National student life: It's not like Duke

As student life at the University undergoes intense scrutiny, comparable universities nationwide foster intellectual stimulation and growth with residential and social systems sharply different from Duke`s.

Duke's residential structure, though familiar to undergraduates here, is actually a unique system. Harvard, Yale and Princeton have all adopted tailored versions of the residential college system, in which incoming students are randomly assigned to live in a dormitory, or college. At Princeton, students stay in their college for two years, while at Yale, students stay with the same group for all four years. Harvard students enter a lottery in a group of up to 20 friends after their freshman year for placement a house where they will live for the following three years.

The colleges usually house a cafeteria, where residents eat most of their meals. Some colleges also house an extensive array of recreational and arts facilities, such as those at Yale, which have squash courts, theaters and printing presses. In addition, each college has its own deans, faculty and/or graduate students living in the college.

Many students heap praise upon the residential college system for helping to foster close friendships and camaraderie within living groups.

"At boring football games, sometimes we won't even pay attention to the game, we'll have shouting wars between the different colleges," said Sascha Segan, a sophomore at Yale. Yale's residential college system dates back to 1930, the oldest system in the nation.

However, other students said the system is stifling and limits student options.

"You get sick of the residential college after your first year. You don't get into it as a sophomore, so there's kind of a divide between freshmen and sophomores within the college," said Howard Gertler, a sophomore at Princeton.

Many students at different colleges complained that dining suffers as a result of the system.

Each freshman dorm at Harvard houses the offices of at least three assistant or associate deans. Academic tutors and house masters, usually faculty members or married doctoral candidates, live in the houses as well.

"Virtually everything a student at Duke would go to the Allen Building for, a student here can get in their own college," Nathans said.

Students at Harvard speak warmly about the administration and its concern for students.

"Before you matriculate here, you write an essay about yourself, and the deans spend the whole summer pairing up roommates," said Jana Meader, a junior at Harvard. "Most freshmen end up becoming best friends with their roommates and loving Harvard because of that."

Of course, student-administration relations are not so intimate at all schools.

"The administration has never made any sort of statement about the quality of student life," said Mike Weston, a senior at Stanford. "They don't take many concrete actions to create an intellectual atmosphere. They just kind of survey the social scene."

Across the board, greek life is facing a decline in numbers, student interest and administrative support. At many schools, including the University of Chicago, Princeton, Stanford and Yale, about 10 percent of the student body is greek, compared to about 35 percent at Duke; greek organizations are not officially recognized by the administration, nor do they receive university housing at these schools.

Many students said that the dwindling greek scene significantly limits their social options, but that greek parties turn stale after a couple years.

"We end up just hanging out a lot," said Tish Williams, a senior at Stanford.

Administrations at many schools are placing more and more restrictions on the greek social scene. At Stanford, officials have issued a moratorium on new greek organizations, and the school's Interfraternity Council only allows fraternities to have kegs at half of their parties. At Brown, the administration has banned kegs in favor of cans and allows each fraternity to have only one "major" party per semester.

"We would prefer to not have greek organizations," said Princeton's Malkiel. Many school administrators said that greek life has been curtailed because they have found it to be counterproductive in facilitating an intellectually stimulating campus atmosphere.

Though many students said they arrived at college eager to take advantage of intellectual opportunities, student bodies exude varying degrees of excitement for academia. One area where this discrepancy surfaces is faculty-student interaction.

"We have Nobel prize-winning professors teaching common core courses. They love interacting with students and it keeps the students really excited about their studies," said Christopher Brown, a freshman at the University of Chicago.

However, students at other schools question if the spirit behind faculty-student interaction is genuine.

"If [faculty-student dinners] weren't conveniently held in the hall where you know you're going to eat, I don't know how many students would make the effort," Princeton's Gertler said.

At Yale, the lack of faculty-student interaction may not be due to a lack of student interest.

"There are faculty fellows who live in the dorm, supposedly to eat with you among other things. We never see them," Segan said. "Sometimes they come, huddle together in the corner, eat fast and get out of there."

But perhaps nothing better gauges a sense of intellectualism than general social attitudes towards academia.

"If you had a 25-page paper due tomorrow and you're sitting on a bar stool telling somebody this, they'll look at you like you're crazy," Meader said of Harvard students.

At Stanford, though, students seem to pride themselves on such behavior.

"The big thing here is to brag about how much stuff you can blow off and be as nonchalant about schoolwork as you can," Williams said. "You simply can't talk about studies at dinner-- you talk about Seinfeld' andThe Simpsons.'"