Just over 25 percent of students voted in Duke Student Government elections Monday, approving all four referendum items and electing 17 senators and the first special secretary for the Young Trustee process. DSG Attorney General Var Shankar, a senior, provided The Chronicle with elections results:
Purple, a new student organization aiming to raise awareness about five specific social issues, launched its social activism week Monday. Check out the video above, shot and narrated by The Chronicle’s Brithny Zhang, to see Purple’s events from the week and what group leaders think the organization means to campus.
Despite the whisperings of incident reports at fraternities and Selective Living Groups across West Campus, this year’s orientation and move-in week has seen about as many write-ups as last year.
Joe Gonzalez, associate dean for residence life, said since Aug. 18 he has received approximately 15 behavioral incident reports across campus. Reports include vandalism, excessive trash and violations in alcohol and noise policies. He said most reports dealt with alcohol, noise or trash—and sometimes all three. These numbers are comparable to last year, he said, although last year’s numbers for the first week were higher than two years ago.
“In terms of behavioral reports, this is a fairly average week,” Gonzalez said. “We have seven quads on West and 14 buildings on East, so if you average that out it’s not even one per community. If you think about it in terms of communities, it’s not very high in my opinion.”
Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs, said a few students on campus had to be evaluated by Emergency Medical Services or transported to the emergency room, but none appeared to be serious.
Gonzalez said RLHS generally deals with incident reports that are first-time offenses, such as noise violations and alcohol policy violations. Some violations go directly to the Office of Student Conduct. When dealing with group incident reports, Gonzalez said each individual receives a report and RLHS will evaluate their history of violations and their involvement in the incident before deciding whether RLHS or the Office of Student Conduct will handle the report.
Students on campus were not the only ones cited this week. Wasiolek said there were five citations off campus—up from two last year. Three citations were by the Alcohol Law Enforcement division and two were by the Durham Police Department; the citations were for fake IDs, possession of alcohol by minors, open containers of alcohol and public urination.
Still, Wasiolek said she did not see the increase in off-campus citations as being significant or the result of more intense patrolling. The DPD and ALE patrolling methods in the Trinity Heights and Trinity Park areas were comprable to last year, she said.
Junior Awa Nur has won the DSG presidency, DSG Attorney General Meg Foran told The Chronicle.
The first-round vote percentages are below. DSG uses an instant runoff system to determine the winner in the event that a candidate does not receive a simple majority of the votes in the first round.
Awa Nur: 35.11 percent
Chelsea Goldstein: 27.7 percent
Mike Lefevre: 20.59 percent
Kousha Navidar: 16.59 percent
The other winners:
Executive Vice President: Gregory Morrison
VP for Academic Affairs: Cynthia Chen
VP for Athletics and Campus Services: Peter Schork
After this Wednesday’s DSG presidential debate, Will Robinson, Local & National Editor and next year’s Editor, chatted with News Editor Shuchi Parikh and University Editor Emmeline Zhao about the candidates’ performances, positions and backgrounds.
If you simply want a recap and brief analysis of the debate, watch the video below (running time: 7:23). If you want to watch the whole debate, click here. We’ve split the debate up by question for easier viewing.
As promised, here is our unabridged video coverage of the DSG debate held yesterday night. Candidates first gave two-minute opening statements. Then, each candidate answered eight questions from John Harpham, moderator and chair of The Chronicle’s independent Editorial Board. Harpham then asked each candidate a specific question, and to end the debate, each candidate presented a one-minute closing statement.
Look below for footage of the whole debate, in the order described above. Feel free to embed these on your website or link to them–especially if you’re a candidate.
“Please evaluate the work of the student government of the past two years. What is its biggest accomplishment, what is its biggest failure, what initiative is ongoing that you would try to finish during the presidency?”
To see the next seven general questions, candidates’ answers to their individual questions, and their closing statements, follow the jump. [click to continue…]
The four candidates for DSG president gathered today in the Great Hall for an hour-long debate. They each issued opening statements, took eight questions from John Harpham, moderator and chair of The Chronicle’s independent Editorial Board, answered a candidate-specific question and closed with one-minute statements.
We were around to live-tweet and film it, and we’ve posting [...]
The DSG Presidential Debate will begin in t-minus 2 minutes. Visit our twitter account to stay up to date on how candidates Kousha Navidar, Awa Nur, Mike Lefevre and Chelsea Goldstein perform.
