Duke

Its about that time of year when we talk about Duke.

Now we talk about a lot about other basketball teams, UNC, Ohio, Georgetown, but when it is March, we will surely bring up Duke. Love them, hate them, every March they are there.

I was there late last fall.

So it turns out that Duke is also a school. Been that way since 1838. By all accounts its a pretty good one too. U.S. News & World Report ranks Duke as the nations 8th best school overall. That is almost as good as their basketball team.

My visit was rather uneventful. Not many were on campus, just me and a few folks I was scheduled to meet with. We met. i walked around taking pictures.

I could have been on any number of New England Ivy covered campuses. Gothic church? Check. Tree lined quad? Check. Granite relief of Confederate General? Wait… they do actually have one of those. Check.

 

Duquesne

“Doo-kane”, its pronounced “Doo-kaaaaane”.Pittsburgh, with its grey skies and steel girders, is perfectly gothic. Duquesne with its calligraphy script and Catholicism is perfectly matched.Sitting in a large ball room chatting with an undergrad he admitted that while ghrowing up in Pittsburgh, he had never been “up here”. He even admitted that none of his friends had ever been up here either. I raised my eyebrows and cocked my head as if surprised, opting not to tell him I had no idea where Duquesne was located till I booked my flight.I am finding a correlation between ivy on campus buildings and the game of lacrosse. Where I was raised we had niether. No…that isn’t true, there was lacrosse. It was played on back fields by a couple kids I never met. I only know this because I played rugby on the same fields. No one else knnew we had a rugby team. Right.

It is not like that everywhere.Duquesne is a great illustration of what is right and wrong in American higher education. Right in that it is a great school that produces great scholars.Wrong in that because it does not have a big time football program, no one, not even those in Pittsburgh, knows where it is.