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Forum: Duke profiteers are setting a poor
example
"One would hope that the educational
mission of Duke would include teaching by example." Duke University official John Burness spends most of his February 17 column describing, presumably accurately, Duke's good citizenship with respect to the environment and the local economy in managing Duke Forest. He explains in particular, the history of Duke's record with regard to the 'piece of the puzzle' land in Orange County that is so controversial these days. This is welcome information, as far as self-congratulations go. However, the last few words of his column go like this: "[Duke]... also [has] a fiduciary responsibility to generate revenue from those limited portions of the Forest that are not essential and important to the mission of the university, [emphasis added] so that revenue so generated can support our academic mission." I suppose we can thank Mr. Burness for his brutal honesty. But this declaration is alarming to those of us who feel the effects when this 800-pound gorilla flails about. If you presume that Duke's leadership has the same attitude about the entire Duke enterprise as Mr. Burness has articulated here about the Forest, the quote amounts to a declaration that they are open for business, that they will use all assets they own, not merely the fundraising they do based on their performance and good reputation as a school, as investments to be made to further pile up money. This is the worst-case scenario to those of us concerned with the University's ongoing threat to use tax-advantaged dollars, received on the basis of a non-profit educational mission, to compete with local private enterprise (see the Central Campus retail controversy). We give tax-exempt status to educational institutions precisely to support their academic mission, and to ease financial pressure so that they can focus on that mission, since an educated citizenry is in everyone's interest. So why should we allow these advantaged dollars, that come at the expense of a community full of increasing needs and increasingly desperate for revenue sources, to be used to compete with local business? What about a fiduciary responsibility for citizens to see that all members of a community contribute their fair share to society's overhead? I'm afraid the answer to those questions could be that Duke has better lawyers, a public relations team (read: spin doctors) and enough sheer influence to get away with it -- the might-makes-right, 800-pound gorilla scenario. How will this policy play out in other issues? As the largest employer in the county, Duke has a chance to set the progressive pace on paying a living wage for example. But with the "Burness doctrine" as articulated above, the quality of life of Duke_s frontline work force would simply lose out to any number of other projects, since paying people more that you absolutely have to doesn_t directly and demonstrably contribute to any bottom line numbers. So instead we are likely to have Duke leading the race to the bottom on that issue, literally putting the community further into poverty. For better and for worse, the fiduciary responsibility of soul-less corporations that exist in perpetuity to turn a profit, is, we all must admit, the economic engine that drives American life. While this is ultimately a problem for the entire society, indeed, the entire world, it's a particular shame to have such thinking invade the area of education, where the rules seemed to be relatively clear. One would hope that the educational mission of Duke would include teaching by example. Are Duke officials teaching their students to grab all they can get and only give back when there's a quantifiable monetary advantage to doing so? Or do they acknowledge that sharing the collectively made good fortune is the only way to sustained collective prosperity? The question really is: Who's running the show over there, the educators or the bean-counters? Tom Clark is a longtime neighborhood activist.
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