As we’ve been repeatedly told, the house model is going to be set up whether we like it or not. Let’s just hope that one particular tenet of the administration’s proposal doesn’t work out the way they’ve planned.
One of the bullet points in the current proposal begins “we expect [all] houses to develop identities over time.” This means that houses, including those full of what we’ve traditionally called “Gosh-Darned Independents” (GDIs), are supposed to organically acquire the sense of mission and shared values that SLGs have always claimed to embody. Not only will everyone be slotted into SLG-style housing; we’re all supposed to act like we’re in SLGs, too.
It’s obvious where this is going. The most telling fact about the PowerPoint that lays out the administration’s proposal is that the word “independent” doesn’t appear in it even once.
Let’s establish right now that there’s no guarantee that the house model will engender identity/community/other good-sounding things within its member houses. We’re just going to have to sit back and wait to see whether these or other virtues materialize. During the town hall meeting on the house model, DSG Executive Vice President Gurdane Bhutani said of the administration’s goal of house-identity-formation, “We don’t think that’s going to happen.” That’s as reasonable a prediction as any other.
But the administration seems to think that identity-formation is a good selling point. Their general marketing plan for the house model has consisted mostly of telling students that we’re just a housing reorganization away from instant community and also, apparently, identity. “Community” almost always refers to a group of people, and in this case, “identity” is also being used that way, as in “house identity.”
This language reminds us that the house model cordons all on-campus undergrads into definite groups—i.e., houses. Freshmen will still get to decide whether to rush SLGs, but they won’t be able to decide not to be a part of some official, formal housing group. This is the end of the Duke independent as we know him/her. This is the end of the GDI.
Is the end of the GDI a bad thing? I can’t speak for the Class of 2015, but when I was a first-semester freshman, “GDI” was one of those terms we tossed around half ironically, half fearfully—like “President Perry.”
But I hope it won’t surprise you to hear that few of the independents I know spend much time worrying about whether we made the right choice. We independents can kibitz all we want about what the relationship between Duke and its SLGs/greek organizations/bridge clubs should be, but we tend to enjoy Duke as much as anyone else. We form our own communities, build our own relationships, have our own fun. And we do it all without anyone telling us to do so. Funny how that works out.
And yet, the administration wants to gather Duke’s independents and stick us into houses. The problem with this roundup has nothing to do with real or imagined divisions among the student body; this is a “campus culture” issue, but only because it raises the question of what kind of university we want to be.
The house model is going to give us a Duke in which more aspects of student life are bound up with formal institutions (like, um, houses). This is a mundane and foreseeable trend, even if it sounds vaguely Big Brotherish.
Can you really blame the administration for banking on students’ desire to be affiliated with yet another secure, existential-angst-reducing institution? We go to an elite university; we scamper like foxhounds after the jobs and credentials that will most safely assure us of our worth and the brilliance of our futures; our prized, oh-so-crucial resumes are basically just lists of the institutions with which we’ve been involved.
That we are, with apologies to David Brooks, organization kids is not news. But it does show that the administration is in fact doing little more than responding to an existing trend by giving us the house model. They’re setting up yet another bunch of institutions that will help each and every one of us define ourselves in terms of what groups we’re a part of.
That doesn’t mean that replacing all independents with house-folk is a good idea. A Duke independent is anything but off-the-grid, but at least the option of going independent allows us to limit the number of groups we join. In turn, we limit the number of mandates placed on us, the number of people and institutions who steer us this way or that. It’s not rebellion, but it is room to breathe. Is there anything wrong with having that as an option, at the very least? Do we really need one more institution forced upon us?
If the house model is instituted (ahem) in its current form, the independent is dead. Long live the independent. Anyone want to pour out a 40 with me? Of course, it’ll have to be on Central Campus—I’m an independent.
Connor Southard is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Monday.
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