I was listening to Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education Steve Nowicki's convocation speech, originally delivered Aug. 20 to the Class of 2012, on my iPod last week. Nowicki said some things that made me a little nervous. At the end of his speech, he decided to talk about "the really important stuff that makes up this campus-you, its students." He explained that "you must incorporate yourself fully into the body and the mind of Duke University. Renew us. Become us and make us more and better than we are now. "
Nowicki's speech made me wonder whose university this is: We've been told, constantly, that Duke is "my" university. We are encouraged to think that we-and by "we" I mean "me"-are the most important part of Duke. Our basketball program tells us that we are the "sixth man" of the team. The Duke homepage showcases pictures of smiling students, with tidbits about our personal lives at Duke and unique student profiles. Even our clothes show that Duke is our own; we can buy Duke footwear, hats or jewelry, and every student owns a Duke shirt. When we wear our Duke memorabilia, we're proudly saying "I am Duke's, and Duke is mine." Our Nicholas School even has an "Insider" Web site that talks about "my Nicholas" experience.
All this reinforces the concept that Duke is "my" university. And there's nothing wrong with feeling at home at Duke. But I worry that the constant reinforcement of a "me"-centered University leaves us feeling a teeny bit entitled.
So I think students should try this instead: Don't think of Duke as your university. Instead, think of it as everybody else's. Think of Duke as the university for the international student who sits next to you in your seminar class, hoping to bring her skills back home to help her community. Make Duke the university of the Durhamites who live next to us off-campus. Duke is the university of the Loop employees who deal with our drunken selves at midnight on Saturday. Every weekend, we students leave a battlefield of beer bottles and plastic cups; Duke is the university of the workers who pick up the mess we leave behind.
Contemplate this thought: Duke is not your university. You might think I'm kidding, that I'm simply advocating for the idea that we just need to temper our egoistic excesses, that I'm not actually arguing we should think of Duke as someone else's. I'm not kidding. I want you to try, at least for a day, thinking of yourself as a visitor to Duke.
When we first arrived at Duke, we didn't assume anything about our new home. We introduced ourselves to everyone we could. We weren't afraid to explore new places on campus. As soon as Duke became "my" university, that ethos of discovery disappeared. We became creatures of habit, we stopped introducing ourselves to random people, we confined ourselves to the spaces that were pertinent to our everyday activities, forgetting that the physical and social dimensions of Duke go far beyond the average student's experience. The Trinity student stopped venturing to the Pratt buildings. The Pratt student never went to the law school.
Of course, why would a Pratt student go to the law school? It doesn't have anything to do with his Duke experience. But that's my point: How can we call the University "ours" when all we know is our personal experience?
So stop thinking about Duke as "mine." Take a moment to revisit Duke. Discover the university that your fellow students experience. Juniors and seniors, take a day off next semester and pretend to be freshmen again. Freshmen and sophomores, don't settle in just yet. Grad students, mix it up with us undergrads. And all of us could benefit from remembering that this university is more than just a place to pursue academics and social opportunities; rather, it is an entire community.
Forget about what Duke means to you; figure out what it means to someone else. You might just find that Duke is a lot bigger than "my" university.
James Tager is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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