campus’s daily upkeep.   This is, finally, offensive to students forcibly shunted, year after year, to Central Campus’s ghetto-like atmosphere of disrepair, low police enforcement and shoddy facilities.  150 beds will not solve the problem of deplorable Central Campus living conditions for independents.

The only way Keohane construction will be paid for in the administration’s rationale, and by their own admission outside of charitable donations and endowment funding that are tenuous, unpredictable and on the decline, will be to hike tuition directly, or cut student services.  For some reason it is acceptable for the literal spending freeze on building to be overruled because students, and not benefactors, will be the ones ultimately footing the bill.  Keohane construction is a direct violation of the moratorium on building.  New spending on money borrowed, to be replaced by anticipated revenue, and on a campus dorm that needs no renovation is reprehensible Recession behavior—the building moratorium is in place for a reason, and Duke’s shameful commitment to coerced retirement of its employees, the cutting of weekend cleaning, and continued indifference to Central Campus’s disorder is an outright disservice to student welfare and campus life—we would little care for spending on McClendon Tower if we were to spend at all.  We request that the university also investigate the nature of this new addition:  If Keohane’s Memorial Grove—the six trees planted in memory of the six Duke alumni who died in the attacks of 9/11—will be built over, demolished or in any way bulldozed upon or around, this will be patently unacceptable to the student body.