House Editorial: JMU not immune from town-gown dichotomies destroying Duke
Posted on April 10, 2006

For those of us willing to get out of our little college bubble long enough to watch the evening news, the sordid tale coming out of Duke University is all too familiar. Cocky, loaded white lacrosse players allegedly rape and sodomize a black stripper from the impoverished surrounding community during a party, and all hell breaks loose. The allegations, exacerbated by the shockingly violent e-mail written by one of the players regarding next steps (it involves murdering and skinning the strippers while ejaculating “in my Duke-issue spandex”), has blown the top off the crock pot. In the wake of the accusations, the underlying dichotomy of class, race and education surrounding Duke University has broken to the surface.

As fascinatingly revolting the story may be, we at JMU cannot watch the goings-on in Durham, N.C., from the same detached point of view that we watch “American Idol” or Katie Couric; unlike much of what makes it into the news, the catastrophe at Duke could have happened here.

James Madison University is positioned in a very similar situation to Duke. Racially, our homogenous, pale-faced student body is increasingly at odds with the community. Even more incongruous, however, is the comparative wealth of the students juxtaposed with the chicken-processing town. JMU is located in the middle of an agricultural and manufacturing area, and admits thousands with 703 area codes. And of course, the educational divide between the school and the town further aggravates the situation.

Making matters worse, however, is the fact that JMU is, in large part, the nerve center for the city of Harrisonburg. Wal-Mart didn’t build two SuperCenters within a five-mile radius of the Quad for the farmers and the mountain people. The campus has spread like a cancer throughout the center of Harrisonburg, to the point that we are now exercising eminent domain to take over buildings on Harrisonburg’s Main Street. People can’t even drive down the only interstate connecting the town to the rest of the world without passing under “James Madison University Boulevard,” and the nationally recognized gym that they aren’t allowed to use.

Isolated though we may be from the Blue Devil disaster, JMU is not immune to the race, class and educational divides that have flared up following the rape allegations. Though we have thankfully not had such a deplorable incident to push the community to the breaking point, it will be far worse for us if — or when — we do.