Separate housing from SLG membership

As students come back for the spring, many look forward to a semester of change. For some, there are new classes to explore and appreciate, while the gauntlet of tenting in K-Ville will be the highlight for others. Yet it is still hard to escape the atmosphere of rush. Whether students are in fraternities, sororities, other Selective Living Groups or independent, there is a palpable layer of tension, energy, anxiety and other emotions surrounding rush. Especially for first-year students, hallways become emptier, weekend get-togethers disappear and there is a sense of a change. These organizations are in the middle of their yearly rush dance to shuffle up campus housing for hundreds of students.

In the past, we have bluntly stated that Duke would be a better place if Greek life did not exist and given pragmatic advice on approaching rush, and navigating the chaos. Though there have been some changes, such as the increased interest in non-Greek SLGs in the last five years, there seem to be few fundamental changes.

Built into the very name of Duke’s SLG system is the binding of social organizations to residential communities. We acknowledge that college is a time of growth and greater independence, and we see the value of students having agency in choosing social groups as well as places of residence. It is important for students to search for the social and physical spaces that work best for them. However, that does not mean that they necessarily need to be connected. Residential spaces should have a social element but not to the point of institutionalized exclusion, especially as first-years increasingly view the choice to rush as one of rushing organizations or being relegated to independent housing.

We look to housing models such as Harvard and Yale’s to see examples of residential communities that, though imperfect, suggest improvements. Residential spaces should promote students having a healthy and safe community, conducive to their whole Duke experience and to meeting a diverse set of peers. The purpose of social groups, on the other hand, is primarily to enjoy the company of others. It is important to recognize when these goals are not both simultaneously being achieved. The extreme segregation, along historically discriminated lines, of race, class and sexual orientation, leads to exclusion and feelings of isolation for countless. It is both a problem internal to these organizations and problem with system-based solutions. Especially at an institution like Duke, where the undergraduate population is relatively small, SLGs are not needed to create residential community in the same way that they are at large state schools.

It is hard to see Duke’s housing and residential model as one with a unified purpose or vision. The current system the University seems to be a jack of all trades and master of none when it comes to spreading itself across social and residential categories. When the current house model was proposed in 2012 to change from the previous quad model, we pinpointed the specific issues of social stratification in SLGs and argued for severing the restructuring SLGs while emphasizing their programmatic potential. In 2014, we theorized that Duke would be a better university if Greek life did not exist. Similarly, we now suggest that Duke will have a healthier, more diverse and more inclusive campus if the residential and social aspects of living groups were separated. The assumption that one necessarily requires the other in the case of living groups is no simple assumption and should be examined more closely by administration in reviewing student feedback on housing.