The interim report that responded to the February CCI report made clear that eliminating selective housing is not in prospect. Let's work with that and see where it takes us. But a decade hence Selective Living Groups cannot look like they do now. The current system is grossly unfair. Consider one of the statistics buried in the February report: over three-fourths of those in SLGs are guys-three men for every woman benefit from the status quo. That was hard enough to defend in 1957. Now it's indefensible.
We need gender balance in SLGs and we won't get there unless it's an explicit goal. It will take more than three years. The balanced composition of freshmen on East gives way to the incoherent and fragmented housing practices of Gothic Wonderland and off-campus living the next three years. Let's take two cycles, so that by 2013 SLGs should have roughly as many women as men.
Some groups do not have to make big adjustments: Mirecourt, Maxwell House, PRISM, Brownstone, Roundtable, Languages Dorm, the Arts Theme House and Wellness. For the rest, there are three ways to achieve balance-shrink the number or size of male groups, expand women's groups, or both. The Baldwin Scholars and Scott House begin to balance Wayne Manor and the dozen fraternities with West Campus housing. That balance needs to tip.
Gender cannot be the only kind of balance. Many student groups promote social organization and student identity. Those that want it should have a crack at housing. We need a process for groups to turn into SLGs, and physical space to house them. We don't have either.
One pathway might be for groups initially to room in blocks, and then petition to become an SLG. We already create and move SLGs. When East became a freshman campus, it involved many housing adjustments. More recently, Duke has created arts groups and the Baldwin Scholars Program. If combined with SLG annual assessments, new groups can morph into SLGs. Some current SLGs may lose their housing blocks if they fail to meet assessment criteria.
Sororities are obvious possibilities. If we keep fraternities, then sororities should have the same opportunity. History, "traditions" that date back only a few decades and the physical constraints of West Campus have kept this option off the table. With new housing being designed on Central Campus, why not consider the possibility of women's housing, including but not restricted to the possibility of sororities to complement Scott House and the Baldwin Scholars?
Many other groups that are not based on gender are obvious sources of student identity and social organization. Each is a potential SLG nidus: Mi Gente, Black Student Alliance, Diya, Hillel, Newman, Muslim Students Association, Asian Students Association, International Students and Native American Student Alliance. The groups embody religion, ethnicity and geography. "Embracing diversity" is going to require confronting difficult choices. Are we willing to do that?
A couple examples illustrate the difficult choices ahead. Some distressing statistics did not quite make it into the February CCI report. In survey data covering 1999 to 2004, African-American women reported significantly less sense of community than other groups at Duke, and the effect was not as apparent at peer universities. The gap appeared to be closing by 2004, the last year for which we saw data, but several reasons for "lack of community" seem plausible. African-American students are disproportionately represented on Central Campus, a more socially isolated place than West. And traditionally black fraternities have living space, but that same social structure does not exist for black women.
Or consider students from First Nations. Even if we include the Lumbee from North Carolina, whom the federal government does not formally recognize, the number of students at Duke is small, and the Native American Student Association is smaller still. If they want to create a distinct social support structure, would it make sense to form an SLG? Maybe. But if there were a First Peoples SLG, it would necessarily reduce "diversity" in other groups. That may well be a desired trade-off; indeed, I would argue it is. But we cannot have it both ways. Counting "diversity" the way we do now-expecting it of each group-will in effect mean that small clusters of students who crave cultural identity through group housing will be prevented from achieving it. How ironic to quash group identity through rules to measure diversity.
How far will we go? There are student organizations for Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Turkish, Singaporean, Persian, Caribbean, Hong Kong, Lithuanian, Chinese, Cuban, Arab and Bulgarian students. Would each aspire to an SLG? This cannot be answered in the abstract. Rules for moving from a housing block to an SLG will require thinking through this. Those rules imply university sanction. Duke's administration cannot avoid choices, and yet the rules will fail miserably if they come from the top. We need a political process that is fair and transparent to make the rules, and an equally fair and open way to put them in action.
If we are going to have fair selective living at Duke, several things have to change. The plans for apartment-style living for seniors on Central Campus will have to make room for more selective living groups that accommodate clusters of students from all three years. Or we need significantly more housing on West. Either way, plans for Central Campus must change, so this is a fateful choice. We need a process for student groups to morph into SLGs. Why can't Focus clusters blossom into SLGs the same way that arts and performance groups have? Unless new housing is built for SLGs, new ones can only grow if current ones shrink or die-or there will be no independent housing left on campus. We need explicit goals for equity. Diversity will include gender, ethnicity, geographic origin, religion and wealth. Whatever the goals for diversity, we also need to measure it across SLGs in aggregate, and not for each individual group, lest we force all groups to assimilate and disperse.
These are hard choices, but if selective living is going to be part of the Duke undergraduate experience, it must be more fair and balanced that it is now.
Robert Cook-Deegan, M.D., is a research professor of public policy studies. He is also a faculty-in-residence at Alspaugh Residence Hall.
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