Column: The Swindle in the Stone

It's easy enough to quip about how Duke has done us wrong, but I want to talk about one of its triumphs one that affects the safety of every person on its campus. I'm not talking about rape, theft or harassment. No one can ever guarantee us absolute protection from those things. No, I am talking about a danger much closer, literally, to home. We don't talk about it much and it goes unregistered. It resides on the tip of the tongue, lodged permanently somewhere between anxiety and acknowledgement. I am talking about siege. I find a good deal of comfort in knowing that my educational institution has gone to such great lengths to protect me from siege. Light bulbs are sometimes busted on the pathways and Safe Rides drivers have the interrogation skills of Spanish conquistadors, but--harkening back to the Dark Ages--the stone buildings of West Campus have battlements, mural towers, parapets and arrow loops (or at least, the windows are supposed to look like arrow loops). After taking military history, I understand the importance of these measures 1,000 years after their implementation in Europe. I feel safer knowing that archers could easily shoot at intruders from the roof of the Bryan Center, or that boiling oil could be poured on invading barbarians from the towers of Perkins Library. West Campus, built from 1927 to 1930, is home to dorms named Lancaster, York, Stratford and Round Table, among others. Ironically enough, Camelot is in Edens Quadrangle, which means that most likely the only idyllic aspect of living there is the fact that it has an elevator. Nottingham is on Main West Campus, but I doubt anyone there will be robbing the rich to give to the poor anytime soon (we are at Duke, after all). My favorite, really, is Stonehenge. I have never been inside Duke's Stonehenge, but as I pass it I sometimes wonder if the occupants perform ancient rituals beneath the moon. The Druids were one of the world's oldest fraternities. The only drawback of this medieval ambience is its inconsistency. Someone should complete this project for the sake of cognitive integrity. Instead of the Blue Bistro, why not bring in Medieval Times for new management? Who needs lacrosse when you can have jousting and falconry in the athletic program? I know the fencing team would appreciate some recognition. As reassured as I feel knowing that "the enemy" would have a tough time conquering Duke's campus, I wonder about the spiritual implications of living, well, in a fake castle. Aesthetically, the campus is very pretty but at its core it is vulgar. Duke is up there with Epcot Center and Las Vegas in terms of kitsch. Yes, the school's design was based on those of Princeton and Yale, but Princeton and Yale have almost a century more history behind them, and thus actual links to the British university system. I love my University and I will be sad to leave it, but it is a plastic imitation product. It is the Disney World of academia. Thump a spring-loaded finger against the walls of the "Oak" Room and you will hear the resounding echo of wood paneling. Walk through the West-Edens Link and note how even our modern architects have perpetuated the medieval ruse with more notched towers (this time, topped with flags!). An ominous-looking, yet amazingly well-lit, rocket ship of a Chapel doesn't spirit us back to the good old days of Notre Dame and Westminster Abbey. All the flying buttresses in the world will not make our school a "Gothic Wonderland." It might be some kind of wonderland, on Friday nights in a "down-the-rabbit-hole" kind of way, but the Chapel was finished in 1935. We aren't fooling anyone here. The jig is up. Institutions of higher learning are supposed to foster the liberal pursuit of truth, yet we at Duke are encased in a charade. This inevitably stirs up a bit of existential malaise, at least for me. Who are we if not who we are? If Duke has a soul, it is one rooted in the American South, not on the English moors. It has a complex, conflicted social history that is so much more interesting than the veneer stretched across its grounds. As students, we are forced to intuit that history because we can't see it around us. Duke's real origins and cultural past have been obscured by an empty, unconvincing faAade. We have artifice, but not art. The realistic has trumped the real. Bronwen Dickey is a Trinity senior. Her column appears every third Wednesday.