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Mixed feelings. Encouraging academic engagement outside the classroom is obviously an admirable goal, and I am certainly all for promoting a more responsible social scene. At the same time, Duke’s social scene is one of its most defining characteristics, along with things like its unusual focus on freshmen, southern location, athletics/basketball, etc. Duke is going to have to walk a fine line to improve the intellectual atmosphere on campus without sacrificing quintessential aspects of the university.</p>
<p>Duke is more academically rigorous than most people realize, and it has a fair number of intellectual students running around campus. I think Brodhead is intent on switching the spotlight from the basketball team and parties to these students, and I agree that it’s something that needs to be done if Duke is to continue to be taken seriously in coming years. Less of a focus on what students do Thursday/Friday nights and more on what they do the rest of the week, if you will.</p>
<p>I’m hoping that one of the best things to come out of this will be increased faculty recruitment. Duke has strengthened its programs over the last two decades and performed extremely well in the most recent NRC rankings, but recruiting top-notch faculty will be paramount if it wants to seriously compete with universities like Columbia and Stanford. Duke’s new $3+ billion fundraising campaign will help with this, I think.</p>