End of an era: Looking back, looking forward

Two tiger statues, green with age, guard Princeton's stately Nassau Hall. When Janet Dickerson sees them, she doesn't think about the school's storied academic legacy or even the Princeton football team. What comes to her mind when she walks into the Revolutionary War-era building that will eventually house her office? Clemson University.

For the South Carolina native and huge basketball fan, this summer's transition from the ACC to the Ivy League has meant rapid lessons about her wider responsibilities-and the schools in her new conference.

"It's meant that I've had to stop thinking about issues at Duke more quickly than I would have thought," the former vice president for student affairs says. But Durham is never far from her mind. The beanie baby tiger in her temporary office wears a Duke shirt. Even more telling, she slips and refers to her new assistant, Jan Logan, as "Nan."

Can you really blame Dickerson for being occasionally confused? After all, parts of Princeton's Gothic campus look remarkably like West Campus, and many of the issues she's dealing with are strikingly similar. Instead of opening a new residence hall at Duke, she'll be opening a campus center at Princeton. Instead of trying to create alternatives to alcohol-centered fraternity parties, she'll be seeking alternatives to alcohol-soaked eating clubs.

And if Princeton officials get what they bargained for, Dickerson will bring the same community-based approach she emphasized during her 9 years in the Gothic Wonderland. "I think she will be remembered as a consensus builder," says Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs. "That was an approach and a goal that she felt was of greatest significance in terms of making a difference here at Duke."

Dickerson's transfer to Princeton leaves room for change at Duke. Although Dickerson was praised for her ability to achieve consensus, she was, at times, critiqued for prolonging decisions.

"Sometimes, in the process of building consensus, reaching a final decision quickly is difficult," says Wasiolek, a potential candidate for the position Dickerson left vacant. "My sense is that there may be some shift from consensus building to a process that will result in more decisions, more timely decisions."

Regardless of decision-making style, Dickerson's departure at a critical junction for Duke means that her replacement will have to deal with many of the same types of issues that she did-the beginning of the 2000s brings only modified questions from the 1990s.

Dickerson has always emphasized the need to create a welcoming campus for all students, and she says she wishes she could have been a bigger part of residential decisions in recent years.

"There's a part of me that really wanted to be involved in what the plans for the upperclass residential campus will eventually look like," says Dickerson. "I don't think, for example, that all the fraternities should be made to live in one section, in one quadrangle."

She recalls that it was especially "painful" to defend the residential greek system to students and parents who complained about living in Trent Dormitory-the sophomore dorm tarnished by its isolated location. "There was a lot of anger and it made me angry, even though for the most part, I held the institutional line," she says.

Nonetheless, President Nan Keohane has promised the Board of Trustees that fraternities will keep their prime housing, and Dickerson's ideas regarding their placement will likely not be explored in the near future.

With Dickerson at the helm, the student affairs division could not navigate issues of greek life without addressing race relations, too. "I see the greek system as retaining some elements of that segregationist system," she says, referring to Duke's historic exclusion of minorities.

Indeed, Dickerson's race itself played a role in her approach to minority issues at Duke and, some say, even got in the way; some people criticized her for being "too black." "There was a part of me that wondered, how black is too black? Would anybody ever say, 'You're too white?' or 'You're too Christian' or whatever?" she says.

Despite her reservations about fraternity culture, Dickerson placed top value on understanding the diversity in student perspectives. "She seemed very willing to explore new answers to old questions and to give new ideas a chance," former Interfraternity Council President Stephen Broderick, Trinity '99, wrote in an e-mail. "Vice President Dickerson was always very supportive of efforts to involve fraternities with other campus groups."

The vice president, who came to Duke after her term as dean at Swarthmore College, left a lasting impression particularly on students, who say she seemed genuinely interested in what they had to say.

"She is an extremely approachable person, and she often invited me to visit her in her office to talk about my ideas, life, career decisions...," Rudy Spaulding, Trinity '00 and former co-coordinator of Mi Gente, wrote in an e-mail. "She not only served as an administrator on whom I depended to get things done, she tried hard to be and was a friend of the students."

With Dickerson's departure and a search for a replacement about to begin, the Duke community is trying to pinpoint what it wants during next era for student affairs. Still, after a decade at Duke, Dickerson's ideas remain firmly planted in the Gothic Wonderland.

"There needs to be a real openness to different ways students want to spend their time...," Baker says. "Variety allows us to embrace all the diversity that does exist at Duke."