residential life social engineering
a comparison across borders
One weekend in October, I wrote an op-ed about Duke’s re-engineering of social life that didn’t end up getting published in the Chronicle (the editor proposed some reasonable changes but I was too stubborn to want to make them so I didn’t publish the piece). Here’s an embargoed portion of that writing, which criticizes the “inclusive” QuadEx system:
Increasingly for the junior class, the first class implicated by QuadEx, Friday nights and “weekend social time” seem to be confined to Hollows and Swift house gatherings where the guest list is completely controlled, or Ubers 20 minutes away to a random frat-colonized farm where the service is spotty.
This could easily describe the social life of any university that does not invest into its residential programming the way Duke does — any random university that allows exclusivity to run rampant over social identity.
Reading the whole piece over again it starts to sound especially brutal, but having now lived at NUS in Singapore for 2 months, I can speak more confidently to some of the downfalls of living in Duke’s living breathing residential lab experiment.
NUS is one of those universities that “does not invest into its residential programming the way Duke does” — tuition for in-state students rarely exceeds 10,000 SGD (~7,500 USD), where Duke tuition exceeds 80,000 USD. And yet, there are plenty of ways in which the residential programming is far superior.
To be just a bit more specific:
I actually go to events held by my residential hall
I actually have a lot of friends from my residential hall, who I met in my residential hall
For many in my grade especially, this is frustratingly uncommon at Duke, no matter what QuadEx wants the public to think. I’m speaking anecdotally, but it’s also true that in the QuadEx transition period many juniors were forced out of their quad affiliation, which dented both their sense of quad identity (whatever amount there was to begin with) and their wallets. Again from the embargoed op-ed, here’s a shining example of the bureaucratic largesse:
It has already been reported on the Chronicle that many juniors who preferred their quad were arbitrarily assigned Swift (which costs more), and many juniors who preferred Swift were assigned their quad. The response from Dean LoBiondo is especially illuminating. From the article:
“Additionally, this year there are many rising juniors who wanted to remain in their quad rather than move into upper-class housing. LoBiondo attributes this to ‘the positive impact of living in their connected quad as a current sophomore.’
‘These are all very positive outcomes of our first full year into QuadEx,’ LoBiondo wrote.”
2023 was the first year rising juniors were obligated to QuadEx — meaning we could only choose between Hollows, Swift, and their quad. Every previous year, rising juniors could choose any quad in addition to Hollows and Swift. So the high number of rising juniors who wanted to “remain in their quad” is simply a reflection of a choice that used to exist that does not anymore. Before selection, HRL discouraged juniors from Hollows, and many do not want to pay the exorbitant extra fee for Swift. Many were forced to anyway.
TL;DR: Duke made students choose a certain way to adhere to QuadEx rules and then bragged that the choice reflected the success of the program.
I’ve become interested in “intentional coincidence” in the last year as it relates to space-making — that is, how systems can facilitate “chance” occurrences and engagements that enrich a place and turn it into a community space. I first define this term on the Camino, after a chance encounter that led to a two hour conversation.
Here are a few ways in which NUS College has facilitated this for me:
The forced meal plan for breakfast and dinner, 6 times a week - at around 5 USD per meal. There’s social engineering behind this but it works - the food is clearly not as good as off-campus or even the other on-campus all-hour food courts, but the point is to get people into a space at a certain time of day. At Duke, this system ends as soon as you enter your second year. It was nice to be re-introduced to it during junior spring.
In most all cases you can’t get to your room without walking past the common area. This is not true at Duke — the residence halls are maze-like and I don’t think I ever needed to walk past the common room to get to my dorm in the last two years.
Singapore is hot and humid. There isn’t always AC in dorm rooms, but there is always AC in the common room. People will gather to study and chill (literally).
Many people stay in a similar location the first two years of their NUS College experience — and in fact are required to stay in a specific dorm (called Cinnamon) their first year.
There is a huge exchange culture, so the thought of meeting someone new doesn’t fade by your second semester in uni. Also, even people who live in suites have to meet new people because there’s a likelihood an exchange student gets placed into your suite.
Almost everything is stratified by residence hall or residential college: sports (intra-house sports), interest groups, book clubs.
The hall organizes events that take you off campus, not just ones on campus.
I have to note a few caveats. I’m more socially capable now than I was at any other point in college, and being an exchange student certainly changes my perception of NUS College. But this speculative analysis can be useful even removed from the comparative context.
Also, my RA rocks. He’s by far the best RA I’ve ever had in college, and as far as I can tell this is pretty unique to my floor. His activity in floor groupchat isn’t just procedural. The lounge is well-decorated on his own initiative. He joins random events that aren’t residential and encourages us to join too. There’s plenty more I can say, but to sum up: he has far exceeded any institutional expectations.
It’s the opposite at Duke, where RA’s are, in my view, given impossible expectations. From the op-ed:
It seems to me Duke has unceremoniously tasked Quad Council and RA’s with completely reconfiguring what formally was Duke-sanctioned social life.
The “Duke nation” image is painted with comprehensive residential programming as its foundation, and this messaging exactly is what justifies exorbitant tuition fees. Everyday or every-other-day programming does not have to be the norm of college life (in most countries not named America, it isn’t) — but the image of programmatic regularity is necessary if the goal is to charge high tuition for “the holistic college experience.”
These students are the labor and logic which the university exploits to charge students exorbitant tuition.
Quad council is compensated for their hard and important work with priority housing in a housing system that Duke itself engineered to be expensive. RA’s are not paid hourly and are also treated generally as an afterthought by both students and administration. For both groups, every hour of their time and labor contributes to a system that, at the back end, thanks them for their service by continuing to charge students higher and higher tuition. Duke has spun this into a message of “student-centered programming” with nil mention of its aftereffects.
This article was honestly an excuse to publish writing that never saw the light of day in the fall, given that my residential experience here at NUS has given me the context and privilege of comparison. A much more cogent and eloquent critique was published by my friend Gabriel in Chron last fall, which I’ll link here.
Next: Thailand :).