The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon and their aftermath dominated the first semester of the Class of 2002's senior year. The planes hit the buildings when many students lay sleeping, and most spent the day watching the events unfold on television. The next day, 2,500 community members held a vigil in front of the Chapel, mourning the deaths of lost friends, family and six Duke alumni.
The attacks left not only an emotional scar on student life, but also on academic endeavours. One FOCUS group was forced to cancel its trip to Greece, while another faced tight security at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on its way to Russia. In addition, the University hosted a series of forums on topics ranging from healing to foreign policy.
The attacks also plunged the nation into a recession, tightening the job market for seniors. Although in 2000 there were 130 firms at the annual career fair, only 84 showed up this year--big-name companies like Accenture, Cisco Systems, Dell and Lucent Technologies were noticeably absent.
When not focused on the attacks or the economy, many students were predictably caught up in basketball. Early in the season, Coach Mike Krzyzewski made headlines when he entered the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and signed a lifetime contract with Duke.
As the Tar Heels went 8-20 on the season, Duke's true rival seemed to be Maryland. The Blue Devils crushed the Terps during their January game at home. But the second matchup was a sign of things to come, as Maryland won 87-73, en route to its first ever national championship. Indiana, who lost in the finals, crushed Duke's dreams of a repeat in the Sweet 16. When the men's team lost, campus attention shifted to the women's
The year was not as kind to the football team, which went winless for the second year in a row. If the team continues that trend and loses every game during the 2002 season, it will break a national record.
The Class of 2002 will also remember the continued debates on campus climate and its link to residential life. Administrators geared up to implement a requirement that all sophomores live on West Campus, designed in part to increase the diversity of residential living and create a more academic community. The requirement coincided with the opening of the 350-bed $37 million West-Edens Link dormitory, scheduled for completion in July.
Residential life continued to morph as another selective house left campus. Leaders of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, citing the group's inability to meet the requirements of Duke and its national office, dissolved their chapter. Tough sanctions for various alcohol and hazing violations also fell on Theta Chi fraternity and Wayne Manor selective house. The Kappa Alpha Order fraternity escaped punishment by agreeing to a contract drafted by its national office.
With the crackdown on selective groups and the priority given to sophomores on West, students claimed that social life at Duke was dying. They pointed both to the new policies and the closing of the student-run Hideaway bar the previous summer. New evidence brought to light in fall 2001 showed that the bar had closed not only because of its drop in customers but also because a former owner and Duke graduate had allegedly embezzled as much as $20,000.
Although several Duke Student Government resolutions addressed
Food service at Duke also changed this year, as ARAMARK Corp. took over several University-run eateries and financial woes threatened to close Uncle Harry's grocery store and the Freeman Center for Jewish Life's kosher kitchen. To save the kitchen, ARAMARK planned to take over operations for the next year.
Although crime on campus remained a quiet issue during the fall semester, it exploded in the spring, when a student reported that she had been sexually assaulted in her East Campus dormitory bathroom early one January morning. Combined with several armed robberies --including one in the undergraduate Blue Zone parking lot Oct. 23--and other sexual assaults just off East Campus, the incident brought safety concerns to the forefront of campus politics.
Duke continued to expand into Durham during the year, committing to lease 150,000 of the 1.1-million-square-foot American Tobacco warehouse, as the developer found the three tenants it needed to move foward with the project. In other local news, an election that implemented a City Council format change to reduce the group's members from 13 to seven, Durham residents voted incumbent Nick Tennyson out of office, selecting Bill Bell mayor by a slim 366-vote margin. Voters also approved $74.7 million worth of bonds for county projects.
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