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At Duke University, fraternities do not
have actual fraternity houses.
Instead, most fraternities have a section of dormitory space
commonly called “section.”
However, our section, for various reasons, can easily be called
“The Deke House.”
First of all,
The Deke House has 18 beds, five doubles and eight singles. We fill every bed, so there are only
Dekes living in our section. Also,
there is only one door to our section and that is the only access. In short, the entire three-floor building
is all Dekes. On the first floor we
have a kitchen and a commons. Our
R.A. lives in another building on the quad.
Compared to
other fraternity sections, you can see why we think of it as a house. Most sections are just a line of rooms in
the middle of a residence hall with multiple doors and entrances. This means there are students not in that
fraternity who not only live on the same hall, but also have free and
unrestricted access to wander through that section. Also, only a few other fraternities have
their own kitchen, and many fraternities have to share their commons with
unaffiliated students or other living groups. This is not to say that
sharing is bad, but having our commons all to ourselves is pretty nice. Many fraternities have obscurely located
signs or benches while our sign hangs right above our door and our bench is
right in our front yard. Finally,
most fraternity sections have their R.A. living right in the middle of
their section.
In short, not
only does our section have the structure of a real fraternity house, this
structure creates an environment that feels like a house. There are never strangers wandering
through the house, and they certainly aren’t using a back entrance to
get to our section (there is no back entrance). Brothers frequently leave their doors
wide open so other brothers can drop by and hang out. Because we all share this space together,
there is no threat of vandalism, theft, messes and destruction like you
would find in a dorm where you don’t know half the other
students. The Deke House is
essentially the model of a residential community at Duke University.
Additionally,
The Deke House is located on Craven Quad, easily the most open, accessible
and sociable quad on campus. It is
located in the heart of west campus, a two minute walk from the bus-stop, Wilson Recreational Center, the Bryan Center, the Great Hall, Perkins
Library, and any other dorm on West Campus.
We are sitting on primo west campus reality.
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