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T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2018 DUKECHRONICLE.COM
OPINION
Durham isn’t ‘sketchy,’ Duke is
ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 18
MEET DUKE’S CLASS OF
2022
By Nathan Heffernan Columnist
We’ve heard it long before coming here: Duke is safe and Durham is sketchy. Step outside the stone walls of East Campus and crime-ridden neighborhoods await. When I toured Duke in summer of 2017, someone asked if East Campus was safe being situated so close to downtown Durham. The tour guide reassured the pfrosh that several safety features such as help towers, security guards, and Duke Alert existed on campus. She went on to say that most students feel extremely safe while on Duke campus, quelling the fears of the trembling pfrosh while implying that Durham inherently imposes a threat on the Duke student population. The fears many Duke students hold of parts of Durham are rooted in a biased perception of the city. The characterization of Durham by Duke students as a crimeridden city, or “sketchy” as I have heard countless times, is indicative of the strained relationship Duke and Durham have had since Duke’s conception. Despite a rich history of successful business and cultural movements, Durham has been viewed as unsafe and inferior for years by outsiders. This racially-influenced characterization of Durham has percolated to Duke students’ current view of the city, and contributes to the lack of interaction many students have with the Durham community. Duke students have tendency to accept this portrait of Durham as sketchy, and in doing so we ignore issues of safety and crime prevalent on our own campus, from our own students. Since we are college students at a elite university, we view our breaches of the law and order with a different attitude than crime in Durham. Students can feel comfortable with drinking and getting drunk in public while on campus since alcohol policy violations are handled by student conduct, instead of the local police force. Students who engage in recreational drug use also face fewer repercussions and feel more freedom than Durham residents. There is a illusory sense of safety when doing drugs at an institution like Duke that makes substances seem less dangerous just from their context. Duke students who habitually use certain drugs are treated differently by society.
Story and graphics by Likhitha Butchireddygari Investigations Editor
For the second year, The Chronicle has fielded a survey for the first-year class, asking questions about the Class of 2022’s demographics, beliefs, lifestyles and plans for their time at Duke. In the survey, The Chronicle asked first-years a wide range of questions to get an in-depth look at the lives of the new Duke students. Unlike last year’s survey, this year’s also asked whether Duke should make standardized testing scores optional. The survey gave a detailed look into the academic, personal, social and political backgrounds of the Class of 2022, with questions asking about anything from their high-school test scores to their alcohol and drug use. The students also revealed how they would like to spend their next four years at Duke—from which majors they were pursuing, to which color they wanted to tent for basketball games. The month-long survey was posted on the class’ Facebook page in July, with prizes for random participants. Overall, 259 first-years—about 15 percent of the class—took the survey, but not everyone who participated answered each question. Last year, Jerry Reiter, professor of statistical science, said that the students’ reason for opting out could be more problematic than the low response rate. Lack of access to the survey or low enthusiasm for Duke could make the results unrepresentative of the class, he said. But just as many students may
have chosen not to complete the 30-question survey due to time constraints—which would not change the results dramatically. The Chronicle released the full survey data Tuesday with comparisons of groups throughout the week and fully in print Oct. 22. But before publication, we have presented some different demographics where the survey reflects the Class of 2022 profile—which was released by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions—and others where it does not. Where the two datasets disagree, you can decide for yourself whether the data is skewed.
The Chronicle surveyed more than 250 first-years about Race and ethnicity Chronicle’s survey participants their experiences and wereTheunder-representative of a typical year in terms of race and ethnicity in two major beliefs. categories. While 10 percent of the Class of
2022 is black and 11 percent is Hispanic, only 6 percent and 5 percent of the respondents identified in that way, respectively. In contrast, Duke’s class profile lists only 28 percent of the class as Asian or Asian-American, but AsianAmerican students made up 38 percent of those who took the survey. However, the survey was on par in its representation of white students. One potential reason for these discrepancies was that, unlike the admissions office’s tally, The Chronicle’s survey included “other” as an option—which was chosen by about 6 percent of respondents. The survey was fairly representative of international students in the freshmen See CLASS on Page 4
See SKETCHY on Page 14
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