BLUE ZONE—Duke students are world-renowned for the ways their passionate activism creates positive change. A brave group of students have been forgoing the opportunity to take the C1 to their classes on East Campus, and instead elect to walk all the way to their car at the ass crack of Blue Zone and then illegally park at Whole Foods, making a brave statement about the lack of public transportation at Duke.
“It’s about so much more than me getting to class on time – it’s about me flexing on my idiot classmates in Psych 104 that I don’t have to ride the free shuttles with the people who can’t afford deodorant,” said Lucas Mushkyn (Sanford ‘24).
“But in a way, it is activism. Maybe if they would paywall the C1, less people would take them, and then it would be way more pleasant to be on it. Maybe they could take Apple Pay like in New York. Then, the people that don’t have petty cash for the bus would walk, which is good for carbon emissions. I think it would help with overcrowding if things were more expensive in general, because then people would make more environmentally-friendly choices,” said Daniel Gregales (T ‘25), another student studying urban housing and commercial development at Sanford.
Thankfully, the average Duke student will never have to reckon with the horrors of easily accessible public transportation, as Duke heroically squashed the Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit Project aiming to link Durham and Chapel Hill back in 2019. When asked, a representative said it was “for the rivalry! Do it all for the rivalry!”