In our December 21 paper, the last edition of 2022, Thomasi McDonald compiled a list of Duke University’s 10 most notorious news-making alumni of the past year, whom we dubbed “the hazards of Duke.” Readers had thoughts.

“Typical idiot lib comments with no basis in facts or reality,” wrote reader John McDuffie in an email. “There are plenty of Dookster stooges, but not some of these. To still defend vaccines with the proven facts showing the dangers and deadly results, shows the idiot lib moniker is alive and well.”

We assume McDuffie is referring to our inclusion of Sen. Rand Paul on this list. Twitter commenter @THAGUYFROMSUM41 has a similar take: 

“Indyweek cannot STAND watching Rand Paul put Fauci in his place.”

We will say, for the record, that vaccine disinformation is bad. Other readers were not surprised to see who made our list.

“There’s nothing shocking about those individuals being products of that institution,” wrote Facebook commenter Cisco Rivera.

“Been trying to tell people. Read the article,” wrote Twitter commenter Charles Miller.

Other readers were genuinely miffed.

“Several of these people did not graduate from Duke, or only went there for post secondary school, but whatever,” wrote reader Mike Ling on Facebook. “You could have been nice and focused on the Dookies who are making positive contributions, but this gets more clicks. Also learn what ‘matriculate’ means.”

Fact check: True. Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer started a PhD at Duke but never completed it. And Kyrie Irving, as we noted, left Duke to play professional basketball and never graduated.

Also, thanks to Twitter commenter Mitch Bryant for naming 2022 hazard and Trump appointee federal judge Aileen Cannon as being “much more relevant” than Spencer to the 2022 news cycle. Cannon graduated with a BA from Duke in 2003 and ruled in favor of Trump during the investigation into stolen classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago; we regret this oversight!

We’ll just end by echoing reader Mike Ling’s sentiment: there are certainly many more Duke matriculants making positive contributions to society than there are Stephen Millers or Eric Greitenses or Rand Pauls. We just like to have fun sometimes.

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