The ChronicleTHE INDEPENDENT DAILY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH YEAR, ISSUE 24WWW.DUKECHRONICLE.COM

New practices New practices lead to lead to fewer turtle fewer turtle deaths, deaths, Page 4Page 4

Cobb makes Cobb makes impact on impact on national stage, national stage, Page 7Page 7

ONTHERECORD“If the OPERA finding is a discovery... the significance is huge,

because it shatters one of the pillars of modern physics.” —Professor Berndt Mueller on neutrinos. See story page 4

Illness form changes reflect student misuse

by Lauren CarrollTHE CHRONICLE

Students should think twice if they want to use a short-term illness notification form to skip class.

The Office of Student Conduct Advisory Group—com-prised of student leaders and Office of Student Conduct administrators—met Friday to discuss recent changes to student conduct policy. The discussion focused on changes to short-term illness form, student leader accountability and the alcohol amnesty policies, said junior Gurdane Bhutani, Duke Student Government executive vice president and ad-visory group member.

STINF policy now requires students to contact their pro-fessors within 48 hours of submitting the form—otherwise, professors are under no obligation to accept work from stu-dents who miss class. The form now includes a statement clarifying that STINF only applies for students with an in-capacitating illness—meaning a student cannot send in a STINF for a headache or a cold, said Lee Baker, dean of aca-demic affairs of Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

“It’s been in the administrators’ eyes for a while that the policy needed to be changed,” Honor Council Chair Nick Valilis, a senior, said. “It was too easy to submit the form. [We] want to make people think a little bit harder.”

Administrators have not yet informed students about the additions—STINF instructions on the Trinity website now re-flect the changes, but those on the Pratt School of Engineer-ing website do not. Trinity faculty plan to discuss how to best inform students Wednesday, Baker said.

DSG and the Honor Council plan to increase student awareness, Bhutani and Valilis said.

Academic deans began to track STINF usage last Spring,

SEE STINF ON PAGE 5

Dean commends Nursing School’s evolution, growth in annual address

by Julian SpectorTHE CHRONICLE

In an age of transforming health care, Dean of the School of Nursing Catherine Gilliss sees her school uniquely poised to embrace those changes.

Members of the Duke University School of Nursing con-vened Monday afternoon for the Annual State of the School Presentation. Gilliss delivered the address, which summarized progress over the past year and described the school’s strategic vision for the future.

“We have made this... a pretty special place,” Gilliss said. “Our students want to enroll.... Our staff turnover is frankly is one of the lowest on campus. It’s really the people who make this such a special place.”

Gilliss discussed the growth of the faculty in recent years, which at Duke, includes a relatively young pool of professors compared to other schools. Currently, with two-thirds of the faculty joining since Gilliss’s arrival at Duke in 2004 and 10 fac-ulty members added since 2010, DUSON has 14 full profes-

sors, 20 associate professors and 35 assistant professors. Gilliss noted that while DUSON has more male faculty than is typi-cal for nursing schools, the professor population is still mostly composed of white women. Ninety-three percent of the faculty either have their doctorate degree or are in the process of ob-taining the distinction, she added.

Susan Schneider, lead faculty for the oncology specialties at DUSON, has been at the school for 11 years. She said she has seen the school grow from about 20 faculty in a small building to where they are today, but she noted that some things have stayed constant.

“I think we’ve kept what’s important,” Schneider said. “We’ve gotten bigger and we’ve gotten better, but we still care about each other as a faculty community, and we still care about our students.”

Although Gilliss is pleased with the growth and general makeup of DUSON’s faculty, she said the target number for

Cultural groups consider forming housing sections

SEE NURSING ON PAGE 6

ELYSIA SU/THE CHRONICLE

The new STINF policy now requires ill students to contact their professor within 48 hours of submitting the short-term form.

by Anna KoelschTHE CHRONICLE

Proponents of the housing model believe each house will form a distinct culture—but now those cultures may be racially defined.

Some multicultural groups’ requests to become new se-lective living groups in next year’s house model could po-tentially result in living spaces that cater to a specific ethnic-ity or culture. Executive members of student groups such as Black Student Alliance, Asian Students Association and Mi Gente have confirmed that they are either applying for a house or are considering applying for a house. The Inter-Greek Council is considering applying as well.

Joe Gonzalez, associate dean for residence life and co-chair of the House Model Committee, acknowledged that some may criticize cultural houses for being self-segregationist, but he said he does not think the argument is valid.

“I consider it unlikely that these communities would re-duce the diversity throughout campus at such a dramatic level that [the] criticism would ring true,” Gonzalez said.

Sophomore Marcus Benning, Black Student Alliance ex-ecutive vice president, said he and several other BSA repre-sentatives will apply for a living group centered around black culture, aiming to increase academic engagement, develop student leadership and enhance racial consciousness on cam-pus. He added that officials from the Mary Lou Williams Cen-ter for Black Culture support the idea, though the idea to apply for housing was entirely student-driven.

“There was an overwhelmingly positive response about applying for a house [at BSA’s last general body meeting],” Benning said. “As a major organization, we have a responsi-bility to provide opportunities of academic enrichment to enhance the experience of our members. We believe that this black culture living group will do that.”

SEE HOUSING ON PAGE 6 CHRONICLE GRAPHIC BY MELISSA YEO CHRONICLE GRAPHIC BY MELISSA YEO

2 | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 THE CHRONICLE

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PATUXENT RIVER NAVAL AIR STATION, Md. — With the Navy’s Blue Angels and their F/A-18 Hornets arrayed in a neat line behind him, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus an-nounced that they would perform in the Labor Day Air Expo using a 50-50 mix of a plant-based biofuel and conventional fuel.

AUDREY ADU-APPIAH/THE CHRONICLE

Wahneema Lubiano, the director of undergraduate studies in African and African American studies, talks about the justice system and how its changes have impacted class and race at a discussion held at the Duke Multicultural Center Monday evening.

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan man employed by the U.S. government opened fire in the CIA compound in Ka-bul, killing an agency contractor and wounding another, officials said Monday.

The shooting late Sunday was the lat-est jarring incident in Kabul.

Navy plans to go green, seeks alternative energy

Afghan employed by U.S. shoots two CIA workers

ORLANDO, Fla. — Republican Johanna White was delighted to find herself nod-ding in agreement with almost every-thing Texas Gov. Rick Perry said after he entered the race for her party’s presiden-tial nomination six weeks ago.

Then he started talking about al-lowing children of illegal immigrants to attend Texas universities at in-state tuition rates.

“It was a total turnoff,” said White, 51 and unemployed, from Port St. Joe, Flor-ida. “I think it’s totally wrong. I’m almost 100 percent directly a Perry supporter, but I can’t agree with that.”

White, a party activist who doesn’t miss a chance to vote in Republican pri-maries, personifies an emerging liability for Perry, who has ascended to frontrun-ner status in the primary contest, eclips-ing former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in national primary polls, since declaring his candidacy August 13.

Gov. Perry’s opinions on immigration shun voters

65

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Eat Local ChallengeGreat Hall, 11a.m.-2p.m.

The Great Hall, Marketplace and Fuqua’s Fox Center will prepare lunches made com-pletely of ingredients from within a 150 mile

radius of Duke.

Homebuying SeminarErwin Square Building, 12:30-1:30p.m.

Experts will give helpful hints on home fi-nancing subjects such ass getting pre-qual-ified, up-front costs, choosing the right mort-

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Freshmen Flu FightersAlspaugh Dormitory, 6-9p.m.

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If I despised myself, it would be no compensation if everyone

saluted me, and if I respect myself, it does not trouble me if

others hold me lightly.— Max Nordau

TODAY IN HISTORY1540: Society of Jesus, or Jesuits,

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St. Vincent de Paul DayMadagascar

World Tourism DayUnited Nations

European Day of LanguagesCouncil of Europe

Duke Greek ConvocationDuke Chapel, 7-8p.m.

Duke’s greek community kicks off a new year with this convocation. Organizers will also be

collecting donations at the event.

THE CHRONICLE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 | 3

Humanities Writ Large

Teams of Duke faculty and students are invited to submit collaborative proposals that explore emerging ideas, projects, or networks that may have the potential to change the way the humanities are taught in the 21st Century. This is an opportunity to take intellectual risks without necessarily building permanent structures.

These grants are part of the Mellon Foundation-funded Humanities Writ Large initiative — a five-year effort to

transform humanities education at Duke.

Grants Available for Spring 2012 Emerging Humanities Networks

TThe Steering Committee aanticipates making 2--55 awards ffor Spring 2012; most will be in tthe $10,000——$$30,000 range——ffor truly exceptional proposals, aawards of up to $50,000 are ppossible.

TThe funding can be used to ssupport efforts including but not llimited to:

WWorking groups WWorkshops SSpeakers SShort--tterm visitors CCourse development TTeam teaching

Application Deadline: October 17. For further information and application instructions, visit our website at humanitieswritlarge.duke.edu, email humanities-writ-large@duke.edu or call Laura Eastwood at 684-8873.

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Lawsuit may shelf Ophan Works Project Obama bill to overhaul patent system

by Andrew KarimTHE CHRONICLE

The University’s involvement in a national digitiza-tion could prove to be short-lived.

Just more than a month after Duke announced its participation in the Orphan Works Project, which digi-tizes out-of-print books whose copyright owners are deceased or unreachable, the project’s partner, a text archiving foundation called HathiTrust, is being sued on the grounds of publishing written works without the authorization of copyright holders.

“We’ve been greatly concerned about the seven mil-lion copyright-protected books that HathiTrust has on its servers for a while,” said Paul Aiken, executive di-rector of the Authors Guild, the group which filed the lawsuit against HathiTrust Sept. 12. “Those scans are unauthorized by the authors.”

The Orphan Works Project involves a network of university libraries, including its founding partner the University of Michigan and others such as Cornell Uni-versity and Emory University. The project identifies the orphan books contained in the HathiTrust Digital Library, which holds the online collections of more than 60 major research institutions and 9.5 million digitized works.

Though Duke’s involvement with the project was made possible through collaboration with HathiTrust, the University does not expect to be affected by the legal ramifications.

“The action which gave rise to the infringement claim is the reception of digital files from Google in exchange for providing the books that were scanned in the first place,” said Deborah Jakubs, University librarian and vice provost for library affairs. “[Since the University] did not provide any books to Google and received no scans, [Duke] is not in danger of be-ing sued.”

The Authors Guild—a New York based group repre-senting more than 8,000 authors—filed a suit against HathiTrust citing infringement and addressing secu-rity concerns regarding the files in the HathiTrust.

The University of Michigan and HathiTrust sus-pended the project Sept. 16 due to procedural errors, according to a University of Michigan statement. The statement acknowledges that some of the works placed on the orphan works list were in fact still in copyright, with reachable owners.

Jakubs noted that if the Authors Guild wins the law-suit, HathiTrust will be ordered to pay licensing fees to the author of each respective work. Although the Authors Guild is basing their claim on the rights of the authors, some of them are either deceased or unable to be found.

“[The Authors Guild] seems to hope that an ap-proach to using orphan works that will pay licensing fees to authors is possible,” Jakubs said. “We believe that such a scheme would fail because most orphans are insufficiently valuable to justify payment.”

Kevin Smith, director of scholarly communications at Duke Libraries, is advising HathiTrust on how to re-fine their orphan works selection process.

“Once a more accurate process is in place, the or-phan part of the project should go forward,” Smith wrote in an email Sept, 20. “No digital files have yet been opened, so all the lawsuit means for us is a delay in being able to give access to these works.”

Smith added that he does not believe the lawsuit will get very far.

“Any claim over orphan works seems tenuous,” he said. “[The Authors Guild] is making this case seem urgent [by] asking to impound all seven million files in [the HathiTrust archive] that date from after 1923, and they base that request on the fact that some of those files—they list 62—are [currently] owned by Authors Guild members.”

by Vignesh KrishnaswamyTHE CHRONICLE

Getting a patent is about to get a lot easier. Some Duke researchers expressed excitement sur-

rounding the recently approved overhaul of the U.S. pat-ent system. President Barack Obama signed Sept. 16 the America Invents Act into law—a patent bill that will sub-stantially change the system for the first time in 59 years. Proponents argue that the change is long overdue, and filing for a patent will now be less time-consuming.

“[The bill] is a vital step in increasing U.S. com-petitiveness abroad,” said Elvin R. Latty Professor of Law Arti Rai, who specializes in patent law and innova-tion policy at Duke.

She noted that patent reform legislation is im-portant because it will make the U.S. patent system a more effective engine for innovation. Specifically, the legislation will help reduce a backlog of more than 700,000 patent applications.

In fiscal year 2009-2010, which ended June 30, 2010, Duke researchers were issued 91 patents and filed 189 patents, according to a Duke news release Sept. 16.

The prolonged wait time for patent approval can create notable uncertainty for innovators, including re-searchers at Duke.

Eric Wagner, associate director of Duke’s Office of Li-censing and Ventures and patent attorney, works as an in-house patent counsel at the Duke patent office, helping researchers and inventors to file patents.

“Patent reform will help everyone from a university and small business standpoint,” Wagner said. “For Duke

SEE PATENTS ON PAGE 6

4 | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 THE CHRONICLE

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CERN experiment may have revealed faster-than-light travel

Study shows sea turtle death rate declining

by Danielle MuoioTHE CHRONICLE

New fishery practices over the past 20 years have made for a dramatic drop in sea turtle deaths.

The number of sea turtles who are unintentionally captured and killed in fishing nets has decreased by 90 percent since 1990, according to a recent Duke study. Deaths due to bycatch—the accidental capture of one species while fishing for another species—is one of the biggest threats to the sea turtle population. According to the study, an estimated 4,600 sea turtles die each year in U.S. waters. Bycatch can also harm the fisheries themselves, creating a trickle-down effect on people’s eating habits and sustainability practices.

“I think this represents a pretty major accomplish-ment in the management of sea species in the United States,” said Elena Finkbeiner, a Ph.D. student at Duke and lead author of the study.

Measures taken to reduce the number of bycatch deaths include using circle hooks that are less likely to be swallowed by sea turtles, as well as limiting fishing activity hours to periods when sea turtles are not frequently present. Finkbeiner added that ad-ditional studies must be conducted to assess the full effect the fisheries’ practices have on the overall animal population.

Unintended sea turtle deaths result in direct costs to fishermen by damaging their gear and reducing their target catch, Jeffrey Moore, co-author of the study, wrote in an email.

“Nets may be damaged when large animals—sharks, turtles, dolphins—get tangled in them and have to be cut out,” said Moore, a protected resources

SEE SEA TURTLES ON PAGE 5

by Michael ShammasTHE CHRONICLE

Science fiction fans and physicists alike have obsessed for years over the possibility of faster-than-light travel—a prospect that would enable rapid forays to other worlds and possibly even time travel. According to Einstein’s the-ory of relativity, however, the maximum velocity an object can reach is the speed of light.

Einstein’s theory was called into question last week when scientists working on the OPERA project at the Eu-ropean Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland observed neutrinos—subatomic particles—

that can travel faster than the speed of light. If confirmed, the results could revolutionize physics.

“It’s huge,” James B. Duke professor of physics Berndt Mueller wrote in an email Monday. “If the OP-ERA finding is a discovery and not an experimental or analysis error, the significance is huge, because it shatters one of the pillars of modern physics—the uni-versality of the speed of light as an upper bound to all velocities.”

The OPERA experiment has been shooting neutrinos at rapid speeds from Switzerland to Italy, but research-ers only recently noticed that some of the particles were reaching Italy between 50 and 70 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light would have.

Although the findings would be significant if proven true, Mueller said Einstein’s theory of relativity will re-main influential.

“Einstein’s theory of special relativity was designed as a general theory of electromagnetic phenomena. Neutri-nos do not interact electromagnetically, so technically, they do not fall under the narrow purview of Einstein’s original theory,” he said.

Although the data from CERN is exciting, as of now they are far from proven. Steffen Bass, associate professor of physics, said he thinks the media is exaggerating the results and that they will most likely prove to be a “false alarm.”

“It is far too early to speculate on the significance of the discovery. The data was made public to encourage other groups to reproduce the experiment, since its re-sults are so strange that there is a high probability that in the end it turns out to be an error or oversight in the analysis of the data,” Bass wrote in an email Monday. “When an independent second experiment confirms the findings, we will be able to take this discovery seriously.”

Bass said he believes Einstein’s legacy would not be

SEE CERN ON PAGE 6

SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

The Laboratory of Gran Sasso in Italy received neutrino particles fractions of a second faster than the speed of light from Geneva, Switzerland.

THE CHRONICLE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 | 5

Valilis said. The monitoring revealed that the number of sub-mitted forms has increased over time.

Baker said he does not know if this indicates that students are abusing the system, but said he has noticed some students who use STINFs more than others—and some who have faked illness.

Biology Department Chair Dan Kiehart said his depart-ment began to notice that the amount of STINF forms for a gateway biology course kept increasing throughout the Spring. About 10 percent of the students in the class submitted STINF forms for a quiz, and about 20 percent submitted a STINF for another assignment, Kiehart said.

“It was simply getting out of hand,” Kiehart said. Administrators and students were considering amending

STINF policy for the last few months, Baker said, adding that they are now working on the changes together.

Valilis said he was approached by administrators over the summer to provide insight on this issue. He added, however, that when he was invited to discuss it again earlier this semester, some changes had already been implemented without his in-put. Administrators were receptive to his suggestions though, for example, including the requirement that students to con-tact their professors.

He noted that he believes the administration should have consulted more students.

“I had ownership in this process,” Valilis said. “But I would hope in the future they will discuss these kinds of changes with others.... This is why we have student advisory groups.”

Stephen Bryan, associate dean and director of the Office of Student Conduct, did not attend Friday’s discussion because he was at a meeting with the Board of Trustees.

Assistant Dean of Students David Frankel and Valerie Glass-man, senior program coordinator for the Office of Student Conduct, attended the meeting Friday but deferred comment to Bryan, who generally acts as a liaison between the advisory group and Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta.

Moneta, who has the final say on student conduct policies, could not be reached for comment.

Student leader accountabilityThe advisory group also decided to allow members of DSG

and the Council on Collaborative Action to redraft a contro-versial student conduct policy, which allows administrators to hold student leaders accountable for their group members’ actions. Bhutani said the vague wording of the policy—on an indefinite moratorium—is causing concern among student leaders about how the policy will be applied.

“The advisory group as a whole agreed there’s a fair justi-fication for the policy,” Bhutani said. “Students need to feel like we’ve created a policy that’s fair to us, and [administrators] have to understand where we’re coming from, and let us do this on our own.”

He added that policies like this give a wide amount of dis-cretion to the student conduct administrators reviewing viola-tions because the rules are so broadly defined.

Bhutani hopes the group will come to a resolution in Oc-tober.

Alcohol amnesty policyThe health and safety intervention clause of the Univer-

sity alcohol amnesty policy—commonly known as the amnesty policy—is still under review for potential changes. Bhutani said the policy will be on hold for at least a semester until the Uni-versity is able to review data that indicates whether or not the amnesty policy is effective.

Current policy states that formal disciplinary action for vio-lating the alcohol policy will not be taken against students who seek medical assistance for themselves or others if no other University policies have been violated. A potential change to the policy could make it so that students violating alcohol poli-cy while seeking medical assistance could later face disciplinary action if the student has a subsequent violation.

Duke partnered with several other universities for the Learning Collaborative on High-Risk Drinking, sponsored by Dartmouth College, in May. Bhutani said policy changes should only be considered if data collected by this initiative strongly indicates that amnesty is ineffective.

“It’s pretty clear that [amnesty] is effective—but if there’s science saying it isn’t, we might want to reconsider,” he said.

Bryan wrote in an email Monday that policy changes are on hold in order to increase student awareness of the potential amendments. The concept of the amnesty policy would not change except to clarify what would occur if there was a subse-quent violation of the alcohol policy, he added.

“This is simply an effort for a hearing body to have all avail-able information in making a decision on how to respond to that subsequent incident,” Bryan said.

scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sea turtles occupy a specific niche in marine eco-systems, said Bryan Wallace, adjunct faculty member at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and co-au-thor of the study.

“They are big animals and live a long time and are abundant.... When you combine these things, they play a cumulatively important role [in sustaining the food web],” said Wallace, who is also a science advisor for the Sea Turtle Flagship Program at Conservation Interna-tional in Washington, D.C. “In places where there are coral reef ecosystems, they are important to maintain healthy reefs since their dietary source is sponges—they keep sponges in check.”

Although the researchers studied sea turtles in U.S. coastal waters, the findings have a global reach.

“The United States shares its sea turtle population

with other countries in the world,” Finkbeiner said.She cited the California-based leatherback sea turtle,

which comes from Indonesia, and the loggerhead sea turtle found in Hawaii, which originates from Japan. Managing the bycatch of sea turtles in the U.S. can help these species around the world, she added.

Researchers at Duke University Project GloBAL and Conservation International used data compiled from na-tional fishery services between the period of 1990 and 2007. They divided this period into two strata, pre-regu-latory and post-regulatory, to look at sea turtle mortality rates before and after regulations were put on fisheries to reduce bycatch.

Wallace said Duke students can aid marine conserva-tion efforts through acting as “empowered and enlight-ened consumer[s].”

“[For example,] carry a reusable bag around. Don’t use disposable plates and cups,” he said. “Even though sea turtles and marine life in general might seem like a far-off thing.... As consumers, they have a lot of say in the human practices that affect sea life and turtles.”

SEA TURTLES from page 4STINF from page 1

6 | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 THE CHRONICLE

eet & reetWITH THE NEW HINDU CHAPLAIN,sha aj

September 27th7:30pm

McClendon 5th floor

REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED

Usha Raj is Duke’s new Hindu chaplain, one of just a few in the U.S! A profes-sional social worker for many years, Usha is excited to help Duke students engage Hinduism on their own terms, be it spiritually, intellectually, culturally, or through service. Come meet her, eat some chaat, and get involved!

inventors, the patent reform will ensure that quicker, more quality patents will come out of the office.”

Of the changes the legislation makes, Wagner noted the transition from a “first to invent” to a “first to file” system is the most significant for Duke innovators. This change means that patents will be awarded based on the date they were filed and not on the date that inventions were created, which Wagner said will put Duke and other universities on a more equal playing field with the rest of the world.

“Everything now is based on file date and the patent office will draw a clear line in the sand as to what that means,” he said.

Because of this change, Wagner noted that it will be important for inventors at Duke to work with the patent office more quickly when filing applications. He said, however, that the University is prepared for the change.

“Duke researchers and inventors have anticipated this for a while,” he said. “The patent office at Duke has been actively in-volved with professors.”

Philip Benfey, Paul Kramer professor of biology and director of the Center for Sys-tems Biology in the Duke Institute for Ge-nome Sciences and Policy, has applied for a patent on a method for regulating biomass in energy crops. He said he is not worried about any changes the act may create.

“I don’t see [the bill] as having a major impact,” Kramer said. “It will relieve the ne-cessity of keeping detailed records to prove when an invention was made.”

Wagner said inventors who are unfamil-iar with the process should talk to the pat-ent office to ensure that they understand the changes. Researchers at Duke need to engage with the patent office earlier and

more frequently now that this legislation has passed, he added.

At the same time, Wagner said the pat-ent laws may have made certain issues worse for scientists. He added that many innova-tors are uncertain about the bill’s logistics.

“[Some inventors] aren’t exactly sure when their concept for an invention ma-terializes into what is considered an actual invention by the patent office,” he said.

Ultimately, Wagner said he believes that the bill’s overall effect will be positive.

“Universities like Duke, which serve as the bedrock for our nation’s competitive-ness, will look back at this legislation as being a cornerstone in changes in the re-search process,” he said. “We will see some great results.”

greatly affected by the data.“Einstein’s theories have been

ground-breaking in physics and remain a cornerstone of our phys-ics framework to this day,” he said. “Many everyday items we take for granted, from solar cells to GPS navigation devices, rely on Ein-stein’s theories and that will not change, so I highly doubt that his legacy would be significantly im-pacted.”

Junior Willie Zhang, a math and biophysics double major, said he thinks the results could change how physicists think of relativity.

“If proven true, these results could have huge implications for Einstein’s theory,” he said. “Relativity deals with objects that possess mass moving through a vacuum, so these results would technically apply.”

NURSING from page 1

the student body is 750, which the school slightly exceeded this year. In 2004, the school offered a Master of Science in Nurs-ing program and the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing with a graduating class of 32 students. Since then, DUSON developed a Ph.D. and Doctor of Nursing Practice program, and the ABSN class ex-panded to 220 students, she said.

“In the early years, we needed to grow and then stabilize that growth,” Gilliss said. “We now have 766 students. What we want to do now is to really focus on not growing but... de-veloping excellence in all those programs.”

The slightly larger than desired student population has not impeded DUSON’s stu-dents from achieving important distinctions, such as earning research funding and winning merit scholarships.

Gillis noted that the 2011 graduates of the ABSN program had a 100 percent pass rate on the basic licensing exam, following a trend of “astoundingly high” pass rates over the past several years. She also commented on positive developments in summer 2011, such as the $15 million donation to the school by J. Mi-chael Pearson, Trinity ’72, and a recent jump in DUSON’s academic rankings.

These developments have important ramifications for the school’s ability to de-velop, Gilliss said.

“Everybody knows about number sev-en,” she said, referring to the school’s placement in the nursing school rankings. “[Duke’s Board of] Trustees themselves re-ally do key into the U.S. News and World Report rankings.... We are demonstrating to the Trustees and others that we are good stewards of their resources, and clearly our ascent has been rather significant.”

During last weekend’s meeting, the Board of Trustees approved permission to plan a new wing for the Pearson Building, so the school may now search for architects to design a roughly 40,000 sq.-foot addition to the school.

This could be in place by Fall 2013, pending further approval from the Board, Gilliss said.

Priorities for the current academic year include a focus on excellence, strengthening evaluation, development and space planning. Gilliss noted that the school also plans to work more closely with the Pratt School of Engi-neering to develop curriculum options for design and entrepreneurship.

Marilyn Lombardi, director of academic and strategic technologies at DUSON, said intensive collaboration with other schools is a new venture for DUSON, but doing so will promote the mission of the school.

“[The goal is to] bring them together and see how we can design more efficient, more thoughtful, more intuitive, more patient-friendly environments and better patient out-comes,” she said.

Additionally, DUSON may be active in Duke Kunshan University in China. Profes-sor Bei Wu, a gerontologist at DUSON, has extensive experience with Wuhan Unives-ity, Duke’s legal partner school in China. In July, President Richard Brodhead signed an agreement between the Wuhan School of Public Health, the Duke Global Health Institute and the Duke School of Nursing, The Chronicle reported July 1.

DUSON is looking into the possibility of holding conferences in Kunshan for the Chi-nese medical community and is considering developing research on issues such as how to treat chronic diseases among China’s aging population, Gilliss said.

With goals and initiatives for the upcoming school year in mind, Gilliss said DUSON stu-dents—marked by their leadership, innova-tion and myriad skills—will continue to gradu-ate from DUSON as positive contributors to the health care system.

“When our graduates leave this place, they understand how to function effec-tively in an interdisciplinary environment, and that’s critical to the future of health care,” she said. “It’s going to be delivered by teams of people, and they have to know how to work together.”

PATENTS from page 3

CERN from page 4

Benning said he expects criticism from the student body, but he does not plan to en-tertain conversations about self-segregation. He added that any student, regardless of race, would be able to live in the house.

“We will emphasize that this is a living group for black culture, not just black peo-ple,” Benning said. “Just by our knowledge of the demographics of the [African and African American Studies] department, it’s not just black people with an interest for black culture.”

It is unclear whether or not the Na-tional Pan-Hellenic Council, the um-brella group for Duke’s eight historically African-American fraternities and so-rorities, will apply for houses. Executive members of NPHC could not be reached for comment Monday.

Gonzalez said the benefits of cultural liv-ing groups far outweigh any possible costs.

“It seems like [cultural living groups] could potentially be an option that doesn’t exist now but might provide a very appeal-ing community for some students,” Gonzalez said. “I’m anxious to see what applications do come forward by the end of the week. There’s a little more interest than I expected [for new SLGs,] but these could be neat ad-ditions to the community.”

Gonzalez added that he had several con-versations with these groups last year and is not surprised that they are considering apply-ing for housing.

The Inter-Greek Council, which repre-sents multicultural fraternities and sorori-ties at Duke, also plans to apply for housing, IGC President Xiao Zhu, a senior, wrote in an email Monday. He said the organization will most likely apply for an IGC house—

as opposed to houses for each of the seven chapters—because the chapters are small, and many members desire greater IGC unity and awareness.

“If IGC chapters were centralized to a resi-dential space on campus, it would greatly aid in visibility and awareness of the IGC, which is currently lacking,” Zhu said.

Asian Student Association President Der-ek Mong, a junior, wrote in an email Monday that ASA is evaluating the prospects of apply-ing for a house but will make a final decision after talking with ASA’s executive board and Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost for un-dergraduate education. Nowicki could not be reached for comment Monday.

Sophomore Betsy Santoyo, co-presi-dent of Mi Gente—Duke’s Latino student association—wrote in an email Monday that the organization is also considering applying for a house but will attend Tues-day’s house model information session be-fore making a final decision.

Gonzalez said he believes there will be enough space in the house model to ac-commodate these groups if they apply, especially because the House Model Com-mittee will be meeting this week to allocate more space to selective living groups in light of Panhellenic Association’s recently announced plans to apply for space.

One of the issues that may come into play when deciding whether or not a cultural group is granted housing is its ability to fill all of the beds in a house, Gonzalez said.

He added that the original plan for des-ignating space for SLGs on West and Central campuses—originally planned to be a ran-dom process—may be changed if cultural groups apply for housing.

“I think we still have to figure out what’s the best way to move forward with specific populations,” Gonzalez said.

HOUSING from page 1

Cobb emerges as nation’s top freshmanWOMEN’S SOCCER

CHRIS DALL/THE CHRONICLE

Freshman Kelly Cobb, who head coach Robbie Church calls a “pure goal-scorer,” ranks third in the ACC with 22 total points.

by Vignesh NathanTHE CHRONICLE

Kelly Cobb comes to Durham from Chugiak, Alaska, and for the first time in years, the No. 4 Blue Devils are ranked higher than their rivals down Tobacco Road. Any statistics professor will tell you not to mistake this correla-tion for causation, but one cannot help but wonder.

After all, the freshman leads the team in points, by a margin of 10, goals, by a margin of three, and assists. She ranks first nationally with five game-winning goals, and places in the ACC’s top-10 in almost all offensive categories, quickly becoming one of the most decorated freshmen in the country.

It might come as a surprise, then, that soccer was not her first love.

“As a kid, I started out with a million sports—ballet, tap dancing, gymnastics and ice skating,” Cobb said. “Then, around age eight, I finally started soccer. From there, I kind of stuck out from everybody else.”

The driving force behind her growth as a soccer player was her father, Gardner. A local sheriff and a former football player at the University of Cincinnati, Gardner knew the discipline and persistence required to become a Division-I athlete.

“My dad had an extensive background in sports,” Cobb said. “He knew what it takes to get to this level. He was in-strumental in my growing and becoming successful.”

Like most other parents, Gardner was at all of his daughter’s soccer games, cheering Kelly on. He took his paternal duties to a new level, however, when he started bringing his own video camera to tape her games and practices. Her night was never over after she took off her cleats—she had to review the tape with her dad first. He also pushed his daughter to practice above and be-yond what her coaches would schedule.

“She would do club soccer practices, and go to her fa-ther and he would do additional practices with her. He was Kelly’s biggest supporter,” Chugiak High School head coach Paul Brehmer said. “He organized her after-practice sessions. When she was younger, he hunted around for the

fromstaffreports Fans will follow a successful program

Is it just me, or did Wallace Wade Stadi-um seem a little empty Saturday afternoon?

Whether it was the busy Homecoming schedule, threat of rain, or sign of protest against new Football Gameday policy, at-

tendance dipped to pre-Cutcliffe lev-els Saturday as only 20,138 people wit-nessed Duke’s victory over Tulane.

Despite the best ef-forts of top administra-tors to inspire a culture

change around the football program, the sta-dium figures were a disheartening reminder of the Ted Roof era. In the former coach’s fi-nal year, the program attracted an average of only 20,064 per game for the entire 2007 sea-son. One year later, the Blue Devils benefited from Cutcliffe-Mania and a renewed sense of faith in Duke Football, increasing attendance by 43 percent to 28,727 fans. The average at-

RyanClaxton

tendance figure has stayed relatively constant since, dipping slightly in 2009 before settling at 28,750 last season with an assist from a visit by then-No. 1 Alabama.

The Blue Devils entertained 32,741 guests at this season’s opener against Richmond, ef-fectively filling 96 percent of Wallace Wade Stadium. One week later against Stanford, however, not even Andrew Luck could buoy ticket sales as only 24,785 fans—many in Car-dinal red—watched Duke compete with the then-No. 6 team in the country.

Then came Homecoming. An event steeped in tradition and pride in the Uni-versity brought with it the old tradition of indifference toward Blue Devil football, and attendance at Wallace Wade continued its first major slide in the Cutcliffe Era.

So the question remains, how can the pro-gram boost the attendance numbers again? Just win, baby, win—all the way to a bowl.

SEE CLAXTON ON PAGE 8

SEE COBB ON PAGE 8

Blue Devils lose defensive stopper

Defensive end Kenny Anunike tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral liga-ments in his left knee and will miss the rest of the 2011 campaign, head coach David Cutcliffe announced today.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Kenny as he recovers from yet another unfortunate injury,” Cutcliffe said in a press release. “He was obviously off to an excellent start this season, and we’ll miss his production and leadership on the defensive front.”

The redshirt junior was a dominant force on the Duke defensive line during the first three games of the season, recording four sacks. He also amassed 15 tackles—includ-ing 5 for a loss—and caused one fumble.

Gray earns ACC player of the week award

Junior middle blocker Christiana Gray was named ACC volleyball player of the week after recording 24 kills and nine blocks in Duke’s two conference wins over the weekend.

The Carmel, Ind., native was espe-cially clutch in Saturday’s matchup with Clemson, which sported the longest fifth set in the NCAA’s rally scoring era. She had 17 kills at a .438 clip, spurring the Blue Devils to a victory.

Gray sports Duke’s highest kill per-centage, .314, of any player with more than 30 attempts. She also has a team-leading 44 blocks on the year.

Wenger honored for second-straight week

Junior forward Andrew Wenger was named to the TopSoccerDrawer.com men’s college team of the week after scoring four goals and recording two assists in two games.

In his first collegiate season play-ing forward, Wenger is tied for the national lead in points with 23—17 in the past three games alone—having posted ten goals and three assists on the season.

The Blue Devils take on Presbyterian Tuesday before taking on No. 6 North Carolina in Chapel Hill Friday.

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www.dukechroniclesports.com

TUESDAYSeptember 27, 2011

>> ONLINEGrading Duke’s perfor-mance Saturday in its rout of Tulane.

Check out a full analysis of men’s basketball recruiting in the Blue Zone.

8 | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 THE CHRONICLE

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right club teams for her to be on.” As a result of her father’s diligence,

Cobb started to stand out more and more among her peers. And due to her rare com-bination of size and speed, she developed a reputation for being able to find the back of the net. Kelly found her calling early as a center striker, and never changed.

“When she was younger, you try to get all of the players to try all of the posi-tions. But from a pretty young age, she liked to be a forward, take the ball and score,” Brehmer said. “She was the most dangerous player we had on the team. She tried different midfield positions, but her job on the team never changed. She was always in charge of attacking the goal and scoring.”

Cobb’s talent never showed any signs of diminishing. She went from being a 12-year-old playing in a 14-year-old league to representing the United States with the U-20 National team in Spain mere-ly five years later. In her free time, she also starred on her high school and club teams. In 15 games as a senior, she re-corded 22 goals for Chugiak High School, leading the program to its first Region IV championship in school history. At the close of the season, she garnered Alaska’s Gatorade Player of the Year honors.

Her skills, predictably, caught the eyes of Duke head coach Robbie Church. In a recruiting battle that included other gi-ants such as North Carolina and Notre Dame, Cobb eventually decided to take her talents to Durham. While here, the freshman is not taking anything for granted. Although she has the potential to go pro, she wants a degree that will prepare her for her other professional aspiration—nursing.

“My number one [reason for choosing Duke] is academics,” Cobb said. “I am getting a really good education. That de-gree is really important to me.”

And the Blue Devils could not be happier call her one of their own. Her ability to put points on the board has transformed Duke into a national contender. In her favorite goal of her fledgling Duke career, she scored the game-winner against then-No. 1 Notre Dame in an upset that caught the nation’s attention.

“[Cobb] fills a role that the Duke pro-gram has been lacking in the past few years, a pure goal-scorer,” Church said. “We’re extremely grateful to have her.”

Of the 30 teams that saw an average at-tendance increase of 2,000 people or more from 2009 to 2010, 17 of those teams went to a bowl game after the 2009 season. Of those 17, five had not gone to a bowl the previous year and saw an average atten-dance increase of 3,922 fans per game.

Could it really be possible to have near-capacity crowds for every game in Wallace Wade Stadium? Could Cutcliffe, with his football wisdom, pull ticket sales up by 10,000 fans in just five years?

Absolutely. Heck, Florida International did it in one! And that was even before they went to a bowl game.

The Blue Devils will pay a visit this week-end to a real Cinderella story that has had stunning success with attendance in recent years. The Golden Panthers got their start as a program in 2002, then joined what was then Division I-A and the Sun Belt Conference in 2005. Current head coach Mario Cristobal came to the program in 2007, following a series of NCAA sanctions that forced Florida International to vacate a total of 10 wins from the 2003, ’04, and ’05 seasons.

Playing in the shadow of the powerhouse Miami Hurricanes, the Golden Panthers ranked 119 out of 120 Division I-Bowl Sub-division teams in attendance for the 2009 season, when an average of just 10,204 fans came to watch the team go 3-9.

Despite an 0-4 start in 2010, though, Cris-tobal led Florida International on a magical run to a 6-6 overall record and a conference championship, which earned the Golden Panthers a trip to the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, where they beat Toledo. The band-wagon took off along the way, and FIU Stadium averaged 19,808 fans per game—exceeding the stadium’s capacity of 18,000. The increase of 9,604 fans per game was good for seventh in the country.

Granted, Florida International plays in a small conference that has allowed it to find quick success. But after nearly doubling atten-dance in one year with no marquee opponents on the schedule, the Golden Panthers are a prime example of the best way to put people in seats on Saturday afternoons—winning.

With the Blue Devils recovering to a 2-2 record, Duke is already ahead of Florida In-ternational’s 2010 precedent. If the Blue Dev-ils can maintain pace and reach that magical sixth win, dreams of a capacity crowd in Wal-lace Wade Stadium for Homecoming 2012 may not be as farfetched as they seem.

CLAXTON from page 7

CHRIS DALL/THE CHRONICLE

Kelly Cobb has helped lead Duke to an 11-1 start, its best open in program history.

COBB from page 7

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Though largely unproduc-tive and somewhat obnoxious, the melodrama surrounding Duke’s dip in U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings raises questions about how the University attracts and selects applicants. Cen-tral among these stands the ques-tion of institutional identity.

In some sense Duke has always suffered from an iden-tity crisis. Although the phrase “work hard, play hard” inevita-bly slips itself into discussions of Duke’s character, not only has the vagueness and over-use of the slogan rendered it almost meaningless—it fails to capture the true dynamism and scholarship of our cam-pus. The University has long recognized the defi ciency of this uninspiring tagline, and, beginning as early as 1993, has

attempted to shift its image away from that of a fun, athlet-ics-centric school to one that emphasizes scholarship and serious learning. Although this push has seen progress, Duke’s identity remains ill-de-

fi ned.Given the

success of schools with conspicuous iden-tities, like Brown University, in improving selectivity and con-sistently achieving high yields, launching a renewed effort to craft a well-defi ned and au-thentic image could magne-tize Duke, giving the country’s college-ready high schoolers something to connect with and hold on to as they shuffl e through the fast-paced and highly competitive admissions process. And Duke has much to boast about. Beyond excep-tional academic opportunities

and exciting athletics, Duke offers unique opportunities to engage with professors and participate in service projects; it provides resources for indi-vidualized study; and it fosters an electric atmosphere of con-stant change and progress. De-spite the University’s success in these areas, even a genuine at-tempt to describe Duke’s distin-guishing features devolves into a recitation of platitudes found on the admissions pamphlets for pretty much every school but Warren Wilson College.

Indeed, distilling from Duke’s myriad character traits a succinct but comprehensive image presents a considerable challenge. But if Duke wishes both to promote the most valu-able aspects of its community and to recruit students who embody its institutional values, it must defi ne the character of

the University and clearly com-municate that to prospective students. We commend Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag for rec-ognizing both the importance and limitations of this task, and encourage him and the Offi ce of Undergraduate Ad-missions to continue explor-ing ways to present genuinely the value of a Duke education to applicants.

Although promoting a dis-tinguishing image remains within the means of admis-sions offi cers, understaffi ng precludes the offi ce from sculpting applicant pools into nuanced and well-rounded classes. Overburdened with an ever-increasing number of applicants from year to year, the admissions staff no longer has time to read applications with the scrupulous attention

of previous cycles and cannot ensure that admitted students will form a composite body that refl ects university values—or even that the school admits students likely to matriculate.

To ease the reading bur-den, the admissions offi ce should explore ways to make a fast but fair initial cut. We rec-ognize the diffi culty in recon-ciling effi ciency with fairness, however, and do not suggest sweeping cuts that omit con-siderations of extenuating fac-tors in an application.

Additionally, we advocate that the University hire more admissions staff. The fi nancial burden of additional readers may be high, but if increased attention to applications im-proves matriculation and produces a more engaged student body, then no cost is too great.

commentaries10 | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 THE CHRONICLE

The C

hron

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The Ind

epen

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ly a

t D

uke

Uni

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editorial

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Admitting the truth

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What is natural about a pavilion where there are cur-rently trees? This is upsetting. We must preserve the beautiful landscape that makes our campus so distinct.

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I’m going to start out by making a bold, simple assertion, the type of thing I’m allowed to say because I’m just a student and not a politi-

cian: Many Americans are under-taxed. At federal and state levels, some of the things that have been on the table for cuts in the past few years have been staggering. Should we really be considering laying off teachers, cutting funds to programs that provide healthy food to low-income mothers or even defunding equipment that helps us track hur-ricanes? We’re talking about slash-ing education, basic preventative public health measures, scientifi c research—important public expen-ditures that have underlain all of our nation’s growth to date.

Bush lowered taxes irresponsibly, without ask-ing where the money would come from to invest in our nation’s most important priorities. We’re go-ing to have to be more responsible about revenue collection—we could reduce the projected 2015 defi cit by $46 billion just by returning estate, capi-tal gains and income taxes to Clinton-era levels. It’s also time for us to think carefully about how bulky and complex our tax code is. Given the number of reforms so desperately needed, we should think carefully about what overarching principles should guide our redesign of the American tax structure. The Buffett Rule, proposed by the Obama Admin-istration, is one of the most important.

Rather than a specifi c policy, the Buffett Rule says all tax reform should occur under the guide-line that the effective tax rate for millionaires should never be lower than that faced by middle-class Americans. It is not meant to be a panacea for all of the problems in our tax code—it is just one of fi ve principles that Obama suggests—but nevertheless, this principle should not be miss-ing from our future policy discussions. Some of the specifi c proposals offered include limiting the total amount that very wealthy Americans could take in exclusions and deductions, allowing the 2001 and 2003 high-income tax cuts to expire, increasing the estate tax and changing how car-ried profi ts are taxed—with all of the suggested raises beginning to take place in 2013. Because the wealthiest Americans control so much of our nation’s wealth, we cannot solve our nation’s rev-enue crisis without raising their taxes. Though it is easy to attack the Buffett Rule for not being more “concrete,” that really misses the point—the Buf-fett Rule is a philosophy that should guide our na-tion’s decisions, and it is that philosophy that I’m here to defend.

With this in mind, instead of explaining the ex-tent to which the Buffett Rule is practically wise, I’ll attempt to engage with you on a higher plane.

I’ll assert that the nation’s wealthy should be funding more of our public expenditures, because they are those who have benefi tted most from the great American experi-ment.

How much money would our na-tion’s hyper-wealthy make if in 1956 the nation hadn’t spent $114 billion dollars (equal to $425 billion in to-day’s dollars) needed to build the interstate highway system, ensur-ing that goods, services, employees and ideas could make it all the way

around our country?How much money would our nation’s hyper-

wealthy make if our country’s corporations couldn’t hire highly talented workers out of great U.S. public schools, or private schools supported by federal funding?

How much money would our nation’s hyper-wealthy make if researchers supported by the fed-eral government hadn’t developed the radio tele-phone links that underlie the modern cellphone or, god-forbid, if federal government researchers hadn’t invented the Internet? How much money would they be able to make if the U.S. government hadn’t undergone the truly massive and ambitious tasks of bringing clean water and electricity into Americans’ homes?

How much money would our nation’s hyper-wealthy be able to hold on to if not for local, state and federal law enforcement? What would they do without our nation’s courts to enforce their business contracts? How could they make money on Wall Street without protections against fraud, insider trading and other corrupt practices that would make our fi nancial markets collapse onto themselves?

When wealthy (and ordinary) Americans rely so much on the infrastructure laid out by the gov-ernment, it is impossible to tease out how much of the wealth they’ve “earned,” versus how much wealth should be fairly attributed to the existence of a government big enough to make sure we do have access to education, that we can do busi-ness knowing that contracts will be enforced. Any wealthy American who believes he deserves all of the money that Barclay’s Wealth is watching for him is deluded. We need a Buffett Rule to shatter that delusion.

Elena Botella is a Trinity junior and the co-president of Duke Democrats. Her column runs every other Tuesday.

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commentariesTHE CHRONICLE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 | 11

The political theatre is not new to snake-oil swindles and chicanery, but the so-called “Buffett Rule” puts all other cheap tricks to shame. Not only will the

Buffet Rule have a negligible impact on the fi nancial di-rection of the nation, it will reduce incentives for invest-ment and distract from the United States’ greater issues like fi scal mismanagement and overspending.

In order to grasp the impli-cations of the Buffet Rule, one must fi rst understand the dif-ference between income tax and capital gains tax. The cur-rent income tax system in the United States divides taxpayers into specifi c income brackets with corresponding tax rates. The more an individual makes per year, the greater the percentage at which he or she is taxed. For example, a tractor-trailer driver would pay 25 per-cent of a $45,000 salary in federal taxes, whereas a business-man would pay 33 percent on the $175,000 he earned. The businessman would give a third of his income to the federal government while the truck driver would only give a quarter. Income tax acts as a threshold: Almost everyone pays income tax, but those who earn more also hand over a greater propor-tion of their income. Consequentially, the top 1 percent of earners paid 38.02 percent of income tax collected in 2008—a clear indicator that everyone in American society helps pay their fair share.

Like the income tax, capital gains tax also targets how much money individuals make. Investors who earn more than $34,500 who make a long-term profi t in the stock market are subject to a 15 percent tax rate on their earnings, with taxes on short term gains potentially even higher. Unlike income tax, not everyone must pay capital gains—only those who choose to further place their money in the economy must pay. Capital gains tax is applied to money which has already survived the income tax, making it a tax upon a tax and thereby punishing those who invest their wealth in the American economy.

President Obama’s new misguided plan seeks to raise the maximum tax rate on capital gains for individuals who make over $1 million, ostensibly designed to help fi ll our country’s gaping defi cit. There would be some merit in the proposal if the Buffet Rule could appreciably raise revenue; unfortu-nately it would not. According to The New York Times, the plan would only increase taxes on 60,000 people and raise approximately $13 billion, barely a drop in the bucket.

Even worse, revenue raised by the Buffett Rule would take money directly out of the United States’ fragile money mar-kets. According to Eric M. Jackson, a former PayPal executive and current CEO of CapLinked, President Obama’s plan is much more of a bane than a boon to tech start-ups. Startups that require large amounts of capital rely on “angel” investors, who make high-risk investments into capital-hungry startups. Jackson states, “It is investments from these kinds of individu-als that have been the seed money for popular technology companies such as Facebook, PayPal, YouTube, Yelp and many others.” The Buffett rule threatens to stymie startup invest-ment, removing precious capital directly from the economy.

Worst of all, the Buffett Rule is reframing the political debate about fi scal responsibility, and diverts attention from more important issues like entitlement reform and cutting waste. Take, for example, the White House Council of Eco-nomic Advisors’ seventh quarterly report on the stimulus, which concluded that each job created by the $787-billion spending package cost the taxpayers $278,000. Or the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund’s discovery that it mistakenly paid $600 million to deceased benefi ciaries over the past fi ve years. Even purchasing breakfast supplies seems too much for government to handle.... The Department of Justice spent almost half a million dollars on refreshments alone for 10 conferences held throughout last year.

There are easy, painless steps the White House and Con-gress can take to steer the United States away from the stormy seas of fi scal insolvency. Raising capital gains taxes is not one of them. In the end, the Buffett Rule is little more than a gold-en apple, a political bauble thrown to the American electorate to sow discord before election season. It is a gaudy sideshow that will do more harm than good, a distraction from substan-tive debate about our country’s economic future.

William Reach is a Trinity junior and the president of Duke Col-lege Republicans. His column runs every other Tuesday.

When religion becomes a curse

lettertotheeditorAn open letter to the Duke student body

On Saturday, I attended the Duke football game to watch YOUR Duke Blue Devils defeat Tulane 48-27. As the Duke players and coaches ran on to the fi eld before the game, I can only imagine their disappoint-ment to see how few students were there to support the team. In fact, there may have been more Duke football players on the fi eld than Duke students in the stands. What a pathetic showing by the Duke stu-dent body! You missed a great football game, by the way; it was a gritty and dominating performance by an enthusiastic, talented and proud group of young men. It is hard for me (and many other loyal Blue Devil fans) to understand how the same students who are willing to sleep outside in tents for weeks and weeks to watch a Duke game in Cameron are unwilling to cross Towerview Drive to watch a Duke game in Wallace Wade. Your fellow students on the

football team surely need and deserve the same rabid support you give those on the men’s basketball team. In fact, they might need it a bit more this year as the football team makes a run at a bowl bid!

The next home football game is Saturday, Oct. 15 versus the Florida State Seminoles. I hope you will join me and many other Duke fans in Wallace Wade for this game. Get there early to cheer on your class-mates as they run out of the tunnel, and stay until the fi nal whistle to (hopefully) celebrate another Duke victory! Your support can turn the Duke student sec-tion into a true “12th man” advantage at Wallace Wade, just as you have done as the “sixth man” at Cameron.

Go Devils!

Kathy Cleaver, former Duke employee and current Duke parent

Every summer, I seem to fi nd a way to depress my-self. Last summer I, together with seven other Muslim-American leaders, visited Nazi concen-

tration camps in Poland and Germany where we witnessed the horrifi c legacy of the Holocaust. This past summer, I spent the fi rst 10 days of Ramadan in Afghani-stan. It was very painful to witness the bleeding wounds of Afghan society as a result of four decades of war and destruc-tion. It is not very well-known fact here in the U.S., but Afghanistan produced a heartless communist regime, a brutal theocracy, and went through the inva-sions by two superpowers and numerous other calamities in one person’s lifetime.

I was primarily invited by the Afghani-stan Academic and Islamic Research Center (AAIRC) led by an inspirational Muslim leader Mawlana Ataur-rahman Saleem, who aims to spread and promote mod-erate and peaceful teachings of Islam through this or-ganization. I saw it clearly that this breath of fresh air religious think-tank and saintly scholars behind it are up to mountainous tasks in Afghanistan because Islam, as it is understood and practiced by most Muslim scholars in the country, has been nothing but a curse and has been pulling the entire nation down. Religion clearly became a source of oppression, despair and destruction in the hands of the Afghani religious leadership, which repre-sents one of the most troubling interpretations of Islam. Afghanistan is a prime example of how religion can turn into something destructive in a deeply broken society.

I travelled extensively in central and Northern Af-ghanistan during my 10 days. I gave several talks mainly to Ulama and met with government offi cials and repre-sentatives of various NGOs. Almost everyone I met in the country complained and grieved about the worri-some reality of the role of religion and religious leader-ship. I was able to get my own “taste” of this grim reality in my personal interactions with hundreds of religious scholars that I talked to. I was primarily dismayed how uninformed and uneducated these people were in vari-ous Islamic Studies. It doesn’t take too much for any learned Muslim to realize that these Muslim leaders actually know very little about Islamic theology, history and philosophy. Their training is limited to a very selec-tive and literalist approach fi lled and mixed with many troubling cultural and traditional practices.

A telling example: I was told that women are not al-lowed to enter the mosques in Afghanistan. I honestly shared my dismay and disapproval of this practice wher-ever I spoke. I challenged scholars to show me any Islam-ic justifi cation for this practice. This upset many Ulama. One of the leading ones in his defense of the practice said that there is a verse in the Quran that clearly says “women are incomplete in their rationale and in their religion.” He was referring to a controversial “hadith,” or “saying of the prophet,” which was said in a very specifi c context—thinking that it is a verse in the Holy Quran. I

immediately pulled out my pocket Quran and extended to him as I asked him to show me where in the Quran says that! Through numerous similar encounters with

these religious leaders, I was convinced that none of them could pass the gradu-ation exams in any divinity schools in the Muslim world. These Afghani religious leaders’ views and practices on women, religious violence/extremism and non-Muslims, are the most painful ones. De-spite their troubling views, they are very powerful, and they have a captive audi-ence in the mosques where they pretty much run the whole show in the area of religion with no real competition.

I have been constantly refl ecting since I left Afghanistan how come this

kind of horrible religious interpretation could reso-nate with so many people in Afghanistan? How can a beautiful religion, which sustains me and hundreds of millions of others, turn into something ugly, harmful and poisonous like that? I am getting increasing clarity, as I review my memories and notes over and over, that the answers to the questions are neither religious nor political but pastoral and psychological.

I believe the real destruction took place in the men-tal and psychological worlds of Afghanis. As a chaplain, I went through years of challenging but rewarding training in the area of mental health, especially in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) recovery. Almost everyone I met in Afghanistan was revealing different levels of PTSD symp-toms. Many of them were in a constant state of grief be-cause of what they had been through. Here in the U.S., we just went through the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Remember the amount of grief we Americans, rightly so, revealed in response to this one day of barbaric attacks which claimed more than 3,000 lives? Undoubtedly, everyday was 9/11 for Afghanis in the last 40 years or so. Generations grew up see-ing nothing but bloodshed and murder.

This analogy is not an attempt to justify or even en-dorse what is going on in Afghanistan, but a humble appeal to empathize with these wounded people. Try to walk in their shoes by comparing some of our similar wounds and hurt. I think our foreign, military and eco-nomic policies should be shaped by this kind of pasto-ral approach. We should seek advice from various men-tal health professionals and include them to our team as we design our efforts towards Afghanistan. I think if we do not understand the scarred souls of Afghanis, we will continue to limit ourselves to militaristic or cheap economic solutions in our aid efforts to Afghanistan. Most of what we say will end up become blaming the victim and adding insult to their injuries.

Where am I going next summer? I don’t know but it is really hard to beat Afghanistan.

Abdullah Antepli is the Muslim Chaplain and an ad-junct faculty of Islamic Studies. His column runs every other Tuesday.

Smoke and mirrors

abdullah anteplithe land of delights

and wonders

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Artsdu

ke

arts.duke.eduThis message is brought to you by the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke Chapel Music, Duke Dance Program, Duke Performances, Duke Music Department, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Department of Theater Studies, and William R. Perkins Library with support from Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts.

Screen Society

Ongoing Exhibitions

Events - Sept. 28 - Oct. 10

Program Includes:

Flying Lesson (USA)Ebony Goddess (Bahia, Brazil)The Mysteries of Nature (South Korea)The Cost of Living (UK)

The Life of Memorials. Thru Oct. 16. Perkins Library Gallery. Free.

Flesh and Metal, Bodies and Buildings: Works from Jonathan Hyman’s Archive of 9/11 Vernacular Memorials. Thru Oct. 16. Perkins Library Special Collections Gallery. Free.

O’ Say Can You See. Thru Oct. 22. CDS Gallery. Free.

The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power. Thru Dec. 31. Nasher Museum of Art. Free.

Becoming: Photographs from the Wedge Collection. Thru Jan. 8, 2012. Nasher Museum of Art. Free.

September 28Author Event. Jeff Sharlet on his new book. Sweet Heaven When I Die. Part of the Documentary Writing Series at the Center for Documentary Studies. 7pm. Center for Documentary Studies. Free.

Immersed in Every Sense Lecture Series. Artist talk by visiting artist Clement Valla titled Original Copies. Reception to follow. 6pm. FHI, Smith Warehouse, Bay 4, Room C105-Garage. Free.

September 29Piano Master Class with Shuann Chai. 5pm. Nelson Music Room. Free.

September 30Guest Recital: Shuann Chai, pianist. Works by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Liszt. 8pm. Nelson Music Room. Free.

Doxita 4: Inside/Outside. Season 4 of this traveling festival of documentary films under 40 minutes in length, presenting films from Italy, Germany, the U.S., and Slovakia. 7pm. Center for Documentary Studies. Free.

October 1Woodwind Master Class with Windscape. 12pm. Nelson Music Room. Free.

Music Lecture. Michael Long. “How Josquin Sounded: An Exercise in Musical Anthropology.” 11am. Room 101 Biddle Music Bldg. Free.

Faculty Recital. Elizabeth Byrum Linnartz, soprano, and David Heid, piano. If Music Be the Food of Love: works by Purcell, Schubert, Rossini and spirituals arranged by African-American composers. 8pm. Nelson Music Room. Free.

October 3Annual 2011 Benefit Gala: Changing the Game. Coach Mike Krzyzewski changed the game for basketball; the Nasher Museum is changing the game for museums! Join Coach K and the Duke Basketball team! Tickets: www.nasher.duke.edu/gala.

Exhibition Reception. Opening celebration for the traveling exhibit “I Have No Right to Be Silent”: The Human Rights Legacy of the Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer. 5:30pm. Goodson Chapel, Divinity School. Free.

October 4Exhibition Reception. A solo show featuring Daylight/CDS Photo Awards Project Prize winner Tamas Dezso and a group exhibition featuring Work-in-Process Prize winner David Pace along with Jurors’ Pick winners in both categories. Thru. Dec. 22. 6-8pm. Free.

October 5Duke Symphony Orchestra. Harry Davidson, dir. A Beethovenian ‘Triple’ Play, with Hsiao-Mei Ku, violinist, Darrett Adkins, cellist, and Cicilia Yudha, pianist. 8pm. Reynolds Theater. Free.

Ariel Dorfman: Feeding on Dreams. Dorfman reads from his new memoir. 4pm. Gothic ReadinG Rm, Perkins Library. Free.

October 6Panel Discussion: The Life of Memorials. Student members of Team Kenan talk about the exhibit. 5pm. Rare Book Room, Perkins Library. Free.

Duke Wind Symphony. Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, dir. Of Seas and Storms: works by Grainger, Sousa, McBeth, R. Williams, Whitacre, and others. 8pm. Reynolds Theater. Free.

First Thursday. Gallery talk by Sarah Schroth, Nancy Hanks, Senior Curator, on Land and Sky in the Nineteenth Century. 5:30pm, cash bar; 6pm, gallery talk. Nasher Museum of Art. Free.

October 8Duke University String School. Dorothy Kitchen, dir. 3pm: Beginning Ensembles & Intermediate I. 7pm: Intermediate II & DUSS Youth Symphony Orchestra. Reynolds Theater. Free.

10/3 Of GODS AND MEN (8pm)French Film Series: ‘Global France’

10/4 TODAY’S SPECIAL (G) (8pm, W)Muslim Diaspora Film Series

10/5 I AM SOMEBODY + WANDA (8pm, W)Future of the Feminist 70s

http://ami.duke.edu/screensociety/schedule

Dance for the Camera Out DoorsFriday September 30@ 7:30 PM

Duke University, East Campus Quad(across from Wilson Dorm)

Bring