After a student was robbed at gunpoint in the Bryan Center last semester, the University's decision to restrict evening access to its parking lots had some members of the Durham community worried that the school was rescinding its welcome to non-Duke visitors.
As the University fleshed out plans for retail space on the redeveloped Central Campus, some Durhamites worried that Duke was effectively discouraging students from venturing out to the city's own vendors.
In short, Duke's neighbors said the University was slowly pulling into its own bubble, isolating itself from the city it calls home. "It appears from the outside that Duke has very much a fortress mentality and that they don't want to be associated with Durham," said Elizabeth Dondero, president of the Burch Avenue Neighborhood Association.
University administrators said they recognized neighbors' concerns and were doing what they could to allay them. John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, said neighbors' fears would be eased if they simply had a better understanding of the rationale behind the University's heightened security measures and its plans for Central Campus. In truth, he said, members of the Durham community need not worry that the University is seeking to pull away from the city.
"Anyone looking at our work with the neighborhoods surrounding the University would see that we have invested a lot of time and resources into building bridges with the community," Burness said. "We are by no means trying to isolate ourselves from Durham."
Burness said the University has been very open about its plans in order to diminish neighbors' skepticism about the retail options being considered. Still, some neighbors remain wary of the University's plans.
"Duke is from all accounts trying to set up a retail cocoon for students and faculty and staff," said John Schelp, president of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association. Schelp said the University was vague about its retail plans for Central Campus--a sign, he said, that the University may be considering retail options outside those originally endorsed by the neighbors.
"Right now, students leave campus to get a bite to eat or to buy something," Schelp said. "If Duke starts providing all of that on campus, there is less incentive for people to leave campus."
David Smith, president of the Trinity Park Neighborhood Association, said he has also heard concerns that Central Campus plans will allow Duke to become a community in itself, rather than remaining a part of the larger Durham community.
Burness stressed that the University has no intention of creating a completely self-sufficient on-campus bubble for members of the Duke community, adding that it was not deliberately vague about its retail plans. "We're not likely to build these things ourselves but to contract out to a developer, and the developer might want to have a mixed-use component," he said. "We've agreed to limit how much would occur, but since we haven't had any conversations with developers, we don't know exactly where the retail is going to go."
Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, noted that whatever development does occur on Central Campus will most likely increase connection between Duke and Durham. "It is in our interest to promote Durham and Ninth Street and the surrounding areas," he said. "Anything we do with Central Campus will probably be a pipeline to Ninth Street and will encourage people to traverse to Ninth from Central Campus."
Guillo Rodriguez, president of the Watts Hospital-Hillandale Neighborhood Association, said he believed the University's plans for Central Campus and Swift Avenue could help increase its connectivity with the community by overcoming the major physical barrier that is the highway.
Central Campus plans aside, many of Duke's neighbors say the University looks to be isolating itself in other ways--primarily in the name of security. As with concerns about Central Campus, the University is trying to temper fears relating to security-induced isolation through increased communication. For instance, an open panel discussion at noon today in the Mary Lou Williams Center will address the issue of isolation as it relates to campus security.
For members of the Durham community, some of the biggest security-related isolation concerns have to do with fences and other physical barriers. Burness said that when the University decided to put a fence around the Blue Zone parking lot a couple of years ago, neighbors raised the same isolation concerns they are raising today with the gated on-campus parking lots.
"The fence in the Blue Zone was very responsive to students' concerns about safety, and the number of burglaries has dropped dramatically since it was put in," Burness said. "It wasn't designed to create a barrier around the University but to deal with a very specific safety problem in a specific area. Still, people saw it as a mark of the University trying to isolate itself from the community."
He noted a similar situation that arose last summer when the University was working out details of the new university-college zoning designation that would be applied to various parts of campus, including East Campus. When neighbors asked if the University had any plans to build a fence around East Campus, the University replied in the negative, saying, however, that it would not agree to a UC zoning code that prohibited such a construction in the far future.
"We never had any idea to build a fence, but we could not tie the trustees' hands forever should a situation arise where it was necessary 50 years down the road," Burness said. "At the end of the day, our ultimate obligation has to be to protect the members of the University community so that they can participate in the intellectual programs here."
Despite rising concerns, not all of Duke's neighbors believe the University is slowly isolating itself from Durham.
"Duke has taken a lot of heat for some of the things they've said, but I don't think they're in isolationist mode," Rodriguez said. "It's not the Yale mentality. Some other universities have built some walls around themselves. Duke is nowhere near that."
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