The first time I visited Duke, it was one those soggy-quad evenings-all mopey math majors and muddy flip-flops. I slumped on the corner of a Residence Life-supplied prison mattress. I listened to an ROTC and a depressed transfer-to-be argue about curriculum requirements. This was college alright, but not anything identifiable, nothing with attitude. I played video games to escape the dead air. Turned out everyone else was at Cameron. Who would want to spend four years at a place like this? Duke sucks in the rain.
Returning in the spring, I had dinner with seven gorgeous girls on a gorgeous night outside at Parizade until the Delta Sig formal kicked us out, headed to the Edens quad for a Kappa Sig rager full of kegs, tunes and hugs, passed out in section, woke up and wrote my last high school English paper, got on a plane and couldn't help but think of who wouldn't want to grow up at a place like this, where you work hard and you play hard and then you work harder and then you play harder and that's what you're supposed to be doing if you want to. Duke rocked when it rocked.
In the four years since, I have witnessed nothing short of an administrative ransacking of this school's social life. Deans, cops, neighbors, nerds and the shadow of the Ivy League have gradually and systematically pulled the rug out from underneath the backbone of this school's identity: fun.
My senior class enjoyed the end of Natural Duke, Durham's Best, Olde Gothic, what have you. Then we went abroad, came back and have been rolling our eyes at Dukie Light all the way through to this-the worst spring in Durham anyone can remember, the bittersweet end to the bitterest degradation of what was once a social scene to die for. This is not about a privileged group of white, Northeastern Tri Delts and Pi Phis and SAEs. This is not about Dick Brodhead's master plan to ruin your life. This is about a change in priorities for a university stuck between a rock and a hard place without a clue as to what made my class and I want to come down South instead of go to goddamn Harvard.
Duke's administration has turned up the heat on the pressure cooker of academics and pre-professionalism while simultaneously putting a stranglehold on its students' release valve. Sure, it's not their fault that Parizade didn't want to put up with Thursday night dance parties or that Bully's management was too incompetent to handle a big crowd or that Charlie's cards too hard.
But it's their fault for upping admissions standards while cutting off anywhere to cut loose on the campus where we pay them to live (When's the last time you saw a physics major-or anyone, for that matter-chug a beer on the quad?).
It's their fault for curing a headache by forcing two mainstay fraternities off campus and doing everything in their power to stop them from organizing themselves (When's the last time you heard Duke not promote its students' entrepreneurship?).
It's their fault for appeasing nutso neighbors by having Dean Bryan and the Duke Police chase kids down Watts Street, only to call in the ALE ringers and secretly buy up students' homes when that didn't calm them down (When's the last time you saw any place of higher learning try to screw over a kid's law school application for having a drink with his girlfriend after a final?).
And it's certainly their fault for backing down to the Athletic Department by taking the last school-wide social event remaining-tailgates (R.I.P.)-and backhandedly forcing kids to binge drink at 8 a.m. so they can (not) go watch kickoff (When's the last time you saw Duke wipe a social scene led by lacrosse players off the face of the earth as a hypocritical face-saving move to make up for past wrongs and public lies? Oh, wait.).
So the last time I visited Duke, it was that pouring-rain-quad Last Day of Classes-all rebels remaining and muddy memories. I stood holding a case of beer, breaking the rules to have fun, as usual. I watched a laxer doing that hilarious, robed secret society routine and felt sorry for him and his compadres who'll get all the blame for the administration's backward handling of student life. This was college alright, but not anything identifiable anymore, nothing but lingering attitude. I looked for an underclassman to wish him luck and tell him I didn't have a solution. Turned out everyone else was still in class. Who would've wanted to spend four years at a place like this? Duke rained on our parade.
Matt Sullivan is a Trinity senior, editor of Towerview and former managing editor of The Chronicle. He would like to thank Lenny, Lizzie, Jake and everyone who kept it real.
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