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Duke women’s soccer’s family affair

Page 15

The independent news organization at Duke University

FRIDAY, AUGUST 25, 2023

ONLINE DAILY AT DUKECHRONICLE.COM

ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 2

SCENES FROM MOVE-IN

A UNION YES

By ADWAY WADEKAR News Editor

By AUDREY WANG Editor-in-Chief

Simone Mashaal is taking pictures with her family in the East Campus backyard. Mashaal, a first-year from Long Island, N.Y., has just moved into Randolph, and college is right around the corner. But first, it’s time to soak it all in and capture some memories with her family before she’s whisked away to begin her orientation program that evening. Saturday marks move-in day for the Class of 2027 and the beginning of their Duke experience. Undergraduate students serving as Experiential Orientation program leaders blast music, welcoming first-years and their families as they pull up in cars to residence hall entrances. As the sun shines down on the new Blue Devils, they hear “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers invariably playing outside their dorms. Orientation leaders yell “pop that trunk!” with the same level of palpable enthusiasm as each car drives up, and before anyone can blink, they have already begun transporting incoming students’ belongings to their rooms — no matter how heavy the items are. None of this was new to Mashaal, though. Her older brother, Justin, is a Duke junior, so she experienced this very scene two years ago when the Class of 2025 moved in. Still, she says that the morning’s energy was “really fun” with all the welcomes and the excitement surrounding the day. For her father, Michael, the move-in process is like déjà vu.

Duke doctoral candidates voted overwhelmingly in favor of an officially recognized union, with 1,000 ballots in favor of unionization and 131 against. “Duke has always cared deeply about our graduate students, and we look forward to working with representatives of the Southern Region Workers United on the shared goal of making the graduate experience at Duke the very best it can be,” Provost Alec Gallimore wrote in a statement. With National Labor Relations Board recognition, the union is required by law to be recognized by the University as the exclusive bargaining body for its doctoral students. The vote also marks the union as the first officially recognized graduate student union at a private university in the South, the largest union on Duke’s campus and one of the largest unions in North Carolina. The union’s most pressing demands include a cost-of-living-adjusted stipend, increased support for international students who must pay additional fees and face visa difficulties and reforms for the University’s harassment and discrimination grievance process. The Duke Graduate Students Union has been operating as a direct-join union without NLRB recognition since 2017, after it withdrew its petition for unionization when the University challenged 502 of its ballots. There were only 14 challenged ballots at the Tuesday vote count. “We are so proud of everyone who has been in this fight for our union at Duke since going back to 2016. Multiple generations of graduate students have fought for this ... not just the current union but the folks who have been at work for years and years,” said Matthew Thomas, fourth-year doctoral candidate in the English department and former co-chair of the DGSU. The DGSU launched its second unionization campaign in September 2022 and filed for an election in March. In response, the University challenged a 2016 NRLB ruling that affirms the right for doctoral candidates to unionize as employees. Lisa Henderson, regional director for Region 10 of the NLRB, rejected Duke’s challenge in July and approved the union’s petition for an election.

MORGAN CHU

“I’m a very proud father, as you can imagine, and to have two kids here is a dream,” said Michael Mashaal. Simone adds that she’s looking forward to going to college alongside her brother. But this goodbye is harder for Michael. “She’s my only daughter, my only girl, and I’ll be very upset to see her go,” he says. Just across the sidewalk, a group of orientation leaders scurry about near Blackwell dorm. Tired, but still with a sense of radiant energy, they’re making themselves useful among all the organized

chaos. Sophomore Gabriel Reis is among them, and he’s been at it since 9:30 a.m. He’ll continue hauling boxes until 2 p.m., when move-in ends — though as an orientation leader, his role is far from over. Reis and the other OLs will serve as mentors to first-years throughout O-Week. “It’s very tiring,” Reis said, adding that he’s glad to see orientation from the other side. “But it’s also kind of emotional and cute. I remember moving in and remembering my family leaving me here.” See MOVE-IN on Page 25

Where do students go after Duke?

The Career Center tracked the Class of 2022’s post-grad career paths using a new data collection method. By ZOE SPICER Features Managing Editor

What do Duke students do after graduation? The Career Center recently implemented a new initiative in hopes of answering this question, tracking students’ post-graduation decisions based on data collected from its senior survey, First Destination Data Collection, Handshake, LinkedIn and other sources. Academic departments have historically had difficulty tracking students’ paths after graduation. Prior to this new data collection method, the University collected undergraduate outcomes only through the senior survey. However, this data was often skewed because the senior survey was not mandatory, resulting in response rates below 65%, explained Greg Victory, assistant vice president of student affairs and Fannie Mitchell executive director of the Duke Career Center. The survey also failed to capture students who entered industries that did not hire until April or later.

The Career Center’s new data collection mechanism is significantly more comprehensive, with an 84% knowledge rate that includes information about students’ careers as late as the December after their graduation. Although the Career Center only has data for the Class of 2022 so far, the results of the new data collection method offer a glimpse into the lives of Duke students post-graduation. The top six graduate schools students attended include Stanford, Duke, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia and the University of Chicago. The top five industries Duke students entered were technology (21%), finance (15%), business or management consulting (15%), healthcare and medicine (9%) and science or research (6%). Of the students represented in the data, 90% said they were either employed or continuing their education post-graduation. Following the beaten path According to the Career Center’s data, more than half of the members of the

Class of 2022 who worked in industry immediately after graduation took jobs in technology, finance or consulting. Victory believes that students often enter these fields after graduation because their recruiting processes are well-defined, leading to security in decision-making. “I met a parent of a prospective student during Blue Devil Days who referred to [these industries] as car wash recruiting processes … once your car is aligned with that rail, the car wash pulls you through the rest of the way, and I thought that was actually a really brilliant way to explain it,” Victory said. Victory says that Duke students’ postgraduation paths are often based on their familiarity with certain industries. Many students know what technology and business careers entail and that companies in these industries have many open positions geared towards recent college graduates. William Julien, Trinity ‘23, arrived at Duke initially planning to follow the

See POST-GRAD on Page 26 @dukechronicle @dukebasketball |

INSIDE Affinity spaces move down Cultural affinity spaces will return to the bottom floor of the Bryan Center, though specifics remain unclear. PAGE 3

Meet Aaron Dinin Dinin, Trinity ‘05, teaches Duke’s socalled Tiktok classes. Read more about his unconventional path to academia. PAGE 5

Lead found in Durham parks