I was a Carolina fan before I came to Duke.
That’s right, I rooted for the Tar Heels during my formative years. But if you asked me why I liked UNC, I couldn’t give you a good reason. All I knew was that cheering for Duke—where I wanted to go to school—was a social faux pas.
I grew up in North Carolina, where a substantial number of people hate Duke. And I mean hate.
Take, for instance, a guy I met at a wedding a few weeks ago. As he nursed a beer in his Tar Heel-dotted cummerbund and bow tie, the twenty-something from Raleigh told me he’s disliked “Dook” since birth. What was a Southern girl like me doing at such a snobby place, he wanted to know.
Enduring his jabs got me thinking. Why is it that so many other North Carolinians despise Duke and resent the fact that a native daughter would choose to go there?
So I asked.
My newfound friend said most of his hatred stems from the fact that, like many people from the Tar Heel state, he can’t stand Blue Devil basketball, particularly Coach K.
Aside from basketball, however, he said he has long-perceived Duke students as “wealthy, stuck-up Northerners” and is surprised every time he meets a “normal, easy-going” Dukie. He was shocked that the University would even admit someone from my part of North Carolina (the East).
“I’ve very much envisioned Duke as a sort of evil-empire breeding ground for Yankees,” he told me, adding that he refuses to set foot on the campus of “the University of New Jersey at Durham.”
In truth, 23 percent of Duke’s population is from the South, 11 percent from North Carolina alone; only 15 percent are from the Northeast. Nonetheless, I found that my wedding compadre’s belief that Duke is an elitist school dominated by New Englanders radiates throughout the state.
Sitting behind the counter at a driving range in Haw River, Joe Vincent—a rare Blue Devil fan—said most people he knows dislike Duke, pure and simple.
“People think Duke is uppity-uppity and snobbish,” Vincent said in a Southern drawl. “[There is] that perception that they’re too good for everybody else.”
A cashier at a Petro gas station on the outskirts of Orange County scratched his balding head and told me he didn’t like Duke’s “liberal types,” particularly those at the Divinity School. He then gave me a business card that encouraged me to find Christ… or else.
And my friend at UNC said he dislikes Duke for offering the same great education as his state school but at a beefed-up price.
With more students from North Carolina than any other state, however, why do so many believe the myth that Duke belongs by the New Jersey Turnpike?
In the end, is it really just because of basketball? Or, despite what we on the inside think, is Duke projecting itself as more Ivy League wannabe than comfortable in its Southern skin?
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