A Brief History

In July 1969 the Committee on Residential Life, chaired by Howard Strobel, submitted a report recommending various changes in living arrangements for students on campus, including the elimination of freshmen dormitories and the establishment, at a time when men and women were housed not only in separate dormitories but on separate campuses, of a co-educational dormitory. The co-ed dorm, known variously as the Pilot Project, the Experimental College, and the Residential College, was to be an academically elite house as an antidote to the perceived anti-intellectualism of undergraduate life at Duke. Residents would be required to be enrolled in Program II or some form of Independent Study, and were to be further selected for diversity and excellence. After consideration of various locations, a residence hall on the Women's (East) Campus, then known as Faculty Apartments, was chosen since it contained suites arranged around semi-private bathrooms, permitting men and women to live in close proximity without violating the State law against co-educational bathrooms. Twenty-seven men and twenty-seven women were chosen from a pool of 151 applicants, and John Clum was appointed Director.

In September 1970 the students moved in and proceeded, without consulting the Director, to change the name of the Faculty Apartments to Wilson House, after Mary Grace Wilson, the then recently retired Dean of the Women's College, who was reputed to be implacably opposed to co-educational dormitories.

[Footnote: Despite its universal acceptance, it is not clear whether the name Wilson was ever officially approved. Wilson House remains the only residence hall on East Campus main quadrangle without a name engraved on the lintel over the front door.]

[Resumption of text.] They also decided upon SHARE (Student Housing for Academic and Residential Experimentation) as the name of their living group. These two acts immediately established SHARE as a group with its own mind and with a talent for being the Court Jester, features which have endeared it to many students and faculty but which at the same time have occasionally been troubling to the administration.

From the beginning, there were tensions between the academic and residential aspects of the experiment. The administration, concerned then as now with reports of anti-intellectualism, wanted SHARE to be an elite academic group, whereas the residents wished to try out various alternative lifestyles. This was a matter of emphasis. The administration was making what was, for the time, a bold lifestyle experiment in allowing students of both sexes to live in the same dormitory, while the residents, although poking fun at the status quo, in no way neglected their studies.

The co-educational experiment of SHARE was a success, and it was extended to the rest of the university. SHARE, however, wished to go further and have co-educational rooms -- not, apparently, for overtly sexual reasons but just to see how it might work out. This put the Director in a difficult situation. SHARE expected him to press their demands on the administration and the administration expected him to enforce President Terry Sanford's Cohabitation Statement which, in essence, prohibited cohabitation at Duke. Caught in the cross-fire, John Clum resigned as Director in 1972 and was replaced, for one year, by Dick White. After 1974 SHARE became self-directed since it had no official faculty coordinator, although a faculty family lived in the Wilson faculty apartment and faculty were associated with SHARE informally, often in connection with the rich offering of House Courses. At the invitation of SHARE, I taught a House Course on meditation in world religions during academic 1980-81.

The tension between the academic and the residential aspects of the experiment, between as it were the "A" and the "R" of SHARE, is typified by that House Course. At its best, this tension was a blending in the finest traditions of a Residential College. Since I brought my professional expertise to it, the course was thoroughly respectable academically, yet it allowed me to test the feasibility of incorporating multiple workshops, led by a variety of specialists, in the practical aspects of the religions which are normally taught only on the level of theory and philosophy. It was an experiment which I deemed successful, and I re-designed the House Course as a full credit Junior-Senior Seminar, "Systems of Meditation", which I have subsequently offered in the Department of Religion once every two or three years. The effect of bringing in specialists in the practice of meditation to lead workshops was, I found, not only an enhancement of the academic aspect of the course, it allowed the residents of SHARE, and continues to allow the registrants in my seminar, to examine their lifestyles and decide if they wish to make any changes in their approach to reality.

Partly as a result of the success of this House Course, I was invited to live in the Faculty Apartment as de facto Director, but this invitation was frustrated when SHARE was moved, the following year (academic 1982-3), to Alspaugh.

The next year, academic 1984-5, SHARE moved to Epworth (above) where it found a physical space ideally suited to both the "A" and the "R" in its name. The Faculty Apartment was occupied, but the relationship between the faculty resident and SHARE was informal. In 1986 I was once again invited to live with SHARE, but once again the invitation was frustrated when another branch of the administration, apparently without consulting those responsible for filling the Faculty Apartment, assigned an Artist-in-Residence to the space.

When, in academic 1995-6, East Campus was designated the First Year Campus, SHARE petitioned to be allowed to remain in Epworth. Its request was granted, subject to the normal biennial review of selective living groups, provided that it accept first year students, which it was permitted to recruit from the general applicant pool rather than have them randomly assigned to it. Epworth/SHARE thus became the only cross-sectional house on campus and the only upperclass presence on the First Year Campus, apart from a few upperlcass students who had remained for one year under a "grandfather" clause. Surprisingly, this bold and intriguing experiment was not actively supported by the administration, but was, rather, ignored and, when it was mentioned, it was spoken of in negative terms. Despite such neglect, SHARE remained strong during academic 1995-6, but the administrative isolation began to tell on it during academic 1996-7 when I, finally, was able to accept SHARE's invitation and become their Faculty-in-Residence. My overwhelmingly positive experience in that post is documented in my article "The Real Duke", Duke Magazine 83:1 (November-December, 1996).

During academic 1996-7, SHARE was given notice that its declining numbers necessitated that it be moved, at the end of the year, out of Epworth. SHARE and I vigorously protested this decision, which we regarded as based upon an incomplete understanding of the value of Epworth/SHARE, and proposed that the administration could bring Epworth/SHARE more into line with the First Year Experience by allying it with the FOCUS program. This proposal was at first accepted, but later, at the very end of the academic year, rejected, when the FOCUS program withdrew from the agreement. SHARE was then relocated, for academic 1997-8, in a section of the third floor of Wilson House.

[editor's note: Since then, SHARE moved to Central Campus, 1708 Pace St. A-L where they remained happily until a hotly contested West Campus housing reassignment which moved SHARE to the second floor of Edens 3A. But you know what? SHARE survived that move too.]

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