The Disorientation guide to Duke that I’ll never submit
Because O-week prepared me for Duke about as well as one of those lame-ass reviews on the back of a book cover where summaries used to be.
Maybe it’s the Monday blues, or maybe I’m just fed up with Duke as an institution. Based on what I’ve seen on the You’re Not Alone page. Based on how administration has tried (ineffectively) to diplomatically placate students’ very much justifiable rage. Based on my friends’ tales of how Duke was (and still is) an incredibly toxic environment, especially for people whose families aren’t in the top 1%, who identify as a minority of some kind, who are in the LGBTQ+ community.
I’m tired of seeing words like “diversity” and “representation” being wielded as they continue to reproduce systems of inequality. To appoint people as figureheads or champions of diversity when the same power dynamics play through again and again. Seeing pictures of students of color used like a stock photo on a brochure or as a bargaining chip at the table for elite, exclusive, corporatized institutions of higher learning.
I’m tired of people ignoring the plethora of students I see entering and leaving Counseling and Psychological Services, who seem to bow their heads in shame and collectively refuse to meet each other’s gazes because they’re too afraid to admit something’s wrong.
I’m tired of professors punishing and giving up on me for being depressed, for grading me “based on my performance” when I can barely even eat or sleep properly in my worst depressive episodes. Sometimes, it’s hard enough to try and simply be human, much less write 10-page papers that no one’s ever going to read.
I’m tired of feeling overlooked, forgotten almost as an afterthought or seen as a vessel for notes and knowledge and advice and nothing more. To feel dehumanized by people who post on YikYak about “all the animals in the library” (by which they meant “the Asians”).
I’m tired of going to a school where the Asia Prime party took place, where someone hung a noose in the BC plaza, where the Muslim call to prayer was banned because of safety concerns, where a student porn star was shamed across the nation.
I’m tired of seeing signs and walls defaced with homophobic slurs, with racist chants hollered near a friend in the middle of the night, with anti-Semitic flyers distributed on campus.
I’m tired of it all.
No one prepared me for this.
No one prepared me for classes that I’d have to sacrifice my sleep and consequently, what felt like my humanity for.
No one prepared me for the overwhelming sense of dread and despair at trying to balance everything yet somehow accomplishing nothing.
No one prepared me for my dream school that became a living nightmare, a toxic environment where complaints from the entitled dominated conversations and stress was the norm.
No one prepared me for the blank, curved walls of the psych ward, the frigid air of the hospital, the clinically cold gazes of the staff as they looked at us like we were caged animals.
This wasn’t in the orientation week pamphlet.
Sometimes I’d joke darkly that Duke was indeed the land of the Blue Devil. Because the devils live in hell. And that’s what it felt like sometimes.
But you know what?
I’ve made some of the most incredible friends around. I’ve learned how to see through people pretty quickly and see what their intentions are.
I’ve had friends who advocated for mental health issues, who’ve been willing to be vulnerable about their own mental health problems, who’ve been through and seen shit the likes of which you couldn’t possibly ever imagine.
I have one friend who dedicated a lot of his time at Duke to an organization that helped connect peers to each other for support.
I have another friend who helped found the You’re Not Alone page in the first place.
I have a friend who’s been working on the housing policy, so that students in independent housing don’t feel as isolated. To fix a broken system that has failed so many.
And I have tried and cried and screamed from it all — for the madness outside and within my brain to end — and hoped and dreamed and survived.
I’ve spoken up at forums and somehow led to change.
I’ve tried to do whatever I can to support incoming freshmen and my fellow APO brothers. Tried to do anything at the individual level to make people feel like they were in a place where they were welcome and free to be themselves.
And I know I could never possibly hope to do enough.
But I know this, too:
I have learned and grown and fought like I have never done so before.
There really is no orientation program that could possibly capture all of this.
And maybe I was disoriented, disenchanted, disillusioned with Duke.
But I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for all I’ve been through.
