It seems that the controversy du jour in the greater Duke community is the fallout from the supposed reckless, "out of control" nature of last weekend's off-campus social gatherings. As an off-campus resident I've arrived on campus to find my house on the cover of The Chronicle, arrived at my house to find Durham Police officers and Herald-Sun reporters wanting to discuss the "situation," and received worried e-mails and calls from my parents who are no doubt losing sleep at the thought of me spending the night in the Durham County Jail.
The immediate driving force for this story is the non-student residents of Trinity Park who are rightfully distressed by the piles of students' empty beer cans and puddles of student urine left in their yards last weekend. I can literally feel their pain. I, too, spent time last Sunday picking up empty cans from my yard thrown there by students that I don't know, as well as some that my neighbors angrily threw in my lawn after the fact. Our neighbors are angry because they feel as though they are being violated and I can understand that, but their anger is misplaced.
Seniors live in houses off-campus and sometimes throw parties in those houses. This has been a staple of the Duke social scene throughout the recent past. To me, this doesn't seem to be breaking news. The change is that the on-campus "fun vacuum" has thrust the off-campus scene to the forefront of the school's social consciousness. The fact that freshman wander aimlessly in groups looking for something fun and, yes, involving alcohol, to do on Saturday night is infinitely more fundamental.
A mere three years ago, I, too, was one of these freshman and I recall being surprised by just how much of the fun that I was seeking I found readily available. In my first few weeks, I went to legitimately fun fraternity parties at six different frats on West, as well as the Hideaway and some off-campus parties. On any given night there were numerous options available to you as a freshman to go have a few beers and meet people. The three places I spent the most of my time, SAE, Kappa Sig and Phi Psi sections, no longer exist.
You need not be an avid student of the Duke social scene to know that this is no random coincidence. Few tears were shed over this occurrence by the school's administration. It is clear that they view the sort of "work hard, play hard" culture that has defined Duke since my parents were here as no longer in line with their view of what Duke should be. I'm also sure that they view myself and my friends as annoying relics of a bygone age that will (thankfully) soon be eliminated.
It is their hope that this new crop of freshman, and those now taking their SATs across the country with hopes of being admitted next year, won't know any better and will happily accept "21 Night Stand" and being forced to live with kids from your freshman dorm for three (maybe four?) years as a fun college experience. Well, I can see where they're coming from with this, but there's a slight problem. People are people and their fundamental tastes don't change. Their expectations for their college years don't really change either. What has this incongruity lead to? Well, it has lead to my neighbors angrily throwing beer cans at my yard because they are angry at the situation and unaware of its root cause.
As I stated earlier, freshmen will wander, now and into the future, looking for a party. The one thing I think that everyone agrees on is that this should not be taking place in the neighborhoods around East Campus. Left with no comparable options on-campus, however, they will do so, even with the Orwellian Duke-funded police presence that now exists in these neighborhoods. Early last Saturday evening I was enjoying a few beers with three of my housemates on our front porch. Group after group of freshmen wandered up inquiring if there "was anything here (at my house.)" We informed them that there was no beer for them and they wandered across the street. I went to a party and returned three hours later at roughly 1 a.m. to find my front lawn and the street in front of my house so filled with people so as to make it hard to move. I had observed the same thing at every student house that I walked past on the way home. Now, even the most paranoid of our critics must admit that we certainly didn't invite 100 freshmen over.
In fact, we spent the majority of the next two hours telling people to either come inside or leave, and the majority of the next morning cleaning up the aforementioned beer cans that they had brought from elsewhere. I understand that our neighbors were bothered by this and I, myself, am obviously bothered by the fallout that has left me fearful to invite even my friends of legal age over to hang out if I don't want to risk a criminal charge for what could be a frivolous noise complaint. The freshmen are obviously not at fault here. They had been on this campus for less than a week at that point. They are victims, too. They also now must live in fear of the long arm of the DUPD. This is all due to the fact that the administration has been busy actively destroying what was once a best-case scenario for this University's social scene.
The safest form of college drinking is a keg party. Keg beer is weaker even than normal beer and I challenge anyone to find me an example of someone going to the hospital because they drank too much beer of any kind. There were no kegs on West when I was a freshman, so freshman routinely took multiple shots of hard liquor on East because they knew booze could be hard to come by on West. This practice is still widespread and it is not safe for anyone. If beer was readily available this would be curtailed. Beer is the weakest type of alcoholic beverage and it's filling. Drinking only beer slows the pace at which someone gets drunk. If Duke still had a beer-centered, on campus drinking culture, things would be safer for everyone. Now, even the remnants of the West scene I knew as a freshman are on their last legs.
Today, off-campus houses are the bad guys and there soon may be no fun parties off-campus held by frats, just as there are no fun ones on-campus anymore. Well, that's just brilliant. Let's encourage students (including freshmen) to go to bars with full liquor licenses where they will spend lots of money, have access to all the shots they want, risk getting a criminal record for having a fake, and, most ominously, perhaps get into a car with an intoxicated driver.
Duke is trying to wash its hands of any responsibility for its students' experimentation with alcohol. You can argue as to whether or not they should do this, but they are going to. The hordes of students on Watts Street from last weekend prove this. It is the worst sort of cowardice to continue passing the buck at the risk of students' safety.
I have the bullet hole in my car door to prove that the area around East is not always safe for me as a 21 year-old male. The risk of sexual assault for 18 year-old girls unfamiliar with the area is a million times more grave than the general threat of crime faced by all of us.
Until the University takes a look in the mirror and admits that it is on a dangerous and foolhardy path in terms of student life, various groups within the greater University community will continue to be victimized in a plethora of ways. I'm honestly sorry for all of the members of the Trinity Park community and I can speak for my house in saying that we hope to engage in dialogue with them, and change or own practices, to "keep the peace." I hope, however, that they will also dig a little deeper and perhaps start writing letters to Larry Moneta instead of the Durham Police. The administration has deliberately attempted to enlarge their fiefdom to include anywhere in Durham students go--I only pray that I need not ever see the disgusting irony of this fully coming to fruition with the first student killed in a DUI accident or raped walking home from a bar.
Mark Boyd is a Trinity senior and the former President of Eta Prime--formerly Kappa Sigma--Fraternity.
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