Somewhere in the Durham Visitor's Center, most likely locked in a back closet, is a tattered old box marked "ADVERTISING TAG-LINES: DO NOT USE." There, the city stores all its rejected slogans, including such gems as "Astonishing Legal Corruption Lives Here!," "Downtown Durham: Not Wholly Vacant" and my personal favorite, "Proud to be North Carolina's Murder Capital For Three Straight Years!"
Don't get me wrong here; the last thing I want to do is lend any more credence to the "Durham is a dangerous hell-hole" crowd at this university. Durham's crime rate is decidedly average for a city of its size, and overall crime is actually lower than many nearby towns such as Winston-Salem. Furthermore, the city has been following the national trend of steadily decreasing violent crime rates in the past few years, leading some to suggest that Durham's "crime problem" is really Durham's "image problem."
Except, of course, for that small matter of the murder rate: 37 people in 2005, or 18.9 murders per 100,000 people. Even more worrying is the five-year pattern. All other violent crime falls, and murder still ticks gradually upward. It seems Durhamites simply can't stop killing each other.
It's a point that was driven home in the ugliest of ways this past weekend, as two 14-year-olds were shot, one fatally, over the course of two days. Both of the shootings were by all accounts completely random, The Raleigh News & Observer reported. In one, an unnamed boy was sprayed by gunfire from as-yet unknown sources while leaving the Town Deli. In the other, a young woman named Tavisa Nicole Cartnail was shot in the head while traveling in a car on North Driver Street, killed by man who was apparently just firing his handgun wildly into the street.
It's easier to shrug at murders when they're connected to drug trafficking and gang fights, as many in the city are. There's a sense of inevitability about those deaths. But it's much harder to equivocate when bystanders are being slain for no reason at all.
The shooting at Town Deli took place at the intersection of Bacon and Lawson streets, within five miles of East Campus. Cartnail's death was even closer, only about two miles away from East.
I don't doubt that some people will take this as further evidence of the wisdom of turtling up on campus for their four years on Duke, but that's not my intention. I'm also not really trying to make some kind of sanctimonious point about the "Duke bubble" and how different things are "out there."
I just think you should know that this happened. This is, after all, your town. I'm not a person who thinks all of us really "owe" Durham something just by dint of being here, but I do think some base level of awareness is a requirement for being a legitimate resident of any place. Otherwise you're just a tourist, and if you're seriously here to learn, that's something you can't afford to be.
Like many of us, I came to Duke from a place that was thoroughly suburbanized, largely safe and highly uneventful. There were small dramas and tragedies unraveling in my home town, like there are anywhere, but they were low-key, and you normally had to dig for them.
Durham was really my first experience in living in an urban area, and what I noticed was how much more vivid the major events taking place here were. This isn't to say that what was occurring was more positive; in fact, it was usually pretty nasty stuff: government incompetence, underfunded public schools, gang fights. Less pleasant than my hometown paper, but also somehow more real. The stakes were a lot higher here.
Four years on, and I still feel this way. Human behavior, good and bad, takes place writ larger in Durham than where I come from. People struggle up from poverty to make a life for their family here, or work 12-hour shifts to send money to relatives in other countries. Duke and Durham meddle in each other's affairs in draconian, often disturbing bouts of institutional give-and-take. A young person is shot dead at an intersection, and nobody knows why.
And no, I don't want to glorify Durham's occasional grittiness, nor do I think any of this is really unique to the city. Like I said, it happens everywhere, it's likely just easier to see here than where you came from and where you're going to next. It would be wise to pay attention to it while it's still so obvious.
One final slogan I'd like to propose for all of us: "Durham: You Don't Have to Love It. You Do Have to Learn From It."
Brian Kindle is a Trinity senior. His column runs every Friday.
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