Students Speak Out On Overall Experience

“Duke's competitive advantage used to be that it was ‘the coolest smart school in the country.’ Students who cared just as much about their experience outside the classroom had an incentive to choose Duke over the other top schools. Now, however, as the administration continues to push its own agenda without responding directly to student concerns, there is little to no incentive for the brightest, most well-balanced high school students in the country to choose Duke over any other Ivy League institution with a comparably dull, elitist social experience. In trying to become a ‘me too’ university, Duke is losing its competitive advantage, dropping from a first choice school to a fallback for the nation's top students.”

“Under the guise of providing students with a ‘safe, diverse, and unique experience,’ the University has succeeded only in driving the social scene in a more covert, exclusive, and potentially-dangerous direction. By dressing in baggy attire and hiding behind tipped baseball caps, are undercover deans attending on-campus parties to protect students, or to single them out and punish them? By dissolving selective living groups for late paperwork during final exams, by failing to return time-sensitive phone calls, and by refusing to work toward compromise in the reinstatement and housing process, are University officials more concerned with maintaining campus diversity, or with permanently removing social organizations? I'm not sure that this is a place you'll want to be in years to come.”