Talk:Duke University

Pictures

There are entirely too many pictures on this page. It's making the article look very cluttered. Ttownfeen 21:04, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. I think pictures are important. If you think this article has a lot, see Boston College. But honestly, I really think they lend weight to the article. We want these articles to be as informative as possible, and photographs, etc. are an important part of that. Gregw824 05:30, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

both points are good. The article looks cluttered but the pictures are important. I think resizing/removing the pictures might reduce clutter somewhat. Bubbachuck 15:46, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Gregw824; the added pictures are very informative and interesting. However, I think that redistributing the photos will help the article look less cluttered.

Pictures, when peppered sparingley, accentuate articles. When too many are used, the pictures themselves distract the reader from the most important part of the article: the article itself. The Duke article is luckily not as bad as the BC article. I should note that I think many of the pictures are good. I believe that taking a few of the least pertinenet ones (like the Les Diables Bleus pic) would greatly improve the article. Ttownfeen 23:51, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Really? I think the Les Diables Bleus picture is one of the most interesting in the article. The only change I would make is to place the picture of Epworth in The Move To Durham underneath the picture of The Washington Duke Building, or vice-versa, so the writing at the top of the article is less squished. JTM 00:18, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would take out bluedevilportrait.jpg, one of the pictures in east campus and west campus subsections, dukeconstruction.jpg or aerialdukewest.jpg, The Chornicle logo (it has its on page). And just so that you know that I can give as much as I take, the alumni photos can be taken out if need be. Ttownfeen 03:56, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Related pages that need to be added too

I think the Crazies invented the term airball. Also, I know that SI ranked the Duke/UNC game at Cameron to be the #1 sporting event. We should add some pictures of students tenting and the cameron crazies in action. Similarly, we should add some information about how it all began with the Bunch of Guys, I think. Tinlash 18:44, 21 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. They did invent "Airball" according to Four Corners: How UNC, N.C. State, Duke, and Wake Forest Made North Carolina the Center of the Basketball Universe by Joe Menzer. JTM 22:29, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Urban?

I am perplexed by the description of the Duke Campus as "urban" on the information box. The campus comprises 9,432 acres, much of which are forest, and the campus itself (with the arguable exception of East) is totally isolated from downtown Durham. Even the section of town that borders East Campus seems like it would be best described as "suburban." Considering UNC, a much more urban-feeling school, is described as suburban, and the College Board describes Duke's campus as suburban, I'm going to change it for now, though I'm open to any arguments for keeping it "urban." JTM 19:15, 18 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would say it depends on whether you regard Durham as a real "city" or not. Are you defining Durham as a "suburb" of Raleigh? That's kind of a stretch. I wonder why either "urban" or "suburban" is even necessary. It's located in a city. That's a fact. Calling it some form of "urban" is, in a way, a Point Of View. Wahkeenah 23:01, 18 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Wahkeenah's view on this. You can't define Duke as suburban because it's IN a city, the fourth largest in North Carolina, not partially in it, but completely surrounded by it, and in fact East Campus is in a densely populated area within a couple minutes walking distance from downtown Durham. Therefore, I'm going to change it back to Urban (and also, you can't simply separate "campus" from "campus area" in the infobox, the templates don't work that way, you'll notice that "campus area" won't show up). The reason UNC is described as suburban is because Chapel Hill has less than 50,000 residents; Durham has almost 190,000. Gregw824 03:37, 19 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Whether an area is suburban or not has nothing to do with the population of the city it resides in. Mesa, Arizona has more than 400,000 residents, but is considered a suburb, and the largest cities in the country have suburban districts - such as Staten Island in New York, and Canoga Park and Toluca Lake in LA. I'm not saying Durham is a suburb of Raleigh, just that Duke is in a suburban section of Durham. Though I understand where you're coming from, I'm still inclined to agree with the College Board [1] that Duke's campus is suburban, but since I'm outnumbered, I'll leave it as it is :-). By the way, nice job on all the recent additions to the history and construction sections! They really add a lot to the page. Best, JTM 21:01, 19 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

More NPOV needed

The opening paragraph needs a lot of work.

1) "...more open to innovation than its more ancient peers" -no schools in the US are ancient

2) "Duke values reevaluation and reimagination" -new buildings just means the school is expanding

3) "friendlier, more energetic" -friendlier b/c its in the south? -I don't see where "energetic" is coming from

These are all very subjective statements. And admissions to Duke, although competitive, is still ~25% which is much higher than most of the Ivy Leagues. This does not imply that Duke is worse or better, but some serious objectivism is in order. Bubbachuck 21:10, 12 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

ok

I agree with you on most points:

1.) a.) The phrase "ancient peers" refers mostly to the Ivy League, which is also known as the "The Ancient Eight" so that's where that comes from.

2.) Yes perhaps that phrase needs fixing. The new building projects are significant, however.

3.) I agree with your assessment of this phrase, I don't know where it came from, but I also think it doesn't really belong.

4.) The admissions rate this year was 22%, yes, higher than all but one of the Ivy League, but that number in and of itself is not completely indicative of the admissions difficulty. You need to take into account self-selectivity/applicant pool, etc. I think most sources would put Duke in the top 10-15 most difficult schools in the country to be accepted to, Princeton Review puts it in the top 10, for example, and for a country that has 3000+ schools, I would definitely say that is considered very competitive. The term "competitive" in college admissions usually refers to schools that accept under 50% of their applicant pool so I don't think the current wording is really a stretch. Gregw824 04:37, 13 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

good discussion, will fix discussed points Bubbachuck 04:56, 19 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

athletics

I see someone added a whole lot of basketball players to the list, which is good, but should we do this? If boozer and battier are up there, we should go ahead and add dunleavy, cherokee parks, and dahntay jones... and what about all the other player whose jerseys were reitred? The list goes on, but should we limit this somehow? Also, I'm adding Alana Beard and Jenny Chuasiriporn to the list hello

Drunkasian 17:36, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree that it's difficult to know where to draw the line. I would argue that we shouldn't add people to the list of distinguished alumni unless and until an article is written about them. Wmahan . 18:27, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

---Perhaps it would be best to only include people who were famous AFTER attending Duke Univeristy. In other words, it makes sense to include Grant Hill since he became a major NBA player, but not Chris Duhon who didn't go into the NBA. Otherwise, I would only add a non-NBA player when that player is especially notable. Perhaps a separate section (or even article) about Duke basketball is in order.

Actually, Chris Duhon did go to the NBA. He was a second round draft pick for the chicago bulls and is doing quite well. Esrogs 04:58, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Copyright

I reverted several paragraphs of text posted by User:Xwillx that appear to be copied straight from [2]. If we have permission to use the text, feel free to reinstate it.

Also, I have some reservations about the logo that Xwillx added to the article; see the image description page for details. Wmahan . 22:14, 2004 Apr 22 (UTC)

Location

Do you expect everyone, even non-Americans, do know where Duke University is? (It's hard enough to find the address on their own web site.) <KF> 16:14, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The infobox says the location is "Durham, North Carolina, NC, USA"; the "NC" should be removed. <Anirvan> 05:50, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm removing the "NC". For something as trivial and uncontroversial as this, you should just Be Bold and make the recommended change. –MementoVivere 20:55, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Add discussion about K-Ville, Cameron Crazies, etc

We should try and add some discussion about K-Ville, Cameron Crazies, etc. I know there's a stub about the Cameron Crazies, but it should be added to. I think the Crazies invented the term airball. Also, I know that SI ranked the Duke/UNC game at Cameron to be the #1 sporting event. We should add some pictures of students tenting and the cameron crazies in action. Similarly, we should add some information about how it all began with the Bunch of Guys, I think. Tinlash

Prestige

Is calling Duke "prestigious" POV? I removed the word from the intro, but Drunkasian pointed out that "Other university pages have the same word". I think one could make a good argument either way. I note that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are described as prestigious in their articles, although Stanford and MIT are not. There is a related discussion at Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What do others think? I'll leave the word in unless a consensus is reached otherwise. I don't feel strongly either way, although I'm wary of a situation in which there is a rush to label every university as "prestigious", thereby rendering the term nearly useless. Wmahan . 22:42, 2004 Apr 18 (UTC)

Top-10 Rank

Since Omnibus revised the order of schools (that I based on the 2005 U.S. News & World Report rankings) in the statement "It is consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report in the top-10 most selective schools among Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, Yale, Stanford, and MIT," I've decided to investigate the rankings from the past few years. From what I've gathered, these are the ranks for the relevant schools for the years 1998, 2002, and 2005:

Princeton (1 in 1998, 1 in 2002, 1 in 2005)
Harvard (1 in 1998, 2 in 2002, 1 in 2005)
Yale (1 in 1998, 2 in 2002, 3 in 2005)
MIT (4 in 1998, 5 in 2002, 5 in 2005)
Stanford (4 in 1998, 6 in 2002, 5 in 2005),
UPenn (6 in 1998, 6 in 2002, 4 in 2005),
Duke (6 in 1998, 8 in 2002, 5 in 2005),
Caltech (9 in 1998, 4 in 2002, 8 in 2005)
Dartmouth (10 in 1998, 9 in 2002, 9 in 2005)
Columbia (10 in 1998, 10 in 2002, 9 in 2005)
Cornell (6 in 1998, 10 in 2002, 14 in 2005)
Northwestern (10 in 1998, 13 in 2002, 11 in 2005)
Brown (10 in 1998, 15 in 2002, 13 in 2005)
UChicago (14 in 1998, 10 in 2002, 14 in 2005)

Therefore I propose the order: Princeton, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, UPenn, and Caltech
vs. Omnibus's order: Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Caltech, and MIT.

--MementoVivere 09:41, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"ranked along with such universities as Stanford and MIT"

That sounds like it was written by a Duke University alumni. Let me assure you that Duke does not belong in the same category as Stanford or MIT. The statement in the subject line is very vague. I would propose removing it entirely or altering it significantly to be much more specific.

Here are the U.S. News & World Report rankings for Duke, Stanford, and MIT over the past decade. (Please feel free to add any missing information)

1994: Duke (7th)
1995: Duke (6th)
1996: Duke (6th)
1997: Duke (4th), MIT (6th)
1998: Duke (3rd), Stanford (5th), MIT (6th)
1999: Duke (6th), Stanford (4th), MIT (4th)
2000: Duke (7th), Stanford (6th), MIT (3rd)
2001: Duke (8th), Stanford (6th - two way tie), MIT (5th)
2002: Duke (8th), Stanford (5th - three way tie), MIT (5th - three way tie)
2003: Duke (4th), Stanford (4th), MIT (4th)
2004: Duke (5th), Stanford (5th), MIT (4th)
2005: Duke (5th), Stanford (5th), MIT (5th)

In none of these years was Duke located more than one position away from Stanford or MIT. Duke was rated higher than MIT and Stanford in 1997 and 1998, and over the past three years it was tied with either MIT or Stanford. This to me would argue that Duke is in the same peer group as these other two schools. — Brim 22:44, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

OK -- factually you are correct. But the fact that Duke alumni feel a need to point this out almost reinforces the impression that Duke is NOT truly in this peer group. After all, nobody says Stanford is ranked along with MIT because everyone knows that. Similarly, nobody says that Harvard or Yale are ranked along MIT, or whatever, because this is widely known. If you have to point out that Duke is ranked along with these other universities, it implies that this fact is not well known, which raises the question as to WHY it is not known. Perhaps because unlike US News, most people do not really perceive Duke as being in the same tier?

I agree with you that the statement that Duke is "ranked along with such universities as Stanford and MIT" contributes very little and should be deleted. It's more accurate to say that Duke is a top-ranked national university. Making the comparison to MIT and Stanford is pointless. Why single out those two schools? But as for Duke not truly being in the peer group mentioned above, that's your opinion, and you'll find that many would disagree with you. Most everybody knows Duke's reputation in this day and age, and Duke is widely recognized as being one of the top institutions in this country, in the same tier as the list of universities quoted previously. Perhaps this was not true a decade ago, however, where--outside of college basketball--Duke was relatively unknown outside its region. Duke has become more recognizable over the past ten years, associated with its ranking going up. Duke is in a unique position being one of the few top-notch academic institutions in the South, whereas Stanford is similarly unique being the flagship academic region of the West Coast. They have a few other similarities, such as the importance of intervarsity athletics at each of the schools, but otherwise, they're geographically distinct schools that don't directly compete against each other. I'm a Duke alumnus, and I never encountered Stanford-envy, or even MIT-envy, since each of the schools attract a different sort of students. I wouldn't directly compare Stanford and MIT, just like I wouldn't directly compare Stanford and Duke. However, I do think that most would agree that all three are elite universities and that any attempt to further stratify them (a la U.S. News) is hardly valid and is largely based on opinion and bias. — Brim 07:01, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)