It's Thursday night at the Searle Center, a conference space just off Research Drive, and the guests of honor are anxious. Around 100 of them, all high school students, all dressed in suits or skirts or dresses and heels, sit around tables with champagne-colored tablecloths and hope they don't reach for the wrong fork. They're visiting Duke-many for the first time-and at least three people have probably advised each of them to treat this entire weekend as an admissions interview. So they laugh at stiff jokes, hold eye contact, extend strong handshakes. Then Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag rises to the microphone. "You can all be confident," he says, "that you will get the thick envelope." And the p-froshes cheer.
At the Black Student Alliance Invitational weekend (BSAI), BSA does its best to showcase black life in the hope of luring a few more black students to join the class of 2011. The event, which has existed in some form since 1967, is entirely student-run; a BSA committee begins planning the next BSAI almost as soon as the current year's ends. Mi Gente has run Latino Student Recruitment Weekend (LSRW), a counterpart to BSAI for Latino students, for the past five years.
Visiting seniors get a taste of academic life through class visits. They hear about the extracurricular opportunities they'd have if they choose Duke through a panel called "Getting what you came for" and conversations with upperclassmen. They get a window into social life through an open mic night, a fashion show, a step show, dinners, meet-and-greets and after-parties. At LSRW, visitors attend similar events, plus Mezcla, a celebration of Latino culture featuring dancing, bands and comedy. And, in perhaps the most important function of the weekends, prospective students meet each other-potential roommates, classmates and best friends.
It's incredibly effective-students who attended BSAI comprise the majority of incoming black freshmen, and dozens of current undergraduates credit positive experiences during the weekend with their having chosen Duke. Alumni return to campus, as though BSAI were Homecoming.
"People have chosen Duke over Harvard and Yale because of this weekend," says BSAI Chair Channing Matthews, who says she also decided to come to Duke after BSAI.
But not everyone at the University is thrilled with the arrangement-President Richard Brodhead, among others, has expressed concern that BSAI and LSRW may not convey accurate representations of Duke's diversity. Some students have suggested that events like BSAI are inherently deceptive; they showcase the best possible version of a fractured black community. Either way, events like BSAI and LSRW beg the question: What should be the role of minority-specific recruitment weekends in a supposedly inclusive University?
Two years ago, at the beginning of his tenure, Brodhead told The Chronicle that he favors a more racially-unified approach to recruitment. "[T]he more you can have everyone together, the more it gives you a flavor of the college you're attending," he said. Perhaps anticipating students' defensive uproar, Brodhead-who halted minority pre-orientation programs while he was Yale's provost-also promised that any decisions about the future of events like BSAI and LSRW would be the result of an "ongoing conversation."
Fast forward to Spring 2007. The steering committee of the Campus Culture Initiative submits the fruits of its months-long deliberations on undergraduate life to Brodhead in February. The final report-prepared over a ten-month period-includes 28 recommendations spread across six broad categories, representing the work of 24 full-time members and countless one-time contributors. The report urges sweeping changes in a broad range of areas, calling for the University to formulate clearer alcohol policies, decrease athletic team practice time and renew its commitment to recruiting women and minorities.
One recommendation no one will find in the final report is a suggestion to cease all race-based recruitment weekends. But the topic was discussed among the CCI's subcommittees, particularly the subcommittee on race, led through the bulk of its conversations by Professor of English Karla Holloway. After a staff editorial lauding the BSAI appeared in The Chronicle, Holloway submitted a guest column stating a less rosy perspective.
"[I]nstitutionally produced difference is not one of the ways to mitigate the effects of exclusionary habits of history," she wrote. "BSA invitational weekend as well as black student orientations where students meet black faculty and participate in black cultural events (like step-shows) seem an odd introduction to a university that anticipates and hopes for a culture of inclusion. It suggests that the institution anticipates that these particular students' cultural and academic universe might be best determined by their race."
Holloway considers events like BSAI and LSRW to be organs that produce racial patterns. These events, she says, are predicated on the assumption that black students will consider their race the basis for their primary identity upon arrival at the University.
"The best route to a student's mind and intellect, to suggest that that is their race, is a presumption that we cannot possibly know," Holloway says. "I don't think that any of us would say that we look at students first by their race when they come into our classrooms, so why would we want that in a recruitment weekend?"
Anthony Kelley, assistant professor of music and a faculty associate of the BSAI, disagrees. He says he would understand the desire for consistency in recruitment weekends were it not for the historical disadvantage black students have faced in gaining access to higher education.
"The minority presence at Duke is only commendable within the terms of comparison to past achievement. The day that we can truly pat ourselves on the back will be the day that we feel these opportunities emerging equally for anybody," Kelley says, noting that he attended BSAI as a high school senior. "If the University just throws up its hands and says, 'Well, African-Americans who want to come to Duke will just come,' that's not going to happen because we're still not at a place where it's on the radar.. Some action must be taken to reach out to those groups who might not have had it in their purview."
Brodhead says that two years later, he's still uncertain of how to balance showcasing the strength of the black community with conveying a realistic portrayal of Duke.
"A separate weekend gives prospective students a chance to see the strength of the minority communities here, which is very important information," he says. "On the other hand, when you come to such a weekend, you don't see the whole community your class will contain-and further, if minority admittees come only to separate weekends, then other admitted students coming to Blue Devil Days won't see the full, rich, various population their class will contain, and that's a loss as well."
Teni Osinubi didn't attend BSAI as a prospective student. "I came to Blue Devil Days and yeah, that's fine, but what I got was a tour," Osinubi says. "But I'm a black student, and I want to see other black students here. I want to know that when I'm coming to a predominantly white university, I have a home to come to, that I have a support group."
Osinubi says BSAI demonstrates the possibility of that support and community to prospective students. And after watching the weekend's events for three years, the senior psychology major wanted to change things. When it came time for Osinubi and Amanda Thomas to plan this year's fashion show-thus fulfilling their final responsibility as BSA social co-chairs-they had some specific improvements in mind.
"We wanted to step up the excellence-to do something bigger and better this year," she says. "I started planning the show in June."
The co-chairs began by moving this year's show from Brodie Gym to Page Auditorium. A coach took prospective models through two days of runway-walk training. And once Osinubi and Thomas whittled the number of models down to 45, they made sure that every one of them strutted down the runway in original designs or store-loaned clothes, rather than items from their own wardrobes.
The theme-La Ville Mode/Fashion City-meant that every scene correlated to a fashion-forward locale. Moscow featured fur muffs; New York was all sharp business attire; Milan showcased evening gowns; vibrantly patterned fabrics brightened things up in Nairobi.
On the night of the show, several BSAI participants wait at the doors to Page an hour before curtain.
"This is like the highlight of the weekend," says Dami Olatunji, a high-school senior from Atlanta. "Naturally, when it comes to a weekend like this, they're going to point out all the good aspects of it, but I think it's doing a good job in showing us what we have ahead of us."
Bahati Mutisya, a senior from Raleigh, nods in agreement. "The most exciting thing about this weekend is just the enthusiasm that I've gotten from all the students here. They really have made it a clear point how happy they are to be a part of Duke."
When the doors finally open, the girls say hurried goodbyes and rush in, the first of 1200 people to fill Page. They speak with the students next to them as though they've known each other forever, rather than just over a day. The excitement crackles over the crowd as the curtain lifts. Dozens of angular models move across the stage and groups call out to their friends, filling the auditorium with shouts of "Yeah Josh!" and "Go Zipporah!"
Jakenna Gilbert models in most of the scenes-she has four outfits in Milan alone, including one particularly memorable purple silk coat, worn over fishnets and black hot pants. Between collected walks down the runway, she runs backstage, where fashion show committee members are waiting to help her strip and suit up for the next walk.
"The violinists who played for intermission were probably standing about four feet behind me as I was stripping and changing into the next outfit," she says. "And I'm not sure they were turning their eyes away."
Things steam up around the Rio scene, when the bikinis come out. (In past years, students have modeled lingerie, but Thomas and Osinubi disposed of that component.) Jakenna says she had no problem showing skin-she modeled in high school. But she recognizes what it's about. "There is an air of superficiality because they pick the attractive people, they pick the people with good bodies, that have the things that people want to see and want to be.. It's what the black community wants to show."
True, bathing suits can be part of fashion-especially these bathing suits, with strings and cutouts in unanticipated places-but if before there had been any pretense that this event is primarily concerned with fashion, it disappears the second one male model hooks his thumb under the waistband of his bathing suit and gives it a slight downward tug. The crowd goes wild. In "Miami," another model lifts his hand to his face in a familiar "Call me" motion. "Welcome to Duke," he seems to say. "Hot people go here. don't you want to come here, too?"
The Campus Life and Learning Project, an investigation of experiences of undergraduate students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, released the first stage of its findings in April 2006. Unadjusted GPAs according to ethnic affiliation revealed significant disparities: Asian-3.39, White-3.30, Bi- or Multiracial-3.24, Latino-3.14, Black-2.97. One out of every seven black students reported being treated badly by instructors. Forty-four percent of black students said they had experienced discrimination in a number of different contexts, compared to 11 percent of white students.
Kamaria Campbell, a junior Baldwin Scholar, charges the expectations created by BSAI as one of the factors behind the gap in academic performance. The junior Baldwin Scholar visited Duke twice, once for BSAI and subsequently for a scholars' weekend.
"The differences between my visits were just ridiculous," she says. "I came to BSAI first-that was like, kind of showing off the University's black life-then to come the next weekend, I was like, okay, this is definitely not what I was sold during BSAI.
"They want to highlight cultural groups and black life at Duke. But the problem with that is that when you're talking about black life, and you're selling it all within this social context, with academics sprinkled in between, I think that you can't really expect students to do something different when they get here."
The project's findings in relation to race and academic achievement were so pervasively disturbing that last fall the BSA convened a forum to discuss the results.
Four black and four white faculty members and administrators sat at a table, coincidently seated alternately according to race. They delivered brief introductions, with some panelists, including Vice Provost Judith Ruderman, detailing their past participation in race-related task forces and initiatives. After a short discussion of the report's conclusions, a moderator opened the floor to questions and comments.
Amita Petit-Homme, a senior, said that although she attended a predominately white high school, "I didn't feel discriminated against until I came to Duke." Other students described a multiplicity of pressures-pressure to excel in classes, pressure to not reinforce dominant stereotypes, pressure to be "black enough."
"I must feel comfortable, and if not comfortable, I must still do what I need to do," sophomore Wesley Nute said.
Panelist Ben Reese, vice-president of institutional equality, called discrimination at Duke "subtle, but real." Chandra Guinn, director of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, reminded attendees that regardless of what other students or professors expected, she cared about their grades. "If nobody else at Duke expects you to get an A. I do," she said, then wondered aloud at the absence of white faculty members at the meeting.
Jeremy Fuller stood to speak.
"We need more black males that aren't athletes," said Fuller, a senior economics major. "If you're a black male who's physically fit who walks into the classroom, people are going to say, 'Oh, are you a football player?'" Sometimes, Fuller said, when he studies in Bostock at night, if he sits down at a table with other students-white students-they get up and move.
Everything, it seemed, was far from alright. But you wouldn't have known it from the fashion or step shows.
Any recruitment effort naturally emphasizes the positive aspects of whichever organization is doing the courting. Everyone attempts, for the duration, to be a little happier, to not let the argument with that girl spill over, to get more sleep, seem more social, less library-bound. To smile. To gloss over certain recognized community fissures in the name of strengthening that group. To not "give the wrong idea," while knowing all the while that the unrealistic nature of the "idea" transmitted nullifies that very goal.
"If you think of anything that the University is going to do for recruitment, you do have to step it up," Osinubi says. "And that's not a bad thing-what do people at other schools do? They're trying to get people to come, so you do have to make it attractive."
And the visitors aren't intentionally misled to expect some sort of wonderland; that sort of starry-eyed reaction is natural among impressionable visitors to any school. Matthews says she went out of her way to ensure BSAI participants knew Duke wasn't like this all the time.
"They kind of give you the disclaimer of, 'Don't expect to see this many black people on campus if you come here,' but that's not a big issue for me," says Mutisya, the high-school senior from Raleigh. "The group of people I'll end up hanging out with, it doesn't matter what race they are, but I feel it's just a good social environment in general, so it'll be okay."
There may even be a different, more specific justification for minority recruitment weekends at Duke: It's already a private school in the South, a location that may have negative associations for black northerners; now, it's a private school in the South with racist, sexist associations in the popular mind.
"If you take [BSAI] away, you might have even less diversity," says Yemisi Ogunro, a 2006 graduate who returned to campus for BSAI 2007. "The people who get accepted here, they have a lot of choices, and it really helps. Especially with things like lacrosse, you want people to know that's not the only side of Duke."
The argument seems circular. The best way for any minority group to cultivate a stronger community is to attract students to whom such a community is important. And if that takes a little exaggeration to achieve, a little bit more smiling and programming and partying, then... enjoy it.
"The importance of racially-separated weekends is to show that yes, we want you to be able to step out of your kind of safety net and be able to explore," Matthews says. "But you can't do that unless you have a safe foundation, a safe start with people who are going to see you through it.
"BSAI is definitely all about them, and if they come, they are going to make this place better for me."
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