On the global stage, no action goes without a significant reaction. Revolts in Tunisia and cries for democracy in Egypt have set off a chain reaction of protests, reforms, and unrest. As is common in American foreign policy, experts identify these reactions under the rubric of “Domino Theory: the idea that sudden change in the leadership of one nation can set off a chain reaction in its neighbors, transforming an entire region.”¹ President Eisenhower originally coined the term in reference to Indochina, claiming that if one country fell to communism, others would quickly follow.

More recently, the Domino Theory has been utilized as an explanation for the growth of democracy. President Bush hoped for a democracy domino effect in the Middle East after the invasion of Iraq, for example, much to the ridicule of the media and his political opponents. But in light of recent events in the Middle East, it appears President Bush’s may yet be fulfilled:if the Middle East is, in fact, a series of dominoes, it appears that Iraq was the first to fall.

In the present moment, as many as nine Middle Eastern countries are pushing away from autocratic regimes towards freer, more democratic governance. But to blame or credit the domino effect seems to minimize the importance of free and individual choice: are countries becoming democratic only because their neighbors are as well? Or are citizens under autocratic regimes seeing real changes and freedoms in their neighbors, and desiring that for themselves?

Winston Churchill once famously said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Since the ancient Republics, it has often been thought that power distributed amongst all people is safer, better, and freer than power confined only to a minority. Politically, it has become a powerful strategy to preach about the freedoms guaranteed by democracy. Americans may not agree on many things, but most believe strongly in the individual liberties that democracy has secured.

When it comes to other countries, however, the true hypocrisy of our faith in democracy is apparent. Americans call for democracy throughout the world, but continue to support autocratic rulers that preserve our economic interests. Especially in the contentious oil-rich regions of the Middle East, politicians would rather have an America-friendly dictator than a democracy of extremists who oppose US interests.

As such, the calls for democracy in the Middle East show us that it is time to practice what we preach. These countries are not simply dominoes falling out of control: they are communities of individuals crying for freedom. To trivialize the desire for freedom by reducing it to a mere force of gravity lessens everything that America stands for. That individuals in the Middle East have chosen to fight for their freedoms, though they may be contrary to American economic interests, is commendable. The United States should congratulate and welcome these new democracies, bearing in mind only the peoples’ best interests, and not our own games to play.

References
1 Tanenhaus, Sam. “The World: From Vietnam to Iraq: The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Domino Theory.” The New York Times, 23 March 2003.

When I first started writing for The Gothic Guardian as a freshman, I was full of story ideas and eager to help define the modern young conservative. But, after three years of writing mostly about fiscal policies and economics, I must acknowledge the challenges of keeping up with both news and politics.

I am apparently not unique among young Americans, many of whom also wrestle with political and news media fatigue. In a Gallup poll from March 2010, only 20 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 were “very enthusiastic” about the fall midterm elections, compared with 44 percent in the age group who were “not enthusiastic.”¹ Young Americans are also more likely to be disinterested in the news, politics-related or not. In a study by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard titled “Young People and News,” researchers found that 45 percent of young adults (aged 18-30) more or less did not read newspapers or Internet-based news.²

Maybe the culprit is the disconnect between the scope of these issues and events and the young people themselves. It seems that students struggle when we are forced to consider these issues outside of the classroom, where we are able to write long essays about public policy and political science. In the real world, when I consider writing about the federal debt ceiling it is much easier to get frustrated because ultimately my voice is only one of the many.

But the thing is, though it can be difficult to change the debt ceiling (although anything is possible!) it is still entirely possible to make a difference. Even if our aim is always to make a bigger impact (as opposed to a smaller one) on the world, the key to doing so is usually to start at the local level. When Duke students help with tsunami relief efforts, for example, it is often by collecting donations locally. When we help campaign for politicians, we usually do it by raising awareness in our local area. Even college writers for a publication like The Gothic Guardian are encouraged to focus on campus and Durham issues and events, because it is in the local niche where we can add something new to the conversation. The best solution to fighting apathy on a national scale is to fight it in our local communities and at our universities.

Duke students, while not be able to run for office or lobby in Washington, D.C. yet, can still get involved in the policy decisions taking place around them. According to recent Duke Student Government survey results, 45.8 percent of Duke students had no opinion with regards to the statement “DSG effectively represents me.”³ According to The Chronicle, voter turnout in this year’s DSG executive election was 49.2 percent, which is a significant increase over turnout from past years, but nevertheless a number that can be further improved on.⁴ The data suggests that nearly half of Duke students are probably not sufficiently involved in student government or do not have enough information on DSG initiatives to form a constructive opinion of the organization.

This is a huge problem, because DSG represents the link between the students and the administrators and also functions as a primary way for students to make a difference at Duke. If we’re living up to Duke’s reputation for possessing dynamic students, then the percentage of students who simply don’t feel strongly about their student government needs to decline significantly.

Duke students are known for getting involved. Whether it’s with a political campus political group or Duke Partnership for Service or even Investment Club, there are numerous ways that students can learn more about the world around them and make a difference. Students have vast resources at their disposal to carry out their plans — they just have to take the time and have the initiative to actually make something happen.

The point is: there are no limitations on what young Americans can accomplish. When we get tired of writing political opinions, we can try our hand at community service or cultural group projects. If we feel dissatisfaction about our dining policies, we can run for DSG office. If we are uncomfortable with gender relations, we can go to talks and forums. And if we simply have too many midterms to worry about, we can at least vote in DSG elections every April.

References
1 Newport, Frank. “Dems Hold Slight Advantage in 2010 Election Preferences.” Gallup. 9 March 2010.
2 Report prepared by Patterson, Thomas. “Young People and News.” Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. 2007.
3 DSG Survey Commission. “DSG Survey Commission 2011 Final Report.” Duke Student Government. 30 March 2011.
4 Tanaka, Sanette. “Schork elected next DSG president.” The Chronicle. 7 April 2011.

A year after the Health Care Reform Act code named “Obamacare” was written into law, its incendiary effects continue to rage on. Much of the right-wing gripe over the law has focused on the unconstitutionality of government mandates to buy health insurance. But the more important issue, from my perspective, is the system’s failure to support and create incentives for the most crucial components in the delivery of health care: doctors.

Doctors face a slew of financial and administrative obstacles today that prevent them from providing the best possible treatment for their patients. Because the incentives provided for doctors under the health care reform law are drastically misaligned, unless more focus is placed on the issue we will be facing a shortage of 62,000 doctors by 2015, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. This massive projected shortage is only four years away. As Medicaid programs expand under the recent health care reform, only a finite number of doctors will be able to treat everyone, and this will lead to lower quality of care.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there is currently a shortage of 16,000 primary doctors.¹ One of the driving factors of this shortage is the high cost of medical school, ranging from $120,000 to $150,000 on average.² In order to pay off their scholastic debts, doctors have an incentive to go into high-paying specialties, instead of primary care. Although Obamacare allegedly recognizes the need for more primary care physicians and includes funding for scholarships and loan forgiveness, it ignores a key part of the problem. Crucially, med students who hope to become practicing physicians must undergo a “residency” period. Residency is a stage of graduate medical training in which students or “residents” practice under fully licensed doctors in hospitals and clinics in order to get in-depth training in a specific branch of medicine. Currently, there is cap on residency funding, which means that the law’s efforts to increase the number of medical students via subsidy is useless, since there is a bottleneck in another part of the process to becoming a practicing physician.

Another way the current government strategy is punishing doctors is through Medicare payment cuts. Medicare is a federal program that provides health insurance to 45 million Americans ages 65 and older. Medicare, along with Medicaid, which provides health insurance to people with low-income and resources, are both inefficient and unwieldy programs. Both programs have very low reimbursement rates to physicians, and in January of next year, an additional 30 percent physician payment cut will be instituted. Counterproductively, this gives physicians further incentives to stop accepting Medicare patients or to drop existing ones.

One of the main goals of the health care reform law was to target rising health care costs. Physicians today face the threat of multi-million dollar malpractice lawsuits. There has been no cap on the amount of damages that can be paid out to plaintiffs, and, as a result, physicians practice “defensive medicine:” they order more expensive tests and procedures because they must operate based on liability rather than need. According to industry experts, defensive medicine counts for about 10 percent of health care costs or $100 billion annually. Not only does the law do nothing to reduce this financial burden on physicians, it very often ties their hands in seeking the best treatment for their patients.

While Medicare and other government programs have failed, private health plans continue to innovate new payment systems. Private plans have incentives to compete for better doctors for their networks, and thus they have provide financial incentives in order to achieve better health outcomes. In a report by PriceWaterhouse Cooper, 8 out of the 10 largest community health plans in the country had implemented performance-based pay for doctors.³ In Pennsylvania, the Geisinger Health System has created a “warranty” program for heart surgery; they charge a flat fee for the heart surgery and an additional 90 days of follow-up treatment.⁴ If there is anything that goes wrong after the surgery, the responsibility is on them. Currently, the incentives for quality elsewhere are misaligned. If a physician makes a mistake the first time, they get paid more for the services incurred by a repeat visit. Conversely, these private plans are innovating strategies to cut down on costs while improving the quality of medical treatment.

It is important to acknowledge that not all of the issues of the health care system can be solved by moving it into the private market. A very large segment of our population is uninsured, which both the right and left should acknowledge as a large problem. However, redistributing the incomes of physicians to increase bureaucracies and the already inefficient and unwieldy government health programs is not the answer. There needs to be a realignment of incentives in order to increase the number of primary care doctors in our country, adequately reimburse current doctors for quality care, and untie doctors’ hands so that they can do their jobs.

References
1 Kirch, Darrell G. “How to Fix the Doctor Shortage.” Wall Street Journal. Jan. 4, 2010.
2 Kavilanz, Parija. “Doctors: 5 gripes about the health law.” CNNmoney.com. April 21, 2010.
3 Gottlieb, Scott. “How Obamacare Will Affect Your doctor.” Wall Street Journal. May 12, 2009.
4 Abelson, Reed. “In a Bid for Better Care, Surgery with a Warranty.” The New York Times. May 17, 2007.

APRIL 8 – Congressional leaders have only hours remaining to pass a new budget or face an impending government shutdown. With this swollen leverage, Republicans have the President’s party by the proverbial chestnuts. Facing the crisis of a government shutdown, Congress has a singular opportunity to restore the conservative dream of American “sanity,” passing the most comprehensive budget cuts in recent history.

So what do they do with all this power? Undermining the overriding goal of limiting government spending as much as possible, Republicans instead consent to a virtually unchanged budget proposal which cuts a meager $38 billion next year.¹ Rather than sticking to their guns and holding the Dems to a major spending cut, Congressional Republicans throw their entire leverage into withholding federal funding from “Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions.”²

So congrats, Republicans. Revive the “War Against Women,” fight the good fight.³ Withhold federal spending from the rape victims and the shameless women who, for no better reason than a broken condom, seek family planning assistance. Certainly, the last thing the party should do in this situation is to take a hard stand for budget reform on a significant, national scale, one that will affect millions of Americans. Personal freedom and fiscal responsibility aren’t part of our core ideology or anything, right?

In the face of this gross mishandling, we should not rationalize our representatives’ failures by embarrassingly embellishing the difficulty of the task before them: “only YOU can prevent government spending, congressman.” People do not realize is how easy it is to balance the budget. Try playing around with one of the free simulators like balancethebudget.com. Our fiscal problems are not due to unfeasibility, but simply because of chronically misplaced priorities. Congress absolutely has the ability to balance the budget, but they fail to do so because our representatives cannot agree on where to cut spending, and are flat out unwilling to cut federal funding from the greatest subsidized institutions. Consequently, Friday night should have been a shining opportunity for the Republican party, a moment when they finally had the leverage to get things done.

So why the big letdown? Clearly, social conservatives have the party’s crown jewels in an even stronger vice grip than the Republicans’ traction with the nation as a whole. Friday’s budget legislation should be a wakeup call all of us who identify as conservative. The issue is not about whether or not one agrees with abortion, its legality, or its continued usage. Rather, the issue at stake here is that time and time again, Republicans have a big opportunity to put their money where their mouth is, and instead forfeit their own goals in favor of trivial, mindless social conservatism. Rarely have I felt so strongly that to be conservative and to be a Republican are not the same thing. Six months from now, when we face the same debt we always have and the abortions are trickling to a halt, maybe the party will get its priorities straight. After all, there’s always next time…

References
1 Hulse, Carl. “Budget Deal to Cut $38 Billion Averts Shutdown.” The New York Times, 8 April 2011.
2 Herszenhorn, David M. and Cooper, Helene. “Concessions and Tension, Then a Deal.” The New York Times, 9 April 2011.
3 Cesca, Bob. “The Republican War Against Women.” Huffington Post, 10 February 2011.

At Duke, every year nearer to matriculation carries with it distinct lessons about how, where, and when to park.

Freshman year enables students to park practically on their doorsteps in the Red Zone. At least, until the lot is inexplicably full and you need to park on the other side of East Campus or face a hefty parking fine. As a sophomore, the question becomes not whether there is parking to be found but rather how many acres of Blue Zone the student must navigate to make it back to West. And for the upperclassmen and graduate students — well, we get to taste the rainbow. Red, Orange, Green, Blue, Violet: each color marks a different lot with a different parking requirement. Not to mention the HP-3, PGC-65, and other signifiers that sound more like a new brand of jumbo jet than a specific parking pass.

On its face, the parking system seems admirably organized. Each different lot, no matter how miniscule, is reserved for a specific kind of access. Law school students and employees, Trinity faculty, etc. – each group is reserved its own parking area. To appreciate how disorderly this system truly is, however, we should take a step back and question its necessity.

Who you gonna call?

Exhibit A: Trent building. As an underclassman, I chronically avoided classes in this building because it is so inaccessible from both East and West campuses. Now, as an off-campus senior, I somehow ended up with class there four times a week. So where exactly can a person park near Trent building?

Not in the gated Trent lot, even though it is perpetually empty. Not in the GC lot across from Trent building, even though it is also rarely full. Certainly not in the massive H lot, even farther away, nor in the residential lots on Yearby or Anderson streets. Definitely not in the enormous Medical Center garage on Flowers Drive, nor in the never-occupied carpool spots along the street, unless you can prove
that not only that you are driving another undergraduate to class, but that said undergrad also has a Blue Zone pass and is declining to use it in favor of carpooling. In fact, according to a private correspondence with Duke Parking, the Blue Zone is the closest legal lot to Trent building for undergraduates. If you’re a freshman with a car, you might as well walk from East campus.

Transportation Fail

Crucially, the problem is not just one of inefficiency but of, quite literally, stupidity. The point of a car is to increase mobility and ease of transportation from one location to another. But freshmen can only legally park on East Campus. Upperclassmen can only legally park on West Campus. Students are not statues embalmed in cement: they travel from campus to campus. Limiting the legal parking areas to one lot per class defeats the entire purpose of having a car at all.

Duke Parking, the only organization capable of shedding light on this quandary, was regrettably unavailable for comment, although I requested an interview with their VP of Parking no less than four times. So we must rely on conjecture. Freshmen can park on East but not West because Parking fears a massive influx of freshmen with cars parking in the Blue Zone when they go to class for the
day. They fear East Campus lots being swamped by upperclassmen driving to their classes in Friedl, Carr, and White. And, more importantly, they want to reserve specific lots so that faculty, many of whom are elderly, do not have to walk too far from their cars. These are absolutely reasonable fears. But we’re solving them the wrong way.

Parking is self-limiting

The problem with Duke Parking’s “overpopulation” hypothesis is that if students could actually park in more than one lot, any given lot would lose and gain spots at the same time. At 1:00, when the mighty freshmen are prowling the Blue Zone so that they can make their classes on West, upperclassmen would be occupying those freshmen’s spots on East. The lots don’t have to be able to hold twice as many students as they currently support; they simply need to have enough cushion to accommodate the very predictable influx and outflux of vehicles during the middle of the week.
Generally, driving from East to West is only advisable during the C-1’s most busy hours, since the Blue Zone is simply so far away from West Campus. Making driving a more feasible option by removing parking restrictions would ease pressure from the overcrowded buses in the middle of the day.

There is no credible reason to expect that off-campus undergraduates will create
parking congestion either. The only pass these students are allowed to purchase,
at this point in time, is Blue Zone access, because the commuting undergraduates
almost exclusively visit West Campus. They are too small a denomination and
their needs are being met too well right now for them to create congestion in a
total liberation scenario. Far from creating a parking nightmare, freeing up all of the lots (not just the Blue and Red Zones) would release a gargantuan number of spots that are currently unoccupied 24/7/365.25. Rooting students in place creates congestion by not allowing them to park in the most convenient lot based on their specific needs. Since different students have different needs, convenience is self-regulating.

But wait, surely I can’t be advocating total liberation? What about the lots used by graduate students, scientists, and Medical Center personnel? The most obscure lots, simply due to their obscurity, would receive the least influx of traffic under the total liberation scheme. The Law School’s lot would not suddenly become overwhelmed by undergraduates because who wants to park all the way out in the
Law School if their destination is West Campus? The lot would become accessible to students who need to park there for a justifiable, academic, short-term visit however. The most specialized lots would only see an increase in parking from the people who actually need to use those lots who are currently SOL.

The remaining question concerns the aged professor. Under no circumstances should he or she be obligated to park as far away as a nimble undergraduate. But the answer is right in front of our faces. We reserve specific parking spots all the time. Specific spots are reserved for handicap vehicles, maintenance vehicles, and other specific services which require that a minimal number of spots be reserved at all times. Faculty should get as many parking spots as they need to ensure optimal parking. But we don’t need to gate off entire lots to accomplish this. The lower Allen lot doesn’t need to remain empty 90% of the time in order to guarantee that faculty can park where they want to. 50
spaces in the Trent lot don’t need to remain vacant all the time so that a dozen faculty
can park there as needed. We simply need to provide a limited number of named
parking spaces in each lot for faculty members. So why have the colored pass
system, what does ROYGBV do for us?

It’s a trap!

It’s a Ponzi scheme, plain and simple. Parking passes are issued by Duke Parking.
They have no competition, since the university grants them a monopoly on
local parking; they can charge whatever they want for the passes. Parking fines are
administered outside of judicial oversight; they can charge what they want for those
too. Got fined erroneously? You can appeal the charge…to Duke Parking. The same
agency sells the passes, creates the parking restrictions, and collects on the inevitable
violations.

And the “no parking” restrictions are arbitrarily established and arbitrarily
enforced. The brief grace period students are afforded to park in illegal areas in order
to unload heavy baggage and for other legitimate purposes is rarely observed. Our
rent-a-cops are more likely to speed across East Campus to collect on a five minute
($200) fire lane violation than to pursue one of those actual offenders we hear about
in the frequent Larry Moneta security alert emails. But the real problem is not the
zealous employees, it is the institutional setting that allows them unrestricted and
nonjusticiable access to your wallet.

Students have no say in this process. The appeals committee purportedly contains some student participation, but those students are selected secretly at PTS’s discretion, not elected through an open application process. The parking restrictions themselves are simply outside the scope of our control. We are literally victims of a system that can fine us outrageous sums when, if, and most importantly where it chooses. We should not be complacent while this injustice continues: students should wield the
government apparatuses available to us. Take action. There is no room on this campus for tyrannical policy making.

March 28, 2011: Representative Ron Paul, often controversial Libertarian, spoke in NC State’s McKimmon Center to a packed auditorium. The 2008 presidential candidate spoke on a variety of issues, from US military actions in Libya to the current financial crisis.

Rep. Paul was hosted by NC State’s Young Americans for Liberty club, who have also been spearheading a “Visualizing the Debt” campaign to bring awareness about the actual size of the national debt. Fiscal responsibility is a topic dear to Rep. Paul. A large portion of his talk focused on the financial crisis in America. He said the financial crisis was predictable, since a downturn is evidence of the market trying to fix its mistakes. “But what do they do in Washington?” he asked. “Spend more! It’s like you have cancer, and they give you another cancer. It won’t get better!”

America’s financial problems don’t just stem from within the country, Paul says. “Our financial problems are linked to our foreign policy: the [American] empire is too big.” Rep. Paul has historically opposed all US intervention in foreign affairs, calling America’s current operations in the Middle East inconsistent and hypocritical.

In his solution for when the United States should go to war, Paul explained the Christian “Just War” theory. He urged that to avoid “too many careless wars,” America should only go to war under the principles of this theory: proper authority, defensive action only, feasible victory, and a peaceful goal. His own addition to the requirements brought a standing ovation: “We as a nation should never go to war based on lies told to us by our government.”

As a self-proclaimed champion of liberty, Rep. Paul is irritated by the by the breakdown of liberty into separate categories of “personal” and “economic” liberty. He argues that if Americans truly defend and champion liberty, they should accept total liberties. “We’ve lost our confidence in the marketplace,” he said. “Property ownership would make the market thrive.”

Speaking to a room full of college students, Paul was optimistic for the future. “If we expect change in our country, it’s going to be from young people like you.” His advice for those young activists: “If you do the right things, things can be changed.”

As a wave of new Republican lawmakers enters the legislative experience, we look back on a decade of important but misguided legislation. Hopefully these newly elected delegates will avoid some of the missteps made mostly by their conservative predecessors.

1. Iraq Resolution. The war in Iraq has been, in the eyes of most, a huge debacle for the United States. Not only were no weapons of mass destruction found, thus invalidating the government’s rationale for invasion, but thousands of American lives were lost and billions upon billions of tax dollars spent. In a recent interview with Dateline NBC, Bush defended his decision to Matt Lauer. He says that he trusted the intelligence reports that claimed Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction and believed his first obligation was to protect the U.S. But good intentions are no excuse for what was ultimately very bad decision-making.

2. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, “USA Patriot Act.” Signed into legislation in October 2001, only a month after the Sep. 11 attacks, by President Bush, the Patriot Act gave the government the authority to wiretap phone lines, delve into financial and medical records, and violate privacy rites in numerous other ways. The bill has been heavily criticized for violation of civil rights, but is nevertheless still in effect as President Obama extended parts of the bill in 2010.

3. Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. In a decidedly un-Republican move, President Bush extended the Medicare program to include prescription drugs as an entitlement benefit. The bill was highly contested in the House, where some controversy arose over Republican leadership coercing dissenting party members into changing their votes and supporting the legislation. The voting records in both the House and Senate are also surprising in that the vast majority of the bill’s supporters were Republicans (204-25 for House Republicans vs. 16-189 for their House Democrats). Considering that, in just the first 10 years of administration, the changes will cost taxpayers an additional $500 billion, shouldn’t Republicans have voted in a manner that better befits their fiscally conservative roots?

4. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. The health care bill, more often known as the “universal health care” initiative, represents the government’s intrusion into the private health care. The eventual consequences of the legislation are still unknown, but it radically restructures the insurance business and will ultimately require everyone to purchase insurance. The bill can have an especially large impact on young adults, the demographic group with the highest uninsured rate . Young adults often choose to not buy health insurance because they have relatively few health concerns, but will be forced to either obtain insurance or pay a hefty tax under the new policy.

5. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. While No Child Left Behind received widespread, bi-partisan support when President Bush first introduced it, the legislation is now often viewed as an ineffective policy that detracts from education rather than adds to it. No Child Left Behind was supposed to raise education standards as well as school accountability by administering tests towards the end of each academic year. The intent of the bill is good, but realistically, the standardized testing has caused numerous problems: from teachers teaching to the test, to time wasted preparing for the tests instead of actually learning, to the reduction of arts and music programs.

Trivia: Ron Paul voted against all five of these bills.

One year ago, the dining plan contract fee increased $70 — from $19.50 to $90. This came at the end of a long, protracted dispute between DSG and Campus Services. The fee increase was suggested for the purpose of reducing the Duke Dining deficit, which had then ballooned to $2.2 million. Finally, after the administration allegedly agreed to adhere to a list of stipulations, the fee increase was agreed upon. The most important stipulation was that the increase was to exist for only one year.

Unfortunately, that’s not happening. Early last semester, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta announced that the $90 dining fee will remain in place until at least 2013. The main argument behind the administration’s sudden change of heart is that the leadership in place now is not the leadership that was in place then. Whereas the agreement was proffered between DSG representatives and former Vice President for campus services Kemel Dawkins, this summer led to the dissolution of Campus Services altogether and the responsibilities of the defunct office were routed to Student Affairs.

While representatives stated publically at the conclusion of the fee negotiations that Dawkins gave them his word that the fee would be in effect for just one year, the administration is now saying that there was no written agreement from the negotiations – only a verbal promise from an administrator no longer employed by the university. DSG asserts that the intention was draft a written contract last year, but nobody signed it.

There is no doubt that DSG failed to take the necessary precautions to protect the student body – while the administration likewise failed to find methods of closing the deficit that are more amenable to the student body. If DSG is not going to apply adequate pressure to make that happen, it is hard to blame Student Affairs for going forward with a permanent fee increase. Though we would like to think that the administrators spend a majority of their time working to make campus better for us, the fact remains that Duke is running a massive deficit in many areas and it is their responsibility to close that deficit by any means possible. You know, except for dipping into the endowment. That would be impossible.

I digress. The fact is: this isn’t as big of a deal as it seems. A $70.50 fee increase sounds pretty stark, but it is important to place it in context – Duke tuition goes up several thousand dollars a year. The more important takeaway, for me, is that DSG settled for nothing more than a transient personal promise from an administrator who was not guaranteed to be at the university when it came time to enact the promise. While the fee increase – relative to tuition – is not very large, the tuition is not something we have any avenue of fighting. This fee increase is the opposite – it is something that DSG has more than enough power to negotiate, and the fact that DSG failed to protect the student body speaks rather poorly of the DSG officials involved, and the general health of our student government.