Duke High School

Minding my own business in my room, my computer's away message suddenly received a handful of instant messages in rapid-fire succession. My friend was sending me a link to a blog site that she had just been sent by another buddy online, urgently telling me to read the entry that had been posted. I left it on my computer until I finished Law and Order: SVU, then sat down to check the site that she was so frantically urging me to check. What I read disturbed me more than the sex crimes of SVU; I found that I had been transported back to a meaner version of high school on Duke's campus.

The blog site featured an anonymous online diary belonging to "dukeobsrvr." The title of the piece, posted on Valentine's Day, was "Dukeobsrvr's how-to guide to banging a sorority girl." The "guide" is aimed at getting young freshman boys some loving, because apparently they can't find it without the watchful eye of Dukeobsrvr. The author rates the Greek women of Duke on a scale of "hotness," "sluttiness" and "insecurity," information that he self-admittedly gleaned from spending over "four hours stalking the facebook." He goes on to further stereotype and "rank" several sororities in his perceived measures of their drug use, social climbing tendencies and personal preference of the frats that "make their way into bed with." He goes on to say that the Greek system at Duke ". leads to unhappy, insecure girls all fighting to get rammed by someone of status," all while never revealing his identity.

Dukeobsrvr goes on to say: ".... You see the level of desirability or 'hotness' of a guy at Duke increases linearly from his freshman year, reaching its peak senior year. The female curve is the inverse function of the male's, peaking at roughly this time freshman year." He closes his entry with the message: "Guys, as you can see it's not that easy getting laid at.. Do not fret, give it a year and that girl who you are probably eyeing hard right now will come crawling back for you." Apparently, Dukeobsrvr sees no other value to one-third of his female peers than his mathematical interpretation of the inverse function of their attractiveness curve or their inevitable desire to come crawling back to boys they once turned down their freshman year.

Despite my initial shock at Dukeobsrvr's highly biased outlook on not only a large social organization in his Duke community but his female and male peers in general, I began to think about how his entry made me feel. Beyond my own biases in being negatively stereotyped by a stranger that chooses to remain anonymous rather than back up his own opinions, I felt as though I was reliving the worst parts of freshman year of high school, listening to the stereotypes and gossip around me, trying to figure out "who" everyone was because at the time, it seemed like the only safe way to figure anybody out.

Similarly, I began to think about Dukeobsrvr's possible motives in writing the entry in the first place. "He" has saved himself from any sort of ramifications for his mass announcements because of his choice to remain anonymous, but the sad fact is that Dukeobsrvr could be anyone: male, female, greek, non-greek, Duke student or even a faculty member. How can any real context be derived from the opinions of an anonymous source? Dukeobsrvr's entries send a message out to the entire cyberspace community that Duke is a place where depraved behavior not only thrives, but is glorified, and values are tossed in favor of social standing and sleeping your way up the fraternity ladder. This is not the Duke that I go to.

Is the behavior that goes on in greek life really that different from that of non-greek life? Don't we all go to more or less the same parties, the same venues, the same Shooters? Why do we feel the need to continue to bash the choices people make to join organizations that they are willing to devote their time, energy and money to? I thought that graduating from high school and going to Duke would prevent my being judged or worse, cruelly criticized for my personal choices.

College is a time of life and a place where people come to grow up. However, some people struggle to grow up while at Duke and instead revert back to the days of high school, where making fun of the "nerds" or the "jocks" was so much easier to do as long as you weren't in the front of the classroom or on the playing field with them.

These people then graduate and move on to college and find once again that they need to act out their own hurt feelings by criticizing other groups around them---whether it's the "athletes" or the "dorks" or the "sluts." At Duke, the greek system becomes one of the easiest targets for criticism, as two-thirds of the student body are unaffiliated and most social events each week center around greek sponsorship or organization. Beyond the anger and bitterness passed around campus and expressed by Dukeobsrvr, we need to ask ourselves: Does the greek community at Duke really warrant such an attack, or do we all contribute to the behavior described in this blog?