Committee Debate focused on space allocation

Members of the Upperclass Residential Planning Group asked the campus community to think about a host of housing issues last semester, but it fixated nevertheless on the most controversial subject: selective living and the role it plays in the allocation of residential space.

Not surprisingly, the issue of space allocation was also the only topic that divided the 13-member planning group which developed the final report, released Feb. 19 by Vice President for Student Affairs Janet Dickerson.

The division on the space allocation issue persisted right up to the night before the report was submitted. At that time, according to planning group co-chair and Dean of Undergraduate Affairs Bob Thompson, "a very strong majority" voted to approve the current proposal. This recommendation would assign a commons room and the five or six contiguous rooms to a selective group and then disperse the rest of its membership in blocks throughout the rest of the dormitory.

Thompson said the group fractured on the question of density: What sort of proximate space, the group wondered, would enable selective groups to retain their sense of community while preventing them from making residential spaces impenetrable to students outside its membership? Some of the dissenters, Thompson explained, believed the group's final decision permitted selective living groups to retain a strong hold on residential space by letting their members unfairly dominate a given section. Other dissenters maintained a position at the other end of the spectrum, arguing that the final proposal scatters selective group members to an unreasonable degree.

Duke Student Government Vice President for Community Interaction and Trinity junior Maya Corey, for one, said she thinks the planning group's final proposal strayed too far from the input accrued during discussions with the undergraduate community.

"I realized after the small-group meetings that selective living is one of the most positive experiences on Duke campus," Corey said, "and, after hearing fraternity brothers saying what the experience did for them, I wanted a similar experience."

She added that she used to believe "unfair privileges need to be taken away from fraternities," but has since changed her mind. "Instead," she said, "We need to figure out how to extend those privileges to everyone else."

A plan, therefore, that encourages the proliferation of selective living groups would be in order, she said. The current plan, she contended, curtails such groups' community-building power.

"My problem, at the outset, was that West [Campus] is dominated by white males. I live off-campus, because right now there is no place on West Campus for me," said Woubshet, who is also president of Spectrum Organization. "Under the proposal, however, groups can create their own culture groups on West. And with the [proposal's provision for heightened] standards, you can't get a space on West just because you have three greek letters attached to your name."

He disagrees, however, with the proposal's allotment of up to 50 bed spaces to each selective group. This large size, he argued, might permit selective groups to perpetuate the exclusive environment about which many students raised concerns during the campus-wide dialogue held last semester.

Woubshet also said he wonders about the motivations guiding the final vote.

"I felt some people were making decisions based on some considerations that I did not feel were part of our mission," he said, suggesting that some committee members thought the blocking of the 50 selective group members would be more palatable to alumni donors than more limiting versions of the plan.

He stressed, however, that he was extremely pleased with all other aspects of the committee's work.

"Of any of the committees I've been on," Woubshet said, "this one has unquestionably been the most challenging but also the most dedicated. And I can't say enough about [the leadership of co-chairs Thompson and Dean of Student Development and Residential Education Barbara Baker]."

Such praise for the committee's working relationship was universal. Several of its members also emphasized that they hope the divide about room allotment would not overshadow the other aspects of the plan, all of which were unanimously supported.

"I hope we don't lose site of things like the single rate structure, the closing of Trent, the new dorm," said planning group member and Trinity senior Chris Lam. "They were just as important a part of the deliberative process."