AP, just how sexy is the Blue Devil? Present company excluded (you and I are both 11’s on a 1-10 scale), would you say the Blue Devil is the sexiest Dukie?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: I don’t want to be an arbiter of taste, so although I’ll say up front that I’ve never been physically attracted to people with superhero outfits and giant sized caricature heads, brandishing tridents, I’ll accept the fact that some fetishists find this really sexy. Or maybe it’s the goatee that drives ’em wild. I’ve got to admit that I like the fact that the Blue Devil always has that big smile. And so athletic, too! While these traits definitely make the BD more attractive than some of those Cameron Crazies with the paint on their not-so-athletic torsos, I’m afraid I’ll still have to avoid calling the BD the sexiest Dukie. You and I still don’t have any close competition. (Check out some of the Blue Devil’s ancestors at the University Archives website: http://www.lib.duke.edu/archives/exhibits/BlueDevil/blue_devil-exhibit.html )

Okay, so when James B. Duke donated all that money and they built West Campus, why did they build it so far away from East Campus? That was back in the 1920s, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t have buses then. How did people get back and forth? Did they walk? That would have sucked.

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Answer Person got some help on this one (hey, sometimes the key is knowing who to ask!), from Tom Harkins, the Assistant University Archivist:

Briefly, the reason we have the East and West Campuses is that when in 1924, Mr. Duke announced his plans for developing a research university around Trinity College, the price for land around Trinity, now the East Campus, became too high. An alternative location had to be found for the school’s expansion. West Campus is it. See Robert F. Durden, THE LAUNCHING OF DUKE UNIVERSITY (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), page 30ff. The book’s call number is 378.756563 D954 L376 1993.

But there were buses in the 1920’s and 30’s, and they weren’t even horse-drawn! In 1991 a student by the name of Curtis Hamilton did a term paper on Duke’s bus service for a History 195/196 course. The paper, “Bus Transportation at Duke: A University-Owned System,” is in the University Archives. According to Hamilton’s research, in 1930 the University purchased two Ford 21-passenger buses. We then contracted with the Public Service Company of North Carolina, which operated city bus systems, to run them between East, West, and downtown Durham. Various different arrangements have been in place over the years since then, until 1978 when we started the present transportation system.

More information on these subjects is available in the Duke University Archives, 341 Perkins.