Duke University Alumni Magazine

"We have been given a treasure in our life, of all those things, some greatly magnified -- partic- ularly the graduates of Duke -- and we rarely share. How many of us know a poor family well enough to go to their house and have a cup of coffee and get to know the names of their teenage kids? Or -- God forbid -- invite them to our house and maybe take them to a baseball game or a movie with our children? Very few of us." --Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in his Comencement address to the Class of 1997 in May

"In general, the people in China are very excited and the people of Hong Kong are very calm. The media in Hong Kong are much more upbeat about the change- over. The media in the U,S. are very negative and that's what's shaping the way Americans think, Somehow, the Western world has more interest in the future of Hong Kong than Hong Kong itself."
--Wei Li, an assistant professor In Duke'a Fuqua School of Business, on the different perceptions at China's acquisition of Hong Kong on July 1

"My concern is that patients are not encouraged to make decisions that are consonant with their values and real goals for care, Physicians tend to talk about treatments and how we can ex- tend life. I believe we need to be learning about our patients' values in order to help them plan their deaths to be in accordance with how they have lived their lives."
--James Tulsky, M.D., co-director of medical ethics at Duke Medical Center, who is teaching doctor how to communicate with dying patients; Duke is one of only five in the country to offer such courses

"People are thinking in terms of the burden of slavery, but if it was just that, it would have ended with the 13th Amendment. The burden is the ideology of race that began in the seventeenth century, was perfected in the American Revolution, and was elaborated through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
--John Hope Franklin, J.B. Duke professor emeritus of history, on the public national debate over the government's issuing an official national apology for slavery

     "SHARE recently submitted a report to President Keohane and others: twenty-two of twenty-six freshmen who have lived in Epworth strongly preferred its cross-sectional nature to a homogenous 'freshman experience.'

     Ending SHARE'S unique experiment on East Campus can only damage the credibility of the president's experiment, SHARE was made for Epworth, and Epworth was made for SHARE. No other group understands more about the history of Epworth House than SHARE. Epworth has a rich history of housing SHARE-like groups, and SHARE takes care of its home. Among the first people to sign our petition to save Epworth were our housekeepers. One look at Epworth convinces us of its uniqueness. This place was not meant as an ordinary freshman dorm, or as offices for Student Development."
-- Austin Chang, Trinity junior and president of Student Housing for Academic and Residential Experimentation (SHARE), a selective living group housed in Epworth House on East Campus (now an all-freshman campus) for the last decade, responding to the Office of Student Development's decision to move its members to East Campus' Wilson dorm

     "Student Development continues to support SHARE as a living group, but we need to do so in an environment that is in keeping with the size of its membership and in a location that complements the residential profile of campus. We hope SHARE will work during the coming academic year to solidify its program focus and membership, Based upon the outcome of their work, we will work with SHARE members to find a new home on West, Central, or North campus."
--Barbara A. Baker, dean of the Office of Student Development and Residentical Education

Do you think that Title IX -- the 1972 educational amendment that mandates equal distribution of scholarship money to women and men at schools receiving federal funds has adequately opened athletic opportunities for women?

Yes: 3
No: 5
Yes, but... : 4

     While most students, male and female alike, agree that the attempt to level the playing field for women in sports has been given the old college try, there's still a long way to go before true equality can be reached, "Title IX has provided the opportunity for women but not the support," says one rising senior.

     Many of those polled attribute any unequal funding between men's and women's sports to the assumption that men's sports are a revenue source for institutions. "It's not really a matter of equality," say one rising junior,"but a matter of business. From an economic perspective, if a men's sport brings in more money, then it's all right to provide that program with more scholarships and funding." Another junior concurs: "Title IX has definitely done its job, if not overstepped its boundaries. You shouldn't measure sports in terms of [scholarship money], Sometimes men's sports -- football, for example -- simply require more scholarships than any women's sports do."

     Several students, however, consider the anti-discrimination law a success because it has elevated the level of women's sports since 1972. One student mentions the recent debut of the Women's National Basketball Association as an example of an indirect effect.

     Other students point out that opportunity doesn't equal popu- larity. "Men's sports are always on a larger scale and more highly publicized than women's sports. You never hear about who won the field hockey game: It's always men's basketball and football that you hear about," claims one rising junior. Another junior say, "Title IX has moved us in the right direction and given women a solid foundation. But the whole process is moving too slowly. It shouldn't have taken so long to come this far."

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