This may come as a shock to administrators campus-wide, but I never wanted to go to Yale. If I had, I would have applied. But when I was searching for an academic and social institution at which to spend four years of my life, Yale did not appeal to me.
When I read the article about the college communities at Yale, the communities that Duke is currently trying to foster in its quad system, I cringed. I remember the "community" that Duke threw me into when I was a freshman, the community in which I felt alone and out of place.
I remember feeling like it was my fault that I didn't fit in. I remember trying to change myself, trying to conform. And I remember how unhappy I was. It wasn't until I found a new community made up of people who chose to live together that I finally discovered a place for myself at Duke.
As the Powers That Be at this University scheme to force community upon us, they forget we are not only willing and able, but also deserve to make choices. We should have the right to choose the community that makes us the most comfortable and the happiest.
No one should be discouraged from living with friends outside their freshman dorm. No one should be forbidden from living on Central or off-campus. And no living groups should be made to feel like their presence is a plague within our "community." We are old enough and responsible enough to know what is best for ourselves; and we chose to go to Duke, not Yale.
If I turn on a Duke basketball game 10 years from now and hear the students chanting "Let's go Kilgo" instead of "Let's go Duke," I am cutting off my donations. That's a threat.
Robin McLaughry
Trinity '04
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