Central Campus: Renovation projects attract student interest

When sophomore Chris Brown visited Duke as a kid, he peered up at the old rooms of his mother and his father—two gothic nooks, framed in blue stone, with Main West Quadrangle for a view.

It was only natural to think he would grow up to live there too someday.

It took him about two weeks to come to terms with the fact that he will be calling an apartment on Central Campus home this Fall, he said.

For almost a decade, West Campus has been framed as the birthright of all sophomores. But Brown pledged Pi Kappa Phi, a fraternity that will carve out its first section on Central Campus this Fall. He and 16 other sophomores in the fraternity gave up their claim to West to be a part of something novel they see unfolding on Alexander Street. And they haven’t looked back.

“I’m very excited about living on Central,” Brown said. “We all are.”

Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education Steve Nowicki is pinching himself.

For many students on campus, long before their time on West runs out, Central is preceded by its reputation: a dilapidated, isolated place with scant social offerings and questionable security.

Nowicki hoped students would warm to Central in light of facilities upgrades and the arrival of several new selective living groups—but he had braced himself for a longer wait.

With New Campus on the back burner, Nowicki said administrators have shifted to their “fallback position:” making Central more livable for the foreseeable future. But it’s the social changes accompanying these physical tweaks that may be truly groundbreaking.

With the April launch of the Devil’s Bistro and the Mill Village complex, administrators unveiled the first phase in Central’s three-year, $13.5 million facelift.

Next up are resurfaced tennis and basketball courts, estate fencing and improved lighting. The apartments, too, will undergo renovations, including remodeled bathrooms, new carpeting, new exterior staircases and fresh coats of paint from a new color palette. A pilot building will be ready in the Fall.

Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta downplayed the physical improvements that Central will undergo.

“The amount of money for these buildings is enough to maintain them and make them more pleasant,” Moneta said. “These buildings aren’t worth investing so much money that they’ll be around for another 50 years.”

But he cited Ubuntu, a service-oriented selective living group that debuted on Central Campus last year, as something “revolutionary.”

With their new sections on Central, Ubuntu, PiKapp and the Panhellenic Association are helping administrators turn back the clock to a time when Duke subscribed to the “house system,” which clustered students into groups of about 40 to 80. Administrators will host a series of discussions about the return of the model with students in the Fall, Nowicki said.

In 2002, the Board of Trustees voted to adopt the “quad model,” dividing West into six large blocks and requiring all sophomores to live there. The change stemmed from the designation of East as an all-freshmen campus, Moneta explained in a 2001 guest column published in The Chronicle.

But the quad model did not prove to be the magic elixir. Five years after its implementation, a report released by the Campus Culture Initiative Steering Committee cited a number of flaws in the Duke housing system, including the disproportionate number of minority students living on Central, upperclassmen’s propensity to “self-segregate,” a shortage of social spaces for independents and the perceived prioritization of selective living groups.

Nowicki said the University is still dealing with unforeseen consequences of the decision to house freshmen on East and concentrate selective living groups on West in 1993. The move landlocked Duke real estate, forcing older students into sometimes-uncomfortable social positions. As a consequence, Duke housing affords students “two levels of privilege” today, he explained.

“[East Campus] wasn’t intended to do that, but there weren’t enough beds. What we’re trying to do is to peel back those consequences,” he said. “We need to level the playing field…. Under the Duke house model, all of the issues raised by the CCI would evaporate.”

Moneta said the reasoning behind the class-oriented living scheme is sound, but he now thinks the model is too rigid.

“There are some developmental differences between freshmen and seniors,” he said. “The housing model tried to reflect that. But I think many believed it was too proscriptive.”

Shifting some selective living groups to Central and permitting sophomores to live off West clears room for the revival of the house model. Moneta cited East Meets West, a section on West for independents who choose not to block, as an example of the type of living arrangement he hopes will multiply in the coming years—housing that gives independents a sense of community without forcing them to affiliate as strongly as students in selective living groups do.

The transition hinges on selective living groups’ willingness to give Central a chance. Administrators insist they don’t want Central to be framed as a punishment. Indeed, the experiences of past generations of selective living groups on the middle campus indicate that once members make the move to Central, they may never want to leave.

Nowicki recalled attending the last supper of a selective living group forced to vacate its section on Central in 1993 when the communities were swept to West Campus.

“It was like they were having a wake,” he said.

The irony doesn’t escape him. Student convictions and administrative philosophies can reemerge and retreat cyclically in the Gothic Wonderland. Today, administrators laud the wisdom of a housing model that was first devised well before current undergrads were born, and a growing number of students are embracing facilities that date back to the same era and haven’t seen any significant improvements since.

Members of Ubuntu have come to love their section on Central. But when the group planned rush for the first time this Spring, they weren’t sure whether freshmen with visions of West Campus dancing in their heads would take to the idea of calling Central home.

Central proved to be an easier sell than they had thought.

“Really our issue was with getting people out to see Central,” said Ubuntu President Louis Ortiz, a junior. “Once they saw the environment we were living in, they saw that it isn’t that bad.”

Ubuntu added 18 new members, far exceeding expectations, Ortiz said.

PiKapp President Jordan Stone, a junior, said Ubuntu’s experiences made his fraternity more confident about establishing roots on Central.

In some ways, Central is the perfect place for a fraternity to be, Stone said. When PiKapp throws parties, they will have the space afforded by off-campus venues without having to deal with the Durham Police Department.

With West still the epicenter of the greek social scene, Stone says he knows it won’t always be easy for PiKapp. But he’s confident that he and his fraternity brothers will rise to the challenge.

“There’s a lot more to a fraternity than a location,” he said. “We’re fortunate in my fraternity that we have a really dedicated group of guys that is going to make this space on Central one to be envied by fraternities on West.”

PiKapp’s new pledge class spent two weeks mulling over whether to live on Central with the upperclassmen in the fraternity, Brown said.

Sophomore Matt Fisher said that although many in the pledge class had romanticized West, he was an early advocate of living on Central. He debunked the classic Central hang-ups about physical and social isolation, insisting that he is just excited to live with his brothers.

“In reality, it’s a 10-minute walk to West Campus,” Fisher said. “It’s not like I’m transferring to another college—it seems like it’s built up to be that.”

A Campus Council survey of sophomores living on Central last year found they were overwhelmingly happy with the experience, Klein said, a good omen for the wave of rising sophomores who will be relocating to Central with PiKapp and Ubuntu.

Stone added that he feels the move to Central is prudent for the fraternity’s future—Nowicki has promised that groups that choose to move to Central will have their pick of housing on New Campus. It could also pay to make the decision sooner rather than later. Administrators have carved out special common spaces for Ubuntu, PiKapp and Panhel, but they won’t have the resources to do that indefinitely, he said.

“If you think of a section on West with dingy hallways and poor lighting, Ubuntu is the best common space on campus by light years,” he said. “There’s a cachet to living on West, but if you’re interested in good real estate Central is the place to get it.”

Nowicki said he is in talks with the Inter-Greek Council, the National Pan-Hellenic Council and another chapter in the Interfraternity Council about space on Central. Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity was offered space on Central but declined for lack of member interest.

IFC President Erskine Love, a senior, said he thinks PiKapp’s section on Central will help the group set itself apart during rush. But he has not heard much discussion about chapters that have already staked out space on West relocating to Central.

“West is a great place for fraternities to be,” Love said. “I think certainly as the housing model from the top down changes, fraternities are going to make sure that we don’t get kicked aside.”

With visions of New Campus still burning bright, Moneta conceded that administrators are making only “nominal” upgrades to Central facilities. Yet they are also the first tangible signs of progress he has seen on Central since he arrived at Duke in 2001.

Moneta said he is “guardedly thrilled” about the changes taking place on Central—happy to have something to show for five years of formal conversation, but disappointed that New Campus remains a daydream.

“I wish we were really working on New Campus,” he said. “[Revamping Central] was our second choice, not our first choice.”

Administrators are remaking Central with a few coats of paint, new carpeting and perhaps some greenery too. If all had gone according to plan, they would have traded the paintbrushes and hoes for a bulldozer.

Yet regardless of when the “quad model” formally gives way to the “house model” and New Campus relieves Central of its stopgap role, Campus Council President Stephen Temple, a senior, said the interim goal is to make the makeshift campus into something else entirely: a community.

“I don’t want [changes to the housing model] to be a huge drastic light switch that we flip,” he said. “We’re going to pull people out of their apartments and build friendships.”

Construction projects aside, many students said the most profound change on Central this Fall is that with the advent of selective living groups, some residents will be living on Central by choice—not by virtue of their housing lottery number.

“In the past, I feel that students were swept onto Central because there wasn’t enough space on West,” said junior Libby Hase, who will be living in the Panhel block. “I feel like if you have happy groups of people then it will improve the mood on Central.”

Klein noted that the addition of selective living groups will revitalize the social scene on Central—and may even challenge traditional nightlife migration patterns.

“This is going to bring people who don’t even live on Central out there,” Klein said.

To alleviate concerns about the isolation of Central campus, the C-2 bus will run in place of the C-1 and C-4 after 8 p.m. starting this Fall, said Brown, who is Duke Student Government’s vice president for athletics and campus services. Some freshmen boarding the bus in search of a section party may be enticed to pull the cord while still on Central, saving the frat party mecca for another night. It may be a bit easier to breath in the halls of West.

Junior Michelle Barbera, who will be living in the Panhel block, is sad to be giving up her quad-view room in Kilgo—the perfect vantage point from which to take in a bonfire last spring. But she thinks her timing is perfect—all signs tell her that change is finally coming to Central.

“Whenever I tell someone I’m living on Central they’re like, ‘Oh, that sucks.’ And it does compared to West,” she said. “But it’s a good year to move to Central. I hope a lot of people look at us and are like, ‘They’re having a lot of fun. I want to go there.’”