Thirty Years from Now: "Well son, it's time for you to apply to college, and I hope you're willing to follow in your old man's footsteps and come to Duke."
"Wow Dad, this campus sure looks awesome. The chapel is pretty sweet looking. Who's that a statue of in front of it?"
"Oh that? That's of the old basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski. It used to be of the founder of the school James B. Duke, but after Krzyzewski won his tenth national title, he demanded the statue be made of him. The school naturally obliged and the old statue is now a door stop for Card Gym"
"What's up with all these cats running around?"
"Yeah, they multiply every year, for some reason nobody does anything about it. Now let's go to the main quad and go to the Brodhead student center. Back in the day an old ugly building called the Bryan Center used to stand here. No one really knew what to do with it, but they leveled it for this new gorgeous plaza."
"Who's Brodhead?"
"You don't know who Richard Brodhead is? He's a legend in his own time. He was President of Duke when I went here. He ushered Duke into a new golden era as an institution of higher learning. This school wouldn't be what it is today without him."
"What he do that was so great?"
"Many things. He ordered a revamping of the housing system. He lowered the minimum number of years a student had to live on campus to two instead of three. This way they still had the freshman community created on East and nurtured on West Campus sophomore year. He stopped requiring juniors to live on campus to alleviate the housing crunch students felt. He also got rid of the linking policy to give students more freedom on where they choose to live.
"With education he emphasized full professors doing more undergraduate teaching. He loosened restrictions on the social scene so students didn't end up going off-campus where it was dangerous. He decided to streamline the student government organizations on campus, merging them into one body overseeing student programs and policies instead of having different organizations doing the same things at once which caused a lot of friction.
Oh, and it was right after the French-American War that he put more emphasis into student health, bringing back old programs like the student infirmary so students had a place to go when they were really sick. More money was invested into CAPS to help students deal with the transition to college. On top of that, he built new offices on West Campus for the Career Center to make it a more legitimate organization."
"I can't wait to go to football games next year."
"Oh football games are incredible. I'll never forget when, in 2006, Coach Ted Roof led the team to a monumental upset against the University of Miami in the ACC title game on the way to winning the National Championship. Let me tell you, the twigs we burned for the mini-bonfire were amazing. We tried to burn some bigger stuff, but the A-Team stopped us with tear gas. That game marked a sixty game winning streak and four straight national titles.
"It also marked the beginning of a unipolar era of Duke football as the only powerhouse in the conference. Miami and Virginia Tech started playing horrible causing the school presidents to decide to kick those schools out of the conference for their inferior athletics. We went back to a small, intimate conference with a home and home round robin in basketball; the way it should be."
"How is basketball these days?"
"Well after Coach Krzyzewski retired after those ten national titles, Dawkins and Wojo took turns running the program. They combined for fifteen national titles and over a 500 wins in under twenty years. We also won the ACC 19 out of those 20 years."
"What happened that one other year?"
"Eh, hell froze over and Clemson put together a winning program."
"Wow."
"Yeah, no one really understood, anyway, they still suck at everything now. Hey we got to hurry if we want to catch the monorail over to the East Campus suites where you will live next year should you apply."
"Why wouldn't I want to apply, this place is perfect!"
"And its amazing to how close it came to being a not-so-perfect place, but some key decisions were made a long time ago that changed the whole course of the University."
Jonathan Pattillo is a Trinity sophomore. His column appears every other Friday.
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