Blue Devil Blues

"REMIND me again. Why did I go to Harvard?" I asked my companion as we soaked up the sun at Duke University during spring break.

The Duke campus seems to have it all. Beautiful weather, beautiful gothic architecture, beautiful people in beautiful clothes, and a food service system to cry for.

After one day at Duke, my Harvard friend and I joked of never returning to Cambridge. But despite the superficial attractions of a USC with academics, Duke is marred by a nasty undercurrent of illiberalism. At the end of our four-day stay, I couldn't imagine spending four years at Duke.

Duke prides itself on being an oasis of enlightenment in the cultural desert of central North Carolina. A campus gag has it that the theme song in the admissions office is "New York State of Mind."

The campus elite energetically pursues the image of New England WASP wanna-be's. The prevalence of J. Crew clothing--the photos in a recent catalogue were shot on the Duke campus--is a universal joke among students. I even saw one undergrad carry a J. Crew catalogue into a hall bathroom. To the casual observer, much of Duke looks like an Ivy League school with a basketball team.

BUT the similarity ends at appearances. I don't intend to tar the entire Duke student body with one brush, as my criticism is directed at a specific group of Duke institutions and students. But in four days at Duke I witnessed more incidents of overt racism, sexism and homophobia than in two years at Harvard.

Much of the blame can be laid at the doors of Duke's residential fraternities on West Campus, which physically and socially segregate minorities from the elite white-boys who live there. In the Theta Chi house, I saw only one minority. A glance at a decade's worth of group photos revealed only lily-white faces.

Black fraternities are not residential, and Black students are concentrated in apartments on Central Campus, about half a mile from the residential frats. "Blacks realize how important it is not to be segregated. But the residential frats are not socially enticing to Blacks," said Joby Branion, Assistant Director of Admissions at Duke.

That's not surprising. While watching the Geogetown-Illinois basketball game in a fraternity common room, the camera panned across Black faces on the Georgetown bench. One member yelled out "Twenty years for armed robbery, 25 for murder, 10 for rape..." to raucous laughter from the brothers.

Branion, who is Black, downplayed both the existence of racial animus on campus and the importance of the fraternity system, noting that only 38 percent of undergrads are fraternity or sorority members. "They are not as influential as an outsider might think," he said.

INDEED, by all indications, the racial climate at Duke should be exemplary. The number of minority students has increased dramatically over the past four years, from about four percent in the class of '89 to almost 10 percent in the class of '93. Duke even has a standing organization, Interact, devoted to improving race relations.

But despite Branion's apologia for Duke's fraternities, I cannot believe that allowing virtual residential segregation on campus helps broaden the intellectual horizons of the fraternity members. The diversity of the student body is wasted when the snooty whites can band into incestuous, insulated fraternities.

In the Duke frats, I saw pervasive, overt intolerance. And racial minorities are not the only victims. One Duke student told me "They say ten percent of the student body is gay. But they're so in the closet--if you're gay, no one knows about it. They just go to tearooms."

While talking to a group of frat members, I referred to a 22-year-old female acquaintance as a woman. The brothers looked at me incredulously. "They're girls here," explained one.

Then I remembered why I went to Harvard. I do not deny that racism and homophobia exist on this campus. But there is a difference. Here, intolerance is intolerable. A racial slur in a house common room at Harvard would draw instant condemnation. At Duke, I saw racist, sexist and homophobic sentiments accepted--and even encouraged--in fraternities.

Harvard certainly has a long way to go to eliminate intolerance among its own. But at least Harvard does not allow the intolerant to unite in residential bastions where they can reinforce each other's prejudices. Until Duke aggressively integrates its housing, I'll prefer Harvard.