Duke Unmasked looks to reduce social exclusivity

The Honor Council, principally in collaboration with the Duke University Union's Major Speakers committee, is launching a campaign this Spring that seeks to break social barriers and reveal the similarities between students in different social circles.

The campaign, named "Duke Unmasked: What's your secret?", will consist of three parts. Beginning in the middle of February, Duke Unmasked will anonymously collect secrets from students across campus. Then, Frank Warren-the creator of "PostSecret," a project in which individuals from around the world anonymously mail in secrets on a postcard-will visit Page Auditorium March 18. The final phase will culminate in a March 20 cocktail party that will bring students together to further the campaign's agenda of combating social exclusivity on campus.

The first phase of the campaign, inspired by Duke's own "Me Too" campaign and Warren's PostSecret project, was actually planned after the idea for the Duke Unmasked cocktail party was conceived.

"The PostSecret campaign is a kind of underground phenomena," said junior Lindsey Wallace, a member of DUU's Major Speakers committee. "Frank Warren receives tens of thousands of postcards a week and features a select few on his Web site every Sunday."

Similarly, students will be able to deposit secrets that they have felt pressured to withhold at major student hubs on campus, such as the Bryan Center, the Marketplace and various libraries, between the middle of February and the late March party. They will also have the option of submitting their secrets online or through the mail.

"We had the idea of doing the Duke Unmasked campaign to give students the ability to speak in ways they typically felt they weren't able to due to social barriers," said junior Adam Hinnant, a member of DUU and secretary and treasurer of the Honor Council.

The secrets submitted to the campaign will then be incorporated into standing exhibits that will serve as decorations at the March masquerade cocktail party, Duke Unmasked. While submitting their RSVP for the party, students will have the opportunity to fill out a short 10-question survey about their interests. Based on this questionnaire, students will pick up a corresponding mask at the start of the event that they will wear throughout the party. Every 20 or so students will be wearing the same mask, corresponding to similar interests and answers to the survey. Although students with matching masks will not be forced to speak with each other, they will be encouraged to do so.

"So it's not that you have to speak to these students," Hinnant said. "But it does give you the ability to go up to students you wouldn't meet in any other circumstance and a mechanism through which to meet more people and break down social barriers."