Okay, sure—Duke students attend a University that’s much smaller than say, a state school like UNC. But almost every day at Duke, I am still surprised by how small it feels. I mean small in the vein of that I am constantly discovering connections that I didn’t know existed between people I didn’t even know knew each other. My roommate is friends with someone from her freshman year who I took a class with last year. A girl in one of my clubs is the my friend’s big. My classmate went to camp with someone I know from home, and so on. Duke is so small, I think to myself, it seems that all of my circles are somehow connected.
But then I look at the statistics. Duke has a total of 6,609 undergraduate students. While I may like to think that I know a lot of people, I surely don’t know over 6,000 people—or even a quarter of that amount, or probably even a fifteenth of it. So then why does it seem like everyone I know is familiar with each other somehow? After reading a recent Chronicle article about homogeneity in Greek life, I started to contemplate reasons why.
Since my first o-week, I have heard people comment that Duke’s social communities are self-segregated. But until recently, I did not really grasp the extent of this or understand how significantly this siloing affects the student experience here. The reason that my circles—both academic and social—seem to overlap so much is because I, too, am a product of that segregation.
All of the groups and activities in which I participate always used to appear random to me. I’m not just referring to my Greek affiliation, because I think most can acknowledge that self-segregation manifests itself in living groups. Instead, even my extracurriculars and off-campus engagements encompass an insular group of participants who found their way there through mutual connections. How did I find myself in (insert club here)? Well, because someone I already knew suggested that I join it. Why did I rush? Because it felt like everyone I knew was rushing. Based on my group of friends at the time, it would have felt odd for me not to do so.
There are hundreds of organizations on Duke’s campus. I’m involved, or have previously been involved with, maybe eight of them. Very rarely did I find my way to those organizations by chance—instead, it was through connections, guidance from others or word-of-mouth from people I knew. The people I know are likely to know each other because everyone around me is segregated in their groups; as a result, we create a big circle, or echo chamber, so that each of us is more likely to be involved in something in which someone in the circle is already involved. Really, it shouldn’t be surprising at all that people I know from seemingly “random” places know each other, too.
And that thought scares me.
If all my connections are really just one big circle at Duke that is derived from homogeneity in socioeconomic status, race, nationality, sexuality, cultural identity, etc., then how many people outside of my circle will I never be exposed to? Duke is an institution that remains proud of its diversity, which is a major reason I chose Duke in the first place. But I cannot help but wonder if I am truly making the most of my experience by remaining familiar only with the people I already know.
There will most likely be no other point in my life that I will have the opportunity to surround myself with people from so many different backgrounds. Yet here I am, affirming that I seek to drive myself in different directions when in fact I am merely running in one big circle. How can I intentionally broaden my exposure beyond what I already know?
To be clear, my lack of clarity about how to proceed pertains to the issue on an individual level. I absolutely agree that there must be widespread organizational efforts for groups to actively diversify, while also maintaining communities like cultural groups or race centers that allow people to preserve certain aspects of their identities. What I question is how I, as an individual, can bring diversity into my own life and take advantage of the uniquely varied environment that Duke has constructed for me.
Frankly, it feels daunting to throw myself into groups and organizations in which I know no one, or lack or any prior knowledge about. Nonetheless, I want to find a way to grapple with this challenge. I have reached the point where I worry that my Duke experience is restricted by how “small” Duke feels sometimes. I would prefer to enter initially uncomfortable situations while I still have the chance to do so, rather than accept this limitation as finite and unalterable. Maybe this means taking the next step with friendships I make in classes, or stepping out of my comfort zone and attending a talk I usually would overlook.
It is not that Duke truly is such a small world after all—rather, it is that the world I have carved for myself within our larger community is small. I do not want my life here to feel circular; instead, I crave a college experience that is dynamic and surprising. I am ready to start exploring the sides of Duke I have not yet seen, forming individual relationships along that journey and finding new paths out of my existing circle once and for all.
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