“Oh, John-boy, you’d be running! You’d run so fast! You’d be chasing Emily in her car!” A friend of mine was telling me how to get John-boy off the couch and out to exercise. The secret is to drop him off in Walltown around dusk.
Only a few blocks off East Campus, Walltown, as my friend describes it, is not somewhere my fellow female first-year should ever run—she just moved to Trinity Park—and somewhere that “John-boy” should only venture if he has a car full of friends he’s chasing.
Durham can be a scary place. It’s a place that can really use our help, though. We can tutor kids for an hour a week at the community center and we can volunteer once a month at the soup kitchen. In my time here, I’ve even helped clean up a not-for-profit consignment shop. Durham is really lucky that it has a major research university that provides lots of jobs and lots of money—we really sustain the local economy. We have a lot of gifts to offer Durham.
Pop quiz: Do you have any idea where Walltown is? Did you know there is a name for the neighborhoods beyond the walls of East Campus and the Gothic spires of West? Of course you know, but that doesn’t mean you have to go there. The Duke administration has sanctioned your isolation, requiring on-campus residence three out of four years. Not that you become more part of the Durham community when you move to Duke 2.0—The Belmont or Partners Place—for your senior year (your humble columnist points the finger at herself too, former resident of A22 that she is).
A few seniors boldly branch out to the neighborhoods off East Campus where there is a long tradition of uneasy relations with neighbors. In these cases, at least there is enough interaction to prove that students venture outside the Duke bubble and try to live life alongside our fellow Durhamites. These sometimes strife-filled relationships have more potential for the rewards of community than do meager attempts to “cure” or “improve” Durham by quick spurts of volunteerism.
I’ve never lived near East Campus, nor have I ever been particularly friendly with those who live in the myriad apartment buildings I’ve inhabited during my tenure in Durham. The convenience of the Trinity Park and Walltown communities, among others close to East, is not lost on me, though. Walking to class, walking to the grocery store, walking to restaurants—one can save gas and root yourself in a not-quite-so-transient neighborhood community.
About a year ago, I started to stumble around what community meant and looked like in Durham. The church I was preparing to join required “service to the poor” once a week. I had visions of driving to the soup kitchen every Saturday for the months it would take to finish my training. Instead, I joined fellow church members in eating breakfast with the homeless guys who live on the church property and anyone else who showed up. There was very little “service” involved—no lining up as the givers and the needy, assuming the positions of the server and the served. Because we all need to feed our bodies breakfast, whoever shows up first starts coffee and we sit around one table and eat the same scrambled eggs. I’ve found that I am just as needy as anyone else around that table.
Just because I have a degree from Duke (and in a few years, two) doesn’t mean that I have no needs to be fulfilled by others. We’re trained to be self-reliant, but we really aren’t. By thinking that we are all independent beings, we’re robbing ourselves of the rich experience of learning how to sit with others in awkward breakfast circles, or laughing around that same table about the best way for John-boy to jump start his fitness training. The way to build community—the way to reap the rewards of investing in others and them in you—is not to put yourself in a place of strength, but to allow yourself to be served and taught by those you think need your help.
It doesn’t take living near East Campus to experience life with our fellow Durhamites, but it does make it easier. Students spend all day together in classes—wouldn’t it be instructive, even invaluable, to experience the rest of our time outside the Duke bubble, in the real Durham community? Many graduate students have the opportunity to do just that.
Since when do the graduate students have all the fun?
