Student elections just can’t seem to generate interest, even in an election season with record youth turnout and enough political mishaps to fill a newspaper (literally). In Thursday and Friday’s DSG elections, Lawrence Chen, whose signature platform idea was a C-Food bus from Edens to McDonalds, beat out serious candidate Andrew Tutt fairly handily and narrowly lost to runner-up Kevin Troy (510 to 479 votes). Apparently about 10 percent of undergraduates (510 votes of the 6,000-large student body) care enough about the election to vote, but not enough to vote for someone who ran a real campaign.

The best example of student disinterest and ambivalence is the embarrassingly poor turnout at Wednesday night’s debate in the Great Hall. I would estimate 30 people were there—15 of whom knew a candidate personally, 10 of whom were eating dinner and 5 of whom actually cared. Yet the debate ran front-page with lead visual in The Chronicle the next day. Any other speech that encourages .5 percent of the student body (and a slightly less embarrassing 1 percent of the
voting body, assuming everyone attending voted) to turn out wouldn’t grace the front page.

This is a good example of an event that people should care about, but don’t. A forum to discuss pressing University issues with arguably some of the most powerful and influential students. At The Chronicle, issues like judicial affairs, campus space and Duke Student Government are discussed regularly not just because they are good fodder for stories but also
because the students who report and cover the University are naturally going to be more interested in University issues. Same as with DSG.

But in all honesty, most students either are too busy to care or just don’t want to care about these legitimate campus issues. Moreover, a vote for Jordan Giordano or Troy or Chen or Tutt is unlikely to make much of a difference, not because the one vote doesn’t affect who wins (because it does, just ask Brett Aresco who lost the VP Athletics and Campus Services position by four votes out of about 2200) but because the people who ultimately decide whether DSG is effective - the administration - are not elected.

How, then, should DSG or student leaders in general work to get students to care more about their University and the issues it faces? Increasing turnout at a debate or speech or forum is good way to start. Duke offers many opportunities to engage in discussion and debate, but these opportunities are too often under-utilized.

I wish the best of luck to Giordano and the VPs in leading our student body. But they need to fully realize that they are more glorified lobbyists than powerful politicians. Because that is what DSG does: act as the lobby for student interests before the actual policymakers - administrators - make the decisions.

 -Eugene Wang, Wire Editor

With the upcoming Duke Student Government elections this week, each candidate seems to place their focus on change. Change from the old boy’s club, change from the Angier B. Duke scholars and even change from the seriousness of a typical campaign.

One candidate’s Web site even looks strikingly similar to Barack Obama’s.

But what seems to be lacking is a focus on feasible ideas and initiatives to better the University.

Several of the candidates have mentioned creating space for organizations that currently does not exist. But I wonder how a student candidate can create or secure an area large enough for 400 undergraduate sorority members on a campus that is already so stressed for space.

In addition, the promise of being able to use food points off campus has been brought up, apparently unsuccessfully, in the past, and likely will be discussed again in the future.

Why don’t candidates begin discussing issues that both matter to students, and those that are able to be achieved—who wouldn’t like to see more convenient e-print or better hours at the Great Hall?

But until students start hearing about issues that don’t seem so far-fetched, we might continue to see low voter turnout and votes going to the candidate with the most prominent banners hanging on main quad.

-Joe Clark, Health and Science Editor

It seems that just about everyone is suing Duke these days. On the 21st of last month, 38 of the 47 players from the men’s lacrosse team of 2005-2006 sued the University and 28 other defendants, noting 31 counts of grievances relating to the false rape charges made in 2006.

Nine parents and 20 current Duke students are involved, leaving only three former players out of the litigation—graduate student graduate student Matt Danowski, Trinity ‘07, senior Kevin Mayer and Matt Zash, Trinity ‘06.

In a period of three months, this is the third lawsuit to be filed against Duke and also the third lawsuit filed by team members in the past year.

But there is a slight caveat this time—a Duke motion has declared a breach in ethics, saying that attorneys for the 38 plaintiffs violated state and federal ethics rules in publicizing their suit against the University.

The rule in question prohibits lawyers from making statements outside the courtroom that could attract outside publicity and possibly sway public opinion.

The filing reads, “When a complaint contains such incendiary language, an attorney should not be permitted to hide behind the language of the complaint and make a statement to the press that strings together paragraphs that are highly prejudiced.”

This same ethics rule was a factor last summer in former District Attorney Mike Nifong’s disbarment hearings and although Professor of Law Thomas Metzloff told The Chronicle this case is nothing like Nifong’s, it is certainly an interesting twist.

The University seems to have a problem with unwanted publicity that could potentially sway public opinion regarding the case or cause permanent reputation damage. This sounds familiar. Is it ironic that Duke is up in arms about damaging publicity, when this is the very reason former and current lacrosse players are suing the University in the first place? Is it ridiculous that the University is protesting the use of media in these proceedings when slanderous media attention was so devastating to the innocent players just one year ago?

In any case, it seems that the 38 plaintiffs have learned something from their experience—and that is that the media holds great power, and now it may be their turn to use it in their own favor.

-Gabby McGlynn, City and State Editor

Some people say that Rolly C. Miller is The Chronicle’s best-kept secret—his mysterious mentions in staff boxes give little indication of who Rolly is or what Rolly does. So here’s a teaser: Each day I come into the office, Rolly has left a copy of the issue from the previous volume on my desk. It’s interesting to see what trends we’ve followed, what issues have come full circle. So before I report any story, I like to sit down with our bound volumes (or The Chronicle archives) and see what history the story has.

But with Wednesday’s arrest, I’d reported much of the story’s precedent. Really, when a similar investigation began last April, I remember vividly how Ryan McCartney (our editor) called Nate Freeman and me into his office—“We’ve gotten a tip that a student’s been arrested, and apparently drugs are involved.” It was one of the more exciting ventures I had as a reporter: Heading down to the Duke Post Office on a hunch. Driving to the police station and getting a copy of the arrest warrant in the last moments before 5 p.m. Calling DHL (rather unsuccessfully). Finding tracking reports—and the shipping information. The package, with a return address listing Colormark Custom Photoimaging in Phoenix, AZ, was supposed to contain business cards. But their very confused employees said they ship through UPS—not DHL—and didn’t see an order for 20-pounds-worth of business cards.

And then, the charges were dropped—the case left unexplained by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.
So here we find ourselves again: a Duke student charged with trafficking marijuana after a package (this one containing 27 pounds of the stuff) was delivered.

But this off-campus situation seems to have been more extensive, involving the black-clad and bulletproof-vested Durham Police Department Selective Enforcement Team.

But this time around, hopefully we’ll be able to get to the bottom of the situation.

Anyway, we’ll be digging.

-Chelsea Allison, University Editor

The case surrounding a party, some students and a rogue district attorney has been more than just a part of my experience at the paper. When the story first broke, I was a wide-eyed freshman, watching the upperclassman editors report and write the stories and decide on how to handle the case that gathered the nation’s attention.

The one word I remember hearing around the newsroom was “allegedly.” In every story, in every interview, that word could be found. The editorial staff of Volume 101 never let writers forget that no conclusions had been made about the case and we could never assert otherwise. I believe their principle—stick to the facts and stick to the truths—has continued to guide volumes 102 and 103 through the coverage of the case.

Since then, similar cases have broken across the country, and other newspapers have had to learn how to handle them. Last December, three football players from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were involved in one of those cases. But the twist is, the players were allegedly sexually assaulted and robbed at an off-campus apartment. And just a couple of days ago, our editor and news editor received an e-mail from a fellow college newspaper editor asking for advice on covering a similar case at Wright University. Perhaps the Duke lacrosse case is now the golden standard to what one should (or shouldn’t) do.

Only a couple of days ago the sports editor of The New York Times admitted that he “regretted” some of his editorial decisions during the coverage of the case. But what’s done is done. Instead of apologizing, reliving the past and blaming others for our own mistakes, what we need to do is move on. The best thing you can do after making a mistake is to learn from it and not make the same mistakes again (it’s surprising how you can never escape from the wisdom passed down from your parents).

I’m glad to see no other university sexual assault cases have caused the national uproar Duke lacrosse caused. Perhaps the media did learn something from the Duke case. Although how the national media treats a case is out of our hands, we can only do what we have continued to do: to be as honest and truthful in our coverage, no matter what the case is. Let’s watch and see how future cases play out. I certainly hope history won’t repeat itself.

-Wenjia Zhang, News Managing Editor

It’s 2008 and my sources tell me the time is nigh for The Chronicle to let go of our ink-and-paper ways and go virtual. So here I am.

It’s taken me a while—don’t get me wrong. But now I’m setting my inky fingers to the keyboard and trying something new. It is a bit liberating, actually, but immensely frightening all the same. When you do newspaper writing long enough the prospect of composing something without a lede, nutgraph or the requisite Paul Slattery/Larry Moneta quotes can be quite intimidating.

That said we’ve opened this blog not to escape our newspaper ways, but to improve on them. Top of the Tower is a forum where The Chron’s news editorial staff can begin to think critically about the stories we write and issues we (hope we) raise, and that can only be a good thing, as far as I can see. We don’t want to convince you of anything or spit opinions at you from our, well, Gothic tower. But we do want to ask questions and perhaps be the “tower of campus thought and action” our flag says we are.

On to the issue at hand: Young Trustee selections. Last year, Jordan Giordano, Duke Student Government’s executive vice president, split with tradition in amending the bylaws that govern the process so as to increase the Intercommunity Council’s role in the selection of the Young Trustee. Previously the system had been largely controlled by DSG, which had the final say in each year’s selection, and often encountered problems only natural to a process that puts one group of students in charge of judging a group of their peers and, often, colleagues. The result was a number of Young Trustees hailing from the undergraduate student body’s biggest student organizations, including many from within the ranks of DSG, itself. Giordano’s amendments put the Young Trustee Nominating Committee—now composed of a 50/50 combination of DSG and ICC members—in charge of the full process and killed a former provision that allowed candidates normally included in the YTNC to choose their replacements to serve on the committee. The changes were intended to reduce conflicts of interest in the YTNC, granting the winner of the honor a replenished sense of legitimacy.

So, one year later, we find ourselves asking whether Giordano’s changes worked. This year’s semifinalists included the presidents of DSG, the Union, Campus Council, the Honor Council, the senior class and the Panhellenic Association and all three finalists were from among that group. Is it true that the students most capable of representing Duke undergrads are already in major leadership roles on campus, or is the problem that our process fails to identify talented leaders from the larger campus scene? And can a process that puts one group of students in charge of judging their peers ever be without conflicts of interest and some degree of cronyism?

And just when it gets interesting, that’s where we stop.  Why? Well, for one, I can’t say I know the answers to those questions. Plus, I have to leave something to be desired in the pages before the Sudoku every day.

–Shreya Rao, News Editor