No-longer-solo cups

When was the last time you spent more than 20 minutes eating a meal on campus? Better yet, when was the last time you ate that meal on real ceramic?

For many students, meals are “grabbed” rather than enjoyed. The Monday-to-Friday sprint usually entails meals squeezed between classes and meetings, often consumed on-the-go. By the time we graduate, some will have learned how to build a bridge, others to write a 30-page linguistics paper, but nearly all will have mastered the art of balancing a plastic platter on one knee and a laptop on the other.

We’re overtired workaholics, according to critics of Duke’s social culture and young people in general. Whether one agrees with this characterization of students, it is worth considering what is lost when we don’t make time for social relationships.

After chewing on this problem for a semester, two students in a leadership class have cooked up a way to overcome this mealtime predicament. Maureen Dolan, a junior, and Shilpi Kumar, a senior, are launching Duke Tables, which will designate tables at campus eateries to encourage students to meet new people over a meal. The initiative echoes Dartmouth’s Social Cups program, where students place a university-issued red cup on their table to signal that anyone is welcome to dine with them.

The program, like any new campus culture initiative, is sure to face initial challenges. We are not interested in debating the program’s merits, but we believe it attempts to address two critical social issues at Duke. First, it encourages students to branch out of what can become narrowly circumscribed social spheres after freshman year. Second, it wants to re build a setting for social engagement, which can be a welcome antidote to everyday stress.

The first concern is particularly salient given the encroachment of MOOCs and other forms of online education. Institutions of higher education face an increasing burden to justify their enormous price tags, which may be a positive consequence for those of us currently in the ivory tower. Could it be that we pay $50,000 a year not only for lab equipment and study abroad programs, but largely for the opportunity to be around smart kids who are unlike ourselves? Is Duke’s contribution assembling this improbable confluence of talent, intellect and backgrounds, so we learn from each other?

This might be a glossy-eyed idealization of the social possibilities at Duke, especially the real trade-offs students confront in budgeting their time. But in the face of doubts about the value of higher education when compared with alternatives, it is surely a waste not to take advantage of the diverse personalities at Duke.

It is unfortunate that we feel we need a red cup-type program—and especially a top-down house model—to foment what should be spontaneous relationships. But we might. Serendipitous friendships form less and less once we leave the petri dishes of East Campus dormitories and the Marketplace. Perhaps the answer to complicated and divisive culture questions is as simple as the admissions brochures make it seem: Sit around a table with people we don’t know.