Duke University - Chanticleer Yearbook (Durham, NC)

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C-Eiarlticlccr : How do you fit in to the residential life of kids here? Mrs. Bushman. Well, I handle their room assignments. I've been on housing . . . about nine years, since the dean of men's office took over a function to do with housing. Before it was all done by a housing management and it was a business function. There was no relationship between the living groups and signing up for a room. There weren't any living groups except fraternities. But as we started to develop the cross sectional houses, and found that in order to build these houses, so that they'd be a good group, the room assignments needed to be done in conjunction with the student leaders of these groups, and therefore it was changed. The set-up was that the dean of men's office would handle the sign-up for the rooms and the housing management would merely handle the business end of the buildings, making the charges for the bursar to do the billing. Well, any student who has a housing problem comes to see me. We try to work out individual problems. To me, the more important part of our function is taking care of the individual and his problem and, with it, cooperating with the houses too. But I have to worry about the two hundred guys on the waiting list and they're important to me, I get really attached to my independent independents. Before I finally get them assigned, I get very well acquainted with them. Qbqticlcef : What will happen with the rooms of the Pegram people that stayed over spring break? Mrs. Bushman: They lost their place on the roster. fpausel Um actually of the twenty-four guys, there were only eleven of them that planned to be in the house. So, a good many of them had decided that they were going to live off campus before they did that. Qfatlticlecf z You're just following the policy that Dean Cox made, right? Mrs. Bushman: Yeah, right . . . umhm . . . C-Eatjticlccf : Is that what you used as your guide line? Mrs. Bushman: I would agree that when someone breaks their contract, you can't renew the contract, no matter what the reason is. If I were renting property, I sure wouldn't renew a contract with someone who busted it. Claughsj . . . Mrs. Whitford does the freshmen room assignments mostly. She sorts them out according to the state they come from and has little stacks all around the conference table, North Carolina and New York, New Iersey and so forth. And then as she builds a house, she tries to match the people according to what their interests are as roommates. But she also tries as she goes along to get people from different parts of the country into a house, especially in the freshman houses. You don't have to worry about it in your cross-sectionals because you just de- velop a cross-section in there pretty much on its own. But in the all-freshmen houses, if you just took it in order, you could conceivably get a house full of New York boys or North Carolina boys, and this is not nearly as interesting to the kids. It's good experience for them to meet all kinds and I think that's why a lot of people come to Duke, to get in a school that has a cross-section of people. I know that's the rea- son I came here. I wanted to get to a different part of the country and meet different people than I knew up in Yankee Vermont. We look at this office, at least I do, as the home away from home for the kids, and I hope they feel that way about it. That's the impression we try to make, and I hope we succeed. I think we do. I started work- ing for Dean Robert Cox, and for me there's nobody that's ever been finer than him. And his whole attitude was help the individual student that comes to Duke to be a better man when he leaves. 25

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C-farjticleer' X ou want to start off with the Pegram thing? Dean Cox. W'eIl, we had agreed last year among the people involved with the housing business that we were going to have to close the dormitories for security reasons, not only for the students but also for our own property, because as you know we've already had ten thou- sand dollars worth of furniture stolen. So I had a couple of students come in and asked what they were doing over the Spring holidays and they said they were staying here. And I said, You know that the dorms are going to be closed? No, we don't know they're going to be closed. So I just started asking students who came in, Did you realize . . .? Well, no. And then I'd open up the calendar and say, Well, you see its announced that they are going to be closed. So I called Paula Phillips and Ella lean Shore. They said obviously we have some kind of problem here because the students obviously have not read the calendar and seen that the dorms are going to be closed, so this is when we got out the questionnaire which asked the students How many of you plan to stay during the Spring Break? How many would prefer the dorms to be closed? We had about 200 out of all the men who responded twhich was about eight or nine hundredj who said they would be staying for part of the holiday but not all of it. And then three to one voted in favor of closing the dormitories totally, to lock them up. So then we started getting the petitions - very late. It was - I went over there Wednesday before the Saturday that the dorms were to close at Spring and talked to what wound up to be about 100 to 150 students. I explained this, but there was just an obvious disagreement . . . and they asked me at that time, What would you do if we de- cided to offer a threat of some kind? And we just said that we would - That I was unable to make a contract with a man who I know from the past is unable to keep it. This is what we did. And on the day of the closing a couple of people from the housing office just walked over to close up the building, and they remained so they got their letters. Qarlticlccr' . But you didn't actually try to force them out of there? Dean Cox: No. Nobody was arrested. Nobody was . . . forced out. . . . You know it's a shame that we can't have the esprit de corps that develops .ng ll ht jj tt' 5 XX XX W .I -' A NX yy xx X .. in a good freshman house - and just keep that house as a house for the remaining four years. In fact, that was the reaction of every one of the dormitories I had, that they wanted to stay together as a group. But the numbers game is such that you really can't do that, because we need every one of those freshmen spaces to house incoming freshmen. I had one house that to the very last day they wanted to stay together. All thot - who had joined fraternities, other independent houses, off campus, tliiyy ii fi' doing to drop all affiliations just to stay together. That was ISIUII' I-.S 'Of' . . oo-07. 24 We Qiaqticlccf . Do you find that you're sometimes sort of back up against the wall in the administration, or sometimes do you find yourself on the students' side? Dean Cox: Both of those, obviously. The Pegram issue was obviously against the students, students against the administrator. But, by and large, this office comes across many times as an ombudsman type. You know, most requests for changes residentially come through here, and renovation changes. So much of my time is taken that it's nigh on to impossible to try to get an appointment with me. Like there're ten stu- dents coming in this afternoon. I - 'T' I T Tf 'U - I ' TITS-i

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the federation: W y? lust before freshman orientation I received an official-sounding letter from the president of my prospective dorm welcoming me to the house and extolling the illustrious history of the dorm, which included being named the outstanding Independent I-louse . When I arrived at Duke I was again welcomed by the president, resident fellow and the men of the house. During freshman orientation 1 was informed of the regu- lations on when and under what conditions female guests were al- lowed in the dorm. For the benefit of those who are unaware of the fact, men's dorms used to have open-opens. women were only allowed in the dorms for certain hours and the doors of the rooms where the female guests were had to be kept open. At the first house meeting an extensive and expensive social schedule was presented for the house's approval. The upperclassmen expressed their approval and the fresh- men followed their example. However, few of the freshmen met or got to know any girls, few got dates and went to the parties. The freshmen were not alone, though most of the upperclassmen were having the same experience. The isolation of the two campuses and formal setting around which one met girls was generally disapproved of. The dissatisfaction with the system as a whole led the house to vote to abolish its selec- tivity system. Later twenty-four hour open-opens were introduced, as they were in many other houses. These changes were minor, though, and did not attack the major problems, the physical and organizational isolation between the men and women that hindered the possibilities of them meeting and getting to know one another. The second semester of my sophomore year a new living-group organization was introduced at Duke, the federation. It was an experiment that was designed to attack the isolation between the two campuses. The federation was to be a living group composed of both men and women. However, no real group identity ever devel- oped and little significant change took place. Last year the Residential Life Committee felt that to create a true federation men must be moved to East campus and women to West. Geographical contiguity was a necessity for a federation-having to ride a bus to see the other members of your living-group was hardly condu- cive to identifying with a federation, to put it mildly. Although every- one was happy that women were coming to West, not so many were willing to move to East. Most of the house members were not very enthralled about vacating newly renovated dorms to move to the ones on East, including myself. Nevertheless, this fall found me staring out at Georgian in lieu of Gothic architecture. I found life on East campus to be considerably more pleasurable than on West. The campus was serene and had thick green grass. it was simply a prettier campus, and it provided an oppor- tunity to meet more girls. Not only that, but the first meeting of the Baldwin Federation was a great success. There were volunteers to work on all the committees, and activities such as a freshmen dance, a beach weekend, intramural sports and dorm courses were organized. Every- one was enthusiastic and it appeared that the federation was to be the panacea for all the social problems at Duke. As the semester progressed it became apparent that this was not the case. Although it' carried out its planned' activities, most people lost their original enthusiasm and participation lagged. The federation was not a real living-group. It had no real identity. Most of the decisions of what the federation was going to do were made without the knowledge of most of the members. There was little participation by the individual. But I would not say that the federation is a failure, it simply has not realized its potential. The federation has allowed people to meet and get to know each other, It has broken down the physical barriers be- tween East and West campuses, but as of this moment the individuals within the federation do not identify with it. The federation is not a panacea for the social problems at Duke. It requires work and partici- pation by the individuals within it to become a viable living-group. The federation concept is the most constructive idea in bettering the resi- dential life at Duke since I have been here, it has not been a total suc- cess'but that does not mean we should give up on it. l l l I 26 nr1i:.n-4-an 'i upr.w.-1,-.Juni v 1 ar ni. 1--up - n.i r. rii