If things keep going like this, 2006-2007 may very well be remembered at Duke as the Year of the Absurdly Lavish Party.
This Wednesday's Duke Royale ("Dare to Indulge!") was just the latest in a long line of enormous, gala-type events dotting the academic calendar, from the DukePlays Library Party to Brodhead's ever-popular Homecoming Ball, all the way back to the Nasher Noir. Enthusiasm for these bashes has been high, turnout generally exceptional and the administration, once severely wary of backing anything suggesting alcohol consumption, now seems enamored with the idea of selling us all pricey booze via white-shirted caterers.
Two or three times a semester, we dress up, with varying degrees of success, and spend a few hours wandering around someone's attempt to recreate the high-school prom closing scene from one of those late-90s teen comedy-drama flicks, probably starring Freddie Prinze, Jr.
It's no longer even novel, and we still love it.
Perhaps it's dangerous to extrapolate from just a few parties (not that a lack of evidence has ever stopped me before) but to me, these fetes suggest a subtle change in the way the student body perceives itself. Despite their breathtaking price tags (the Nasher Noir, for example, cost more than $14,000) and their potential to undermine a legitimately student-driven social scene, these extravagant undertakings have received very little criticism.
Instead of indignation, the much more common reaction seems to be a weird sense of relief, as if these parties give us a chance to get some great secret off our collective chest. For a while, we can amuse ourselves toying with decadence, without any accompanying guilt. Under official sanction, with the approval of friends and neighbors, we can finally just admit to each other that we're really, really rich and fritter the night away doing rich people things.
On a campus often obsessed with difference and wracked with how to bridge it, you'd think it would have made sense to rally around our shared commonality of richness a long time ago. Maybe so, but that wouldn't be taking into account how deep in the rich closet most on this campus are.
No one wants to own up to being wealthy: You may have just returned from yachting in the Mediterranean, you may "summer" in the Bordeaux region of France, you may occasionally order your butler to smash cases of Dom Perignon for your personal amusement, but by God if I inquire about your family's socio-economic standing, you'll tell me you're "middle class" (maybe "upper middle" if you're feeling generous).
I've seen this tendency played out everywhere; I've seen entire lecture halls of 75+ students put their hands up when asked by the professor "Who considers themselves middle class?" This was before they were told what the middle income bracket was ($22,500 to $77,250 per family in 2006, as per the U.S. Census), after which a grand total of three hands remained up.
No one knows the average family income for Duke students; according to the admissions office, the figures simply don't exist. What is known is that only around 40 percent of students here receive any form of financial aid, and of those that do, the median annual package is roughly $22,000 (not counting loans). In other words, a comfortable majority of our parents are wealthy enough to simply pay the current $130,000+ bill out of pocket, and a majority of the remainder still have sufficient scratch to cover more than half that.
We're not alone in persisting in our middle-class delusions; the rest of the country is the same way. A Washington Post article from last year reports that a measly 2 percent of Americans self-identify as "upper class," compared to 62 percent for middle class and 27 percent for working class, just a notch below middle. The middle class, for all its disparagement by intelligentsia, still implies something honorable. It has shades of hard work and sacrifice. It's safe, unimpeachable.
The upper class, by contrast, are those rich jackasses, the world-ruiners bilking employees out of their pensions while their H2s pour greenhouse gases into Al Gore's precious atmosphere, fueling international ire and environmental crises with their conspicuous consumption. Upper class suggests entitled, never worked a day in his life. Upper class suggests The Man.
I can't weigh in on whether these stereotypes of wealth are right or wrong. There's insufficient space, and you wouldn't like my answers anyway. But good or bad, they're ours to deal with. We have to take them up, examine them, accept or refute them, because they're our stereotypes. To the vast majority of the country (Hell, to the vast majority of Durham), we are The Man.
Continuing to insist we're middle class when we're clearly not is tedious and pointless. At the very least, collectively acknowledging that we're wealthy can give us some much-needed common ground in our ongoing effort to piece together a coherent student body. Ideally, it would help us better understand what we owe ourselves and our society, where our responsibilities lie. It doesn't have to mean taking up some great burden of guilt and shame for being "privileged." It can simply mean telling ourselves the truth.
So when the next fancy affair rolls around, by all means, dare to indulge in drinks, snacks and ambience. Just try to indulge in a little honesty as well.
Brian Kindle is a Trinity senior. His column runs every Friday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.