The Daring Freshman: James Stevenson

Hailing from the beautiful city of Toronto, I present to you James Stevenson. This spring, at age 18, James was the first EVER freshman to run for the prestigious position of “Young Trustee” on the Board of Trustees at Duke University.

“Make big moves; you never know what will happen,” James told me.

Low and behold, James can say that he was indeed one of the eight semi-finalists for the position, but his journey ended there. Only three three candidates made it to the final round, and on February 8th, it was announced that senior Chris Brown is the new Young Trustee. However, James should not be disheartened as the position is almost always awarded to a senior.

“Young Trustee” is the one elected student to represent the whole undergrad body, so it’s kind of a BIG deal. So why did a freshman like James think he was qualified for the position?

“I’ve had a great experience at Duke so far, and I want to be involved in as many opportunities as I can be. I feel like I have the skills to be a Young Trustee. As a rising sophomore, I am in my prime at Duke. These seniors are on their way out”, James said.

Still, that is not to say that James does not believe the seniors he was running against are very qualified. Better still, he will consider running for the position again later on in his Duke career. His main goal for the future is to take advantage of all of the opportunities Duke offers. “That’s why I ran for Young Trustee in the first place,” he said. Plus he received a huge amount of support from his peers and faculty members even if the cards weren’t in the deck for him.

“I guess I missed the memo that freshmen don’t run for Young Trustee,” James joked. “But I’d rather try and fail than not try at all.”  That’s the spirit, James!

In discussing why James ran for Young Trustee, we talked about why he decided to come to Duke in the first place. Though his parents are both Harvard alums, James decided he wanted to keep his options open and applied to many different schools across the country.

“I came to Duke for the full undergraduate experience. I know there are great places in this country to sit in classes for four years and walk away with a diploma, and Duke is definitely one of them, but to me, ‘college’ means a lot more than that. Duke offers a place for me to explore my interests beyond the classroom.  The fact that I was even allowed to apply for the “Young Trustee” position as a freshman speaks to that.”

When James isn’t busy making Duke history, he spends time devoted to athletics, namely sailing and skiing. Here at Duke, he is on the Club Sailing and Club Ski teams, and frequently travels across the region competing in both sports.  During dinner with James, he told me a story about how he almost bought a sailboat on impulse on his last sailing trip with the Duke Sailing Team.

“It was a really good deal, but I had nowhere to put it,” James said.  

Whatever next?