Duke University - Chanticleer Yearbook (Durham, NC)

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My work then is what all honorable work is—the attempt to control chaos. It has freed me till now from physical want, from prolonged dependence on my fellows and—occasionally—from myself. It has freed me for the attempt to under- stand, if not control, disorder in myself and in those I love. It has even freed me, at times, to participate in the richest, most dangerous mystery of all—the love of what otherwise I should have feared and fled—a few human beings. 22

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The University provides, among other things, gym suits, throat lozenges, and semester calendars. But one must admit that it also gives some larger, more significant raw materials which exist for the benefit of the transient student population. They are the donnee—the given—base materials from which one may draw the fundamental resources for building his education. The potential wealth of these resources is quite often overlooked; it is difficult, after all, to recognize familiar things as valuable things. The campus itself—buildings, gardens, the Quad—is one of these given things. It exists when we arrive and remains when we leave. And Durham, though not a part of the university, is complexly related to Duke and its students. The campus and the city together form the environment to which thousands of people are suddenly transplanted at the age of twenty or so. What these people then do, how they make use of the resources offered, and how they in turn contribute their own resources to the en- vironment are determining factors in the college ex- perience. In a certain sense the administration and faculty are also components of the environment. That is not to imply any strict parallel between the buildings on campus and the professors in classrooms, though certainly some professors have been here as long as the buildings and are equally dynamic; but from the student viewpoint, the faculty and administration do represent permanent aspects of Duke. And surely the faculty and administra- tion present some of the most worthwhile resources of- fered to students. Reynolds Price has emphasized the effect of certain professors on his education and life; we perhaps will be able to make similar acknowledgements. A college student has access to more learned minds than he will probably ever have again, and most students seem to be aware of this. One sometimes feels the urge to approach a professor and say, Tell me what you know.” Of course, it’s not that easy, and some people probably never achieve the sort of relationship with pro- fessors which a genuine educated man” has experienced. Student-administration relations are now somewhat un- easy; but certainly the existence of a group of men whose primary interest is the growth of a great university repre- sents as potentially educational an experience as classroom lectures or research papers. And then there are always girls. This aspect of life at a coeducational university offers a myriad of untapped resources. Again, the benefits of this part of the college depend upon the individual method of learning and his own definition of education. 24