Starting in fall 2023, non-Greek selective living groups were required to transition into living learning communities or Duke Student Government-approved student groups in order to live in sections in campus housing or hold recruitment events as part of QuadEx.
Two SLGs that have been approved as LLCs, The Cube and Langdorm, are currently undergoing this transition.
While SLGs do not require members to live together in residential sections, each LLC is assigned a section within a dorm. Junior Pranay Vure, president of The Cube, believes that the new living arrangement has fostered greater collaboration and motivation among members.
“You just feel way more at home like you're in a community when you can look [at] the door to the left of you and the door to the right of you and see people that you enjoy spending time with,” Vure said. “That will help you be a better person at the end of the day.”
For senior Sophie Zhu, co-president of Langdorm, maintaining a tight-knit residential community was one of the main goals of Langdorm’s transition to an LLC. This would allow Langdorm to continue holding “late-night study sessions [and] really spontaneous activities that really bring a group of people together.”
Another benefit of transition into an LLC is the open line of communication and support from University departments and faculty partners that is fostered
According to Vure, the decision to transition to an LLC was not a hard one to make, given the goal of The Cube to promote an environment of academic engagement and entrepreneurship. As an LLC, The Cube has been able to collaborate closely with Duke Innovation and Entrepreneurship, allowing the group to secure funding and gain access to academic resources and alumni networks.
As a result, The Cube recently co-hosted a Startup Fest with Duke I&E for undergraduate and master's students who are interested in venture capital and pitching new product ideas.
“I think the process has been really, really smooth for us. I think that is mostly due to the fact that our advisors and Duke as a whole … agreed to have us be an LLC,” Vure said. “I guess Duke as a whole really shares the same goals that we do. So I feel like we're a lot more integrated within that space of Duke.”
Langdorm has also benefited from increased faculty engagement. According to Zhu, the multicultural LLC worked with the Chinese department last semester to organize a Mid-Autumn Festival event with over 100 attendees. Currently, the group is working with the German and Italian department to organize future events.
“As an LLC, we can throw a lot more open events to the entire community,” Zhu said. “So rather than having this like living group that only does things for itself, we're able to open it up and invite more people in — that kind of creates a more open environment.”
Vure and Zhu pointed out that the transition of The Cube and Langdorm to LLCs has allowed the groups to open up recruitment to first-years.
Since 2021, non-Greek SLGs have been restricted from holding recruitment events for first-year students, even though some groups have continued to do so. Following the transition to LLCs, both The Cube and Langdorm have seen overwhelming numbers of potential applicants in their biggest recruitment cycle yet.
According to Vure, potential recruits are not only evaluated on their academic interests but also their “social fit” in each group’s respective communities.
“We are always looking for people who want to share that sense of community with us,” Vure said. “But then on the other side, we're always looking for people who want to build that next big thing.”
With a large number of first-year recruits in Langdorm this semester, Zhu recognizes the potential difficulty in accommodating new members but is excited to see them settle down in the community.
“We want to make sure that we throw a lot of ‘get to know each other’ mixers. We want these people to feel comfortable and happy with their decision to live in section next year,” she said.
While the transition for both the Cube and Langdorm has been largely successful, the groups have faced challenges in enforcing a rule dictating that members listed on an LLC roster must live together.
“Obviously, we don't want to kick anybody out. But unfortunately, they would not officially be members,” said junior Kaitlyn Yan, a member of Langdorm. “I think moving forward, we would probably just invite them to internal events, but not have them as official members because there's just no getting around the ‘all members live in section’ requirement.”
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Lucas Lin is a Trinity first-year and a university news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.