Duke’s Chapel Tower is the first thing one notices about this place. It’s fitting, then, that a view from the top should be among seniors’ last perspectives.
On a sunny Monday in April, girls in sundresses and guys in sunglasses gathered in the shadow of the 210-foot icon to climb the spiral stairs, an opportunity reserved for first- and last-year students during Orientation and Senior Week. They smiled, making small talk with the friends who had joined them, those who had come late and cut in line. They took pictures in front of the building they had passed nearly every day for four years, the inaugural event of Senior Week having made them something like tourists.
The carillonneur had finished his 5 o’clock set—which on Fridays includes the alma mater, “Dear Old Duke”—in a small studio beneath the bells. By 5:15 p.m., more than 50 seniors wound around the Chapel lawn, while the speakers provided by the Duke Annual Fund spouted a different sort of hymn: Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” and Rihanna’s “Rude Boy.”
“If you’re claustrophobic at all, decide beforehand if you’re going to go up,” a woman from the Alumni Association warned, walking along the row of seniors. “It’s small and dark and goes straight up.”
The railing stretches almost vertically for 239 steps, and cylindrical lamps punctuate the darkness every 10 steps or so, save a patch in the middle that is lightless, and a portion up top that is railless. Twice during one six-minute climb, as some slowed to steady themselves, certain seniors let there be darkness, flicking the light switch at the base of the Tower.
As of 8:15 p.m., approximately 200 seniors in groups of 20—none had passed out—had ascended the winding Chapel steps. Perhaps just as many still awaited their turn.
Up top, representatives from the Young Alumni Association distributed collection envelopes for those who have not yet given their senior gift of $20.10.
They caught their breath on the sight of what, in a few weeks, they will leave behind. The long drive that bisects acres of woods. In the distance, to the left, East Campus. Further still, downtown Durham, signaled by the Lucky Strike smokestack. On the right, the Academic Quadrangle, and the artistry of the Gothic turrets. The students who will still call this campus their own.
On the descent, seniors, the same ones accustomed to standing in line for hours for free T-shirts, chattered about whether the wait had been worth it, if only for the symbolism of the journey they had made.
More Annual Fund representatives waited at the mouth of the Chapel, where seniors emerged, still dizzy from clutching the copper rail, the scent of pennies clinging to their hands.
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