Bringing a group as diverse as graduate and professional students together for social activities can be a tall order. But the Graduate and Professional Student Council thinks events with free food and drink specials seem to fit the bill over the summer.
"We've had a lot of people show up considering the number of people here over the summer," said Elayne Heisler, GPSC president. About 70 students have gathered at various Durham bars for the Thursday night events--an improvement in attendance from events during the previous year.
Although most professional students leave Durham during the summer, some stay around, especially those in the Graduate School and the School of Medicine.
The gatherings are largely intended to create more of a community among graduate and professional students, who are spread across eight of Duke's schools and whose lifestyles vary more widely than those of undergraduates.
"Our social events have to be open to people who, [for example], have to worry about child care," said Heisler, adding that the events have, in fact, attracted a diverse group of students. "It's nice that it's not just GPSC and friends of the board. [Attendance has] been really random," she said.
Getting that diversity among graduate and professional students has not been easy, said Will Tyson, GPSC ombudsperson and one of the organizers of the summer events. "There were definitely plenty of people willing to go to these, we just needed people to put in the effort," he said.
For Gil Renberg, a sixth-year graduate student in Classical Studies, the regular events have been a nice change from past semesters when GPSC sponsored events sporadically, he said. "Before this there have been no summer events, so anything is better than nothing," Renberg said.
One challenge in organizing graduate and professional social events has been actually notifying the students, many of whom are not centrally located on campus. "If we tried to put signs everywhere our graduate and professional students are, we'd wear ourselves out," he said, noting that sending e-mails has worked well.
Although most of the events so far have been in Durham establishments, Heisler, a third-year graduate student in sociology, hopes to have more events in the fall on campus where undergraduates tend to dominate social life. The sprawling structure of the campus prevents significant daily interaction among graduate and professional students, said Tyson, a fourth-year graduate student in sociology.
"The more successful the special events are, the more of a reason it is to have everyday social space," he said. "I think that will be the logical next step for [graduate and professional] student social space--to have a place to bridge these gaps every day."
Such a space would allow more of what Tyson said was the best part of the summer events--interaction across academic disciplines.
Because the students at the events have been so diverse, he said, the students have been able to branch out and make connections with others outside their specific departments. "That was what I thought graduate school would be like when I came here. So maybe free food and beer at Mug Shots is the best way to do it," Tyson said.
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