DURHAM, NC—On Wednesday, Vincent Price stood proudly alongside Duke psychology professor Ligmund Sneud on the concrete platform of BC plaza to embrace a crucial new stage of development: the suppression of Duke IDs in favor of Duke Egos. Recently, the Duke administration has noticed that the IDs have permitted a plague of campus-wide “funny business.” Students’ unchecked IDs have led them into others’ dorms in the wee hours of the night, leading to all varieties of drunken debauchery and dissipation. “The physicality of the IDs is too much for the students to manage,” said Price during his speech, “and it makes it hard to remember to bring the cards along every time they want to enter a new building. You know, students are hardly even conscious of them.”
Sneud, a seasoned psychoanalyst as well as professor, found a solution to the struggle with the IDs in his research on the oft-observed but little-studied phenomenon of the Duke Ego.
“It’s this quality that finds unusually powerful expression in the selfhood of the Duke student,” muttered Sneud around an unlit cigar. “There are certain tensions and triggers involved in the activation of the Duke Ego. Sometimes it’s a glance at the U.S. News and World Report, sometimes it’s a fortuitous basketball game, and of course, there is a strong positive correlation with the number of internships accrued, as well as with SAT scores.” Sneud paused the interview to replace his cigar, the first tasting too “phallic.”
“The most important feature of the Duke Ego is that it can be detected by all, especially the card readers.” Now, all students have to do is look smugly down at the monitors, and the combined forces of their white-stripped smirks, the ultraviolet saturation of their royally Duke-blue hoodies, and the electromagnetic power of their consultant potential leave the monitors no choice but to let them in. This new technology is based in part on the philosophy of Duke’s admissions committee, which exhibits a similar response when confronted with privilege.
Unfortunately, the Duke Egos have proven fragile, leaving several hundred Duke students both humbled and crumpled on the quads. Some suggest that the natural recourse should be an upgrade from Egos to Super-Egos. Leading members of fraternities and sororities argue this presents an equity issue.
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