The other Duke bubble

Before landing at an urban airport at night, you look out at the highway from above and the endless snake of headlights-red in one direction, white in the other. You look out at the neat checkerboard of city blocks, and the rows and columns of homes within those squares. You look out at the skyscrapers and the patterns made by lit and unlit rooms, at a solitary car in a parking lot, at the entire grid of the city.

Each set of lights on the highway, each home, each car and each lit room has a person in it. That person has a name and a story, just like you do, but you cannot see them and they cannot see you. You see their compartments-their houses, cars and windows-and they see the flashing lights of your airplane, but that is the extent of your interaction. We surround one another, yet maintain our isolation; each of us in our own compartments, barely conscious of those around us.

Back at Duke, you see West, East and Central campus. You see dorm quads, floors, halls and rooms. Like a passenger on a plane looking down at a city, once again you find yourself in a cubicle scarcely aware of the person in the compartment nearby.

This isolation is not unique to Duke, but it is particularly pronounced here. The University is not so large, both in terms of space and the number of students, but interaction among students in different "compartments" is exceptionally low.

Freshmen all live together on East Campus, and sophomores make up the majority of West Campus. Juniors go abroad first semester or live on Central Campus, and seniors are dispersed throughout West, Central and off-campus houses. Within this system, mixing between classes is limited.

Classes are separated in the name of building class unity, but after fraternities, sororities and selective living groups choose new members, social groups tend to crystallize. By the time sophomore year rolls around, a student may very well not know the people who live just down the hall.

This is not to say that this social crystallization and the forces behind it are necessarily "bad." People go where they are most comfortable, and there is nothing wrong with that. But social crystallization unnecessarily limits the potential of the Duke experience. Nearly everyone at Duke-and I say "nearly" because I think we can all agree that we can discount people who ask questions in lectures that aren't really questions but merely academic posturing-has something to offer.

Commentators inside and outside the University reduce the Duke student to a collar-popping, Jimmy Buffett-listening future executive, clad in Nantucket red pants. A friend of mine heard a corporate recruiter at this year's career fair scoff at the idea that a Duke student would have any interest in work in the public sector.