West-Central Shuffle

he small cement bench surrounded by a crowd of black students sits under a tree adjacent to the Chapel Quadrangle. With its prominent location, it is the axis around which students rotate between classes and dorms and food. Yet it is widely known for the race of the people who frequent it: And for that it has gained the campus-wide sobriquet of 'Black Bench' and is seen by many as a conspicuous symbol of self-segregation at Duke.

But is the Bench really emblematic of Duke's much-reported and much-maligned problems with segregation? It is no more a symbol than any West Campus fraternity or house bench, around which people gather to socialize. Because those pieces of furniture very clearly represent a dorm or selective house, they are often surrounded by a homogenous population as well. But just as the Black Bench sits at the center of campus, its perceived identity occupies a similar space in the University-wide discussion of race and segregation at Duke.

Such issues are hardly novel in America and at the University. In recent history alone, Duke has grappled with multiple issues of race relations and segregation. In a 1993 commentary published in The Chronicle, Hardy Vieux, Duke's undergraduate student government president, wrote about Duke students who live segregated lives. "I've watched us segregate ourselves in the dining halls. I've watched the majority of my African-American peers move to Central Campus. I've watched two social systems thrive," he wrote.

That same year, the television news program "60 Minutes" highlighted racial segregation at Duke. More recently, Sigma Chi's "Viva Mexico" party ignited the ire of Duke's Hispanic community, as the fraternity advertised its function with handbills designed as expired green cards and greeted revelers with a customs booth at the party's entrance.

Against this history, Duke has considered and continues to explore ways of alleviating segregation.

Or should it be left alone?

Ebony Scales grew up in Dayton, Ohio, a small Midwestern city of 160,000, attending primary and middle schools with young men and women who mostly shared her African-American ethnicity. With the assistance of a teacher and the prodding of her caring mother, Scales enrolled at St. George's Prep, a Rhode Island boarding school, on the wings of a Better Chance scholarship.

"I went to this random place with all these rich white people. It was really rough: different groups, different friends," she says. "I just buried myself into my work and didn't think about the situation I was in."

Scales eventually made several good friends at St. George's, but when she began looking at colleges, she was lured to Duke, in part, because she had a desire to be at a school with a larger population of black students. She arrived on East Campus in the fall of 2000 and developed relationships with many in her dorm and eventually joined Zeta Phi Beta, a historically black sorority, of which she is president. She, like 44.2 percent of Duke's African-American upperclassmen, lives on Central Campus.

"The social atmosphere [on West] isn't exactly--it doesn't exactly cater to African-American students," says Scales, who lived for a year in Edens Quadrangle before moving to Central. "It wasn't exactly to get away from--it wasn't miserable.... It wasn't even that bad of an experience. I was on Central most of the time anyway.... I wasn't escaping a hellhole or anything like that."

Scales' sentiments were echoed in a survey released in December by Duke Student Government. The report concluded that the "freshman-year living experience continues to be one of the major positives discussed by students of all years. This campus environment allows first-year students to forge bonds and 'helps people get acquainted into a new social environment,' according to one sophomore. Despite the novelty of the administration's policy to house all sophomores on West, the East Campus feeling has not yet transferred."

The report continued, saying "forced racial interaction doesn't seem to be working either. Though the University's commitment to diversity via recruitment is commendable, a junior asks, 'What good is diversity if no one integrates?' Duke has strove [sic] to increase the diversity of its student body via admissions and the integration of different races through the housing policy. This still has not led to the elimination of racism. A member of the class of 2004 describes the campus as 'Still hostile to minorities. Though not blatantly obvious, hidden racism is actually worse because then it is more difficult to combat.'"

For Scales, her desire to live on Central was multifaceted: She wanted to have her own apartment and she wanted to be nearer to black greek life--"Most of the white frats have housing; one black frat has housing," she explains. "If there were more black greek organizations with housing on West, I can guarantee the number of black students living on West would go up."

But perhaps most ardently, she wanted to get away from the ignorance that many blacks--and other Duke students--believe exists among much of Duke's undergraduate population.

"Duke isn't exactly a place that forces you to question how you think about race," she says. "You can't blame somebody for having the ideas they have when they haven't been corrected otherwise. I've been in so many classes when people have said ignorant things that have no basis and haven't been corrected by the professor who I know knows better--or maybe the professor doesn't know better either...."

Her voice trails off.

"It's not like I'm closing myself off; I've met a lot of cool white people since I've been in school," she continues. "And that's what most black people are inclined to say. In situations like this, when given the chance, very good relationships--friendships--are able to grow. But I'm just the type of person I'm not going to force myself anywhere. It takes a lot of energy to try to combat everybody, so you just prove people wrong by what I'm doing."

Clearly, there was a larger percentage of African-American students that chose to live on Central Campus" before the new housing policy, says Director of Housing Assignments and Communications Bill Burig, who opines that there was a "natural progression" for many black students that continues to direct them to Central because a supportive community exists there. This is augmented, in Burig's opinion, because "African-American students saw West Campus as a less inviting environment for them."

"Students are going to congregate with people who are going to be supportive of their lifestyle," he continues.

According to Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta, the predominance of African-Americans living on Central derives from Duke's segregated history, when the "fraternity campus presence on West Campus dominated the facilities. The fraternities really dominated half the bed-space before the WEL was built and Edens was built.

"So eventually Central becomes more comfortable [for black students] because it's all that's left. So now, years later, that comfort is somewhat engraved," Moneta says.

And despite Burig's insistence that the percentages of African-Americans on Central had "nothing at all" to do with it, top administrators attest that the new housing policy was created, in part, to foster a more comfortable atmosphere for African-American and other minority students on West Campus.

"When we implemented the new housing policy, one of several factors that motivated us was that African-American students consistently told us that they did not feel at home on West Campus and deliberately chose to live on Central--a choice which reinforced itself as a form of 'group-sorting' as multiple individuals made that choice and found the creation of a congenial culture an advantage," Keohane explains. "However, the same individuals, also, clearly resented not having the choice of a congenial culture on West, as well as Central, so they could choose residential locations on other grounds, as other students do."

The primary reason for the policy change, however, was "to acknowledge that developmentally, students in their second year at Duke can be best supported in a residence hall setting and not in an apartment," Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek writes in an e-mail. "The resources available through our residence hall program, such as RCs, RAs, faculty-in-residence and programming, for example, can greatly enrich and enhance a student's experience."

Regardless of the administration's intent, the policy has pleased Burig in that the percentage of African-Americans on West Campus has increased from a five-year low in the fall of 2000. In the year the plan was implemented, the percentage of African-Americans living on West jumped from 33.2 to 53.8 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of blacks living on Central dropped from 55.8 to 44.2 percent. The other minority classifications which are recorded by the Housing Office--Asians/Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and Hispanics/Latinos--have not shown significant changes.

"I think as much as possible, we want to create an environment where all students will feel welcome here... and that African-American students in particular don't have to feel like Central Campus is where they need to go as a junior," he says.

But the fact that the percentages have been altered, many students argue, will likely change very little in terms of the way people interact at the University.

"The whole forcing people to live on West, that was ridiculous to me," Scales says. "From my understanding, the idea was to bring everybody together and to try to bring down the segregation of the black people.... This is not going to work. All they're going to do is still go to whoever they were friends with freshman year, so the effort needs to be something different than that.... They're just going to leave after sophomore year.... It's not going to do anything. All they're going to do is after they get off West, they're going to go to Central."

It is important to acknowledge, however, that many students at Duke do not live in circumstances which can be defined as "racially separate." Indeed, there is multicultural interaction on campus. A multicultural sorority does exist. A Center for Race Relations was founded last year by two current juniors. But students and administrators are quick to counter that such circumstances remain relatively rare.

"When I first arrived at Duke, the student body, as well as the faculty and administration, was basically homogenous from a race perspective," reflects Wasiolek, who graduated from the University in 1976. "Over the years, it has been fascinating and fulfilling to observe the entire University community become so much more diverse. It makes for so many more opportunities for all of us to learn so much more about the human race." What Wasiolek has learned, however, is that Duke's rise in numbers of minority students does not equate to "increased and enhanced interactions between and among the races. So, the question is, do we as an institution have a responsibility to do more?"

In a 1999 story on racial segregation at Duke that appeared in The Chronicle, Keohane discouraged the use of the word 'segregation' in exploring the relations between ethnic groups on campus.

"I would not describe Duke students as 'segregated,' a word that implies that somebody is imposing a living pattern on somebody else against their will, which is surely not the case," she said at the time. "I do think that our students, like many people, tend to select their friends and activities in a 'comfort zone' of folks who look, talk, dress and act in a familiar way. This can be by race, class, religious conviction, geography, intellectual interests, among other things."

Those comments remain relevant, and the words she writes today are remarkably similar: "Racial or ethnic group-sorting, as a specific example, done willingly or unwillingly, is still very much a feature of our society, and many societies today, so it is not surprising that this has an impact on our campus."

And though racial separation remains conspicuous at Duke and in America--in its public schools, in its cities, in its workforce--it is a subject that is often treated with "common themes of distress and impatience" and a "national mood of puzzlement and annoyance" by "much of the spectrum of white America," according to David Shipler's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America.

Duke manifested these symptoms this past December, when The Chronicle published a controversial letter claiming that "having a group of clearly identifiable students that are part of an educational cohort that is considerably lower than the general population of the school is bound to lead to ghettos, socially and academically."

The sentiments instigated a collective sigh of frustration exhaled by many of Duke's students, minority and white alike. The letter's premise revolved around the author's disagreement with Duke's use of affirmative action in admission policies, which he believed allows for unqualified students to be admitted to the University, consequently preventing "beneficial interaction."

Several students wrote in to The Chronicle in response, agreeing that self-segregation was an issue at Duke, but strongly disagreeing with the author's theory and the ignorance displayed therein. Bianca Ford, a Trinity junior, cited a different explanation for self-segregation at Duke: "Acknowledge that it is a direct consequence of the fact that there are members of Duke's white community that share your views. Since opinions are not as 'clearly identifiable' as physical attributes, it becomes difficult to isolate those whites from others; therefore, in order to avoid contact with individuals who are equally as ignorant and uninformed as [the author], some blacks just choose to align themselves with those like them, and that is what now facilitates the segregation of this campus."

Still, national research has shown that disdain exists toward minority students, who are often regarded as segregating themselves from their respective communities, despite the fact that white students are equally likely, able and inclined to isolate themselves.

"That's the point of the whole thing, everybody [self-segregates]," Burig says. "It's just more obvious to pick on the black students because they're a minority, and they're more obviously congregating. That's just kind of the way we think: We don't think about the majority; we think about the minority."

Or perhaps, people in the majority think about people in the minority.

Among myriad psychological and developmental explanations, Beverly Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, suggests that "as one's awareness of the daily challenges of living in a racist society increase, it is immensely helpful to be able to share one's experiences with others who have lived it. Even when white friends are willing and able to listen and bear witness to one's struggles, they cannot really share the experience."

Wasiolek, echoing academics and Duke administrators alike, says she believes "separation exists at Duke, as it does in the rest of the world, on a number of levels and in a number of different ways, one of them being race." Balkanization is derived from much more than skin color and ethnic background--"it's just that race is such a visible way to recognize separation."

Nevertheless, Duke's housing statistics provide a conspicuous example of segregation. In the Fall of 2002 81.1 percent of Duke's caucasian sophomores, juniors and seniors lived on West Campus and comprised 62 percent of all the students living there. Only 17.1 percent of whites lived on Central Campus, a number that made up just 47 percent of the area's total. The number of Asian/Pacific Islander students shows very little discrepancy between living on West and Central--they comprised 15.0 percent of West's population, and 15.3 percent of Central's. This trend is also true for Hispanics/Latinos, who made up 6.5 percent of West and 5.3 percent of Central.

Of Duke's non-freshman African-American students, 53.8 percent lived on West; however, that number made up only 8.7 percent of the population there. On Central, where 44.2 percent of African-Americans lived, they made up 25.9 percent of all students living on Central.

"History plays a huge role in segregation," says Jason Hendrickson, president of National Panhellenic Council fraternity Phi Beta Sigma. "People tend to associate with those who are similar to them. When you have a group of people who are discriminated against for the same reason, whether it be the struggle to pay the bills or similar conditions in their neighborhood back home, they will come together because of their similarities."

The situation is not unique to Duke: The conservative essayist David Brooks wrote in The Atlantic that "even though race and ethnicity run deep in American society, we should in theory be able to find areas that are at least culturally diverse. But here, too, people show few signs of being truly interested in building diverse communities.

"If you run a retail company and you're thinking of opening new stores, you can choose among dozens of consulting firms that are quite effective at locating your potential customers. They can do this because people with similar tastes and preferences tend to congregate by ZIP code," he wrote. "Looking through the market research, one can sometimes be amazed by how efficiently people cluster--and by how predictable we all are."

It would be irresponsible to discuss segregation without recognizing that separations occur on many levels outside of race and ethnicity.

"The larger issue of why black students, or fraternity or sorority students, or athletes, or Francophones, or music lovers should choose to spend time in a 'comfort zone' with others who share their interests, is powerfully important," Keohane writes.

But Hendrickson says, "History has created conditions that bring people together on the basis of race. It comes as no surprise that people continue to congregate based on skin color." Still, he quickly nods to the role of culture in segregation, something he believes "brings groups together". But a tension does exist at Duke and in society--be it "cultural, racial, or a number of other things"--which he believes creates incidents that can only be "eased by understanding another's culture, class, sexuality, etc."

This raises the question of to what extent Duke's administration should attempt to create a more welcoming and comforting atmosphere for its students who believe in the existence of racial separation, which is not only apparent in living practices but also in the social climate.

There's no doubt that you can walk around campus and see various students together," says Moneta. Still, he believes that Duke and its students "should not judge ourselves so harshly, but also to acknowledge that there is work yet to be done." Moneta affirms that he is not trying to be a "social engineer", but he does want "to interrupt practices or interrupt cultural norms or interrupt policies or procedures that in fact make it uncomfortable for students to cross those lines when they want to."

Maya Washington, president of Duke's Black Student Alliance, believes that people "socialize with those who hold similar values and have had similar experiences as us," which perpetuates the labeling of groups of friends as self-segregation.

"Self-segregation is generally viewed negatively as a mechanism of division," Washington continues. "And if it perpetuates a situation where students are not interacting and getting to know people of different backgrounds, then it can be a problem. However, at Duke I don't think that is the case. Regulating how people choose to socialize is not necessary. You can't dictate how well people relate to each other despite their differences.

"Additionally, just because your closest friend may look and act like you, doesn't mean that you are not getting to know a diverse group of people. I think that Duke provides ample opportunities for us to learn more about other cultures. Expecting the administration to take responsibility for diversifying the relationships we form is not necessary. They have no control over who we associate with and they shouldn't."

Further, Washington--who is unaffiliated--expands her belief to the oft-criticized greek and selective living-group system, which is consistently deemed as culpable for many of Duke's issues regarding racial separation.

"Yes, it segregates, classing people off into groups of those with similar interests," she says. "But I don't think it denies students the opportunity to forge relationships and friendships outside of their individual sororities or fraternities."

Amy Lazarus, one of the co-founders of the student-run Center for Race Relations, rests both elbows on a table, which is littered with pamphlets and flyers advertising the year-old organization committed to helping students understand that race is but a component of identity. The Trinity junior excitedly explains one of the Center's most significant achievements to date: the Common Ground retreat, which took a diverse group of undergraduates through a series of discussions and scenarios intended to help them learn about race and identity. She then discusses her own experience as a white student who attended Shaker Heights, an elite public high school in suburban Cleveland that was nearly equal in its number of black and white students.

Her high school experience was greatly impacted by race, and her personal grapplings with her own identity, which she would better understand once arriving at Duke. During her time at Shaker Heights, she became very involved in a program that sent high schoolers into the classrooms of fourth and sixth graders twice a week to discuss developing and maintaining friendships with people who have "different identities".

But during her sophomore year of college, she began to reflect upon her experience as an individual and as a white person dealing with issues of race. "I realized how guilty I felt that (A), I didn't realize how blind I was that I didn't even let myself see [how lucky I was growing up], and (B), What to do with that guilt? And guilt is not a helpful feeling," she says.

So Lazarus decided to help by founding the Center for Race Relations with Philip Kurian, a columnist for The Chronicle and a contributor to TowerView. The group sponsors and organizes dialogues among different student organizations on campus, in addition to serving as the newest and perhaps most promising voice in helping to forge a greater sense of understanding on campus, one identity at a time.

When Hardy Vieux was concluding his column in The Chronicle back in 1993, he did his best to share his own understanding, and to spur further awareness and communication among Duke's undergraduate population. His message was a call to arms, one that foreshadowed and perhaps even served as an impetus for student activism in the years that followed. And now, with the inspired growth of the Center for Race Relations, students have the vehicle to instigate change and to foster thought regarding a critical and complex topic. The result could be the development of a new comfort zone at the University--one where universal understanding would be the reward.

"We often look to administrators, or those who supposedly have power, to hand us a solution to our race relations problem," Vieux wrote. "This is the wrong approach: We are not entitled to anything we don't work for ourselves.... All too often we use generalizations when communicating with individuals. Stereotyping immediately conveys an unwillingness to listen and thus true dialogue can never take place.

"The multicultural nature of our campus merely reflects our larger society. In order to succeed in this ever-changing society, we need to be able to interact and relate to people of various cultures. Why not start now?"