by stickdog99 » Sun Apr 23, 2006 6:42 pm
If you think the worst things about Duke from the 1970s on have anything to do with the ancient history you posted, RB1, guess again.<br><br>Sure, Duke's faux-Gothic facades were built with tobacco money on the shoulders of poor tobacco farmers and cancer ridden mill workers. And the United States exterminated 98% of Native Americans.<br><br>But Duke isn't even a Southern institution by any standards of the South, and it hasn't been for well over three decades, at least. Both the student body and the faculty are 80%+ displaced Northerners.<br><br>Duke has had more students from NY, NJ and New England alone than from the entire South for at least the last 30 years. Duke's faculty is 90% Ivy League educated because Duke has been an Ivy League wannabe ever since its regents and trustees found out they could make a mint selling Duke as a "hot college" for rich preppies who want to party a little and who can't quite get admitted to Harvard, Yale or Stanford.<br><br>Duke is run like a giant corporation, and there are a lot of highest level "executives" at Duke who are making a KILLING. All of Duke U's land has long since been bequeathed, and the cost of labor and rent in Durham, NC is a lot less than at any of the other top 10 schools Duke competes with. But Duke doesn't pass any of its savings on to its students, instead pricing Duke as a "bargain" (to the kids of Northeastern elites) because it's only 95% as expensive as "comparable" universities located in places like the SF bay area and one of nicest neighborhoods in Boston. Duke is a veritable money making machine, going so far as to disallow all student business ventures within its walls (unless, of course, a student somehow gets a good thing going around these restrictions and Duke can step in and get a big cut of the action).<br><br>Duke is located in Durham, NC, a poor town that is racially divided down the center. Duke's imported Northerners generally treat Durhamites the way that Guiliani's biggest Manhattan contributors treat New York City's homeless population. For years, Duke has responded to Durham problems like poverty with silly canned food drives and crime by further sealing up Duke's campus with a huge force of double standard rent-a-cops. <br><br>Durham's "justice system" is even worse. When I was there, it consisted of a bunch of cops who would traverse any black neighborhoods except the most crime ridden ones, picking up poor folks for offenses like loitering and gambling and throwing them in the pen. If you were a Duke student, they would throw the book at you, but if you played their game and paid the right tied in lawyer enough, you'd invaribly be able to plea yourself down from that dreaded "career-killing" felony once your parents ponied up a few thousand more to pay your negotiated fine.<br><br>I could go on an on and on. Race relations at Duke are poor. Duke makes all sorts of money grubbing admission exceptions for the uber-rich. Duke's commitment to economic diversity still lags far, far beyond its commitment to filling its coffers. I used to watch idiot Duke frat boys making toasts and singing songs of praise to that "great statesman" Ronald Reagan. And so I'm wondering, RB1, exactly where did you get the idea that I ever gave a "pity poor little picked-on Duke" speech? Nothing I said in my first post said I thought Duke was getting a raw deal from anyone, and nothing I said in my first post was non-factual. In fact, I said that one good thing about this event was that it's forcing Duke to confront a few of its demons.<br><br>Your reply, at least as it applies to my post (as well as Duke University from the 1970's onward) is fundamentally ignorant. I mean, Duke stands for the worst of the South? PLEASE! Duke is basically a bunch of Johnnie-come-lately Yankee carpetbaggers gouging a bunch of rich Yankee Republican parents. The only thing South about it is its location.<br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=stickdog99>stickdog99</A> at: 4/23/06 4:45 pm<br></i>
