Housing? Justify it

Consider the following thought experiment.

Joe and John are close friends-so close, in fact, you might mistake them for brothers. They live in what you might call a wonderland, a stately complex not far from where they work. Every year, Joe and John invite a crowd of new faces from their office to hang out in their wonderland, and at the end of the month, they choose the funniest, coolest guys as their new roommates. Coincidentally, the funniest and coolest tend to look a lot like Joe and John.

This year, Joe and John reject Zach. After some initial distress, Zach decides he doesn't like beer that much, or Joe and John that much, for that matter, but he would like to shorten his daily commute. He calls the wonderland landlord to say that he is also willing to pay the full monthly rent. He promises to be a much quieter tenant than Joe or John and asks when Joe and John's lease will end. The landlord laughs. He tells Zach that Joe and John add valuably to the community, and when Zach points out that he could add valuably, too, the landlord admits that Joe and John's older brothers would throttle him if he gave away their lease. The landlord advises Zach to apply for one of the limited number of vacancies scattered throughout the wonderland, distributed by a lottery system. One of Zach's good friends, Zee, manages to obtain one, but Zach is forced to rent space in another neighborhood a short bus ride away.

The landlord decides that a big chunk of his complex needs to be renovated. Unhappily, this includes the rooms owned by Joe and John. The landlord decides to take leases from some tenants in another part of his building-their names are not important, and impossible to remember-and distribute these to Joe and John and their friends. Zee is forced to move out at the end of the year and join Zach.

Zee and Zach grow accustomed to living farther from their workplace, despite the inconvenience and their complete dependence on unreliable public transportation when it comes to finding a simple meal. Mostly they like the lower living costs-but then again, everybody seems to associate their neighborhood with crime and see their living space as an eyesore. Most of their friends still want to live in the wonderland, but many join Zee and Zach when they realize how much less they pay for rent.

Consider the following facts.

According to the 2007 Campus Culture Initiative, 30 percent of the 2,690 available beds on West Campus are reserved for fraternities and selective living groups. Of these beds, 77 percent are male and 23 percent are female.

For the 2008-2009 year, an air-conditioned double on West cost $6,440. Its counterpart, a one-bedroom apartment on Central, cost $5,170.

Consider the following translation.

We discriminate against independents-especially against unaffiliated males, a "tradition" most transparently revealed when RLHS allotted all displaced groups space on West during Few quad renovations. We create "block-free" zones like "East Meets West" and promote the proliferation of selective living groups under the banner of different names like "themed living groups." In summary, we cast about wildly for ways to preserve our preferential housing practices, failing to recognize them as a large part of the problem.

The cost differential between West and Central living both reflects and perpetuates the perception that living on Central is less desirable. At 11 p.m. on a standard weekday, the racial demographic represented on the C-2 clearly demonstrates which segments of the Duke population occupy space considered less desirable.

Infrastructurally speaking, the West Campus model is abysmal. To start, the community-centered "quads" as they were conceived 14 years ago never actually came into existence. But although the physical constraints are real, what is truly limiting is our irrational devotion to "tradition"-long-sustained, often flawed, practices.

Critics bellowed when Duke redesigned East Campus in 1995 and launched what we know today as the first-year experience. They have since been silenced by the simple reality that has emerged from the experiment, revealing pre-rush first semester of freshman year to be a temporary window into the kind of diverse and un-self-conscious friendships that many of us came to college seeking and leave Duke largely without.

If we can't stomach residential revolution, let's at least be real. So long as we can muster up only enough vision and courage to "tweak" rather than overhaul our housing model-and continue putting real change off on New Campus and endowment issues-our initiatives will amount to polishing the dials on a broken clock.

Jane Chong is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Tuesday. For more thought experiments on Duke life, check out backpages.chronicleblogs.com.