Dec. 20, 2006, Duke University will bid farewell to an esteemed member of its community. The Perkins computer lab will shut off its last flickering monitor for good, to be replaced by a collaboration space equipped with an OIT Help Desk.
The Perkins Lab is a second home to many of us. We have camped out there and in the adjacent Deryl Hart Reading Room as faithfully as our brethrens tenting in K-ville. For this eulogy, I inquired about the history of the computer lab, but it apparently outlived OIT's institutional memory.
"To be honest, the Perkins lab predates most of my colleagues," said Kevin Davis, a senior manager of OIT. "It may even pre-date the creation of today's OIT. The best recollection I was able to drudge up from our team was that the lab in Perkins opened in the early 1990s."
The rise and fall of the Perkins lab follows the trajectory of any great nation. In spring 2006, most days show more than 20 students simultaneously logged in to the lab's Macs and PCs. In January and February, there were as many as 650 logins per day on average.
With the competition of flashy new workstations in Bostock and Perkins libraries, however, the traffic has dropped steadily throughout this semester, to about half of the earlier numbers and continues to decline. The typical day now finds no more than 10-15 students crunching away at the same time.
The campus is changing, and so the lab is adapting to new roles. The lab's login times are now shorter than those in Perkins and Bostock and computer classrooms like Old Chem. This indicates that more people seem to use the lab for checking e-mail and printing off documents, rather than cranking out 20-page term papers.
The closure of this venerable lab will indeed be a sad day. It seems rather doubtful that other computers scattered in the area can completely absorb the Perkins Lab clientele. A cursory look around during the exam period now shows that almost all of the computers are in full usage. But even more importantly, Perkins Lab has cultivated a unique community equipped with its own loyal residents over the years. It is this population that will be forced into exile, and its culture that we shall miss.
To appreciate the true Perkins residents, we have to first understand who the public computer users are and why they are there. They can be divided into three groups. It is no secret that almost 100 percent of the students at Duke have personal computers, but it is rather cumbersome to drag these around. The public computers are perfect for casual users-e-mailers and e-Printers. This is the first group: the Trespassers. They flock in between classes usually around noon, jam up the printers and disappear for the rest of the day.
On top that, some students like being able to meet somewhere around a shared computer to work on a project together. This is the second group. They are the annoying house guests who talk too loudly, giggle too much and overstay their hospitality.
Finally, there are those students who find the public computer an oasis from distractions popularly known as iTunes, instant messaging and roommates. For these regulars, Perkins Lab is not a computer cluster, but another community. The Mac users are sharply segregated from the PCers. Each person has his or her favorite computer, chosen through some combination of superstition and bounciness of the keyboard.
Like all populations, here too exist social castes. The confident elites usually fill up the first rows, eager to flaunt their typing prowess and electronic drafts to all the procrastinating spectators behind. The last rows are taken up by the shy and the desperate, forced to hunker down but wanting to fade into the wall.
As we enter into its final examination cycle, treasure the community of the Perkins Lab. Treasure the knowing looks of sympathy, from eyes spanning that spacious lab, built upon the shared experience of academic misery and triumph. That companionship has sustained me through countless hours.
James Zou is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Friday.
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