Hey I recently got accepted and I wanted to ask you a few things. I am also Hispanic and was wondering how that aspect of Duke is. Are there a lot of Hispanics? Does anybody speak Spanish? Also, how do the meal plans and stuff work?
When I attended Duke, I felt that there was a significant presence of Hispanics on campus, even though it didn’t reflect that much in most of my general ed classes. However, you can definitely find a strong supportive group through Mi Gente, the Latino student group on campus. They have been striving to make the campus a more open and welcoming environment for incoming Hispanic students from all backgrounds. They hold many events to make students feel at home, and to bring awareness to a lot of issues that impact the Latino community nationally and internationally. Most of the Hispanics I met did speak Spanish, though some did not, it does happen that you get that kind of mix.
In case you haven’t been keeping up with what’s been going on at Duke, right now the environment for some Hispanics/Latinxs is rather tense. For the last few years, Mi Gente, the Latinx Student Group, has been funding the annual Latinx Student Recruitment Weekend (LSRW) with little to no additional funding from the university. As a result of years of meetings and demands from the student group to administration only to be met with empty promises, LSRW will not be funded by Mi Gente this year. I am not sure what the updates are as of today regarding LSRW, but that is what I do know. Many people support Mi Gente’s boycott of LSRW, myself included, however there are others that do not think this is the right course of action. I support it because I served on council for two years and know the struggle that we had with having administration listen to us. That, however, can be for a much longer and private conversation if you want it.
As far as meals go, that depends on your financial aid package. You do pay for a meal plan for your first year (or your financial aid covers it, depending on your situation) and that meal plan covers five Monday-Friday breakfast swipes at Marketplace, the Freshman Campus dining hall and seven dinner swipes. If you don’t use the breakfast swipe that day, you can use it that same day to pay for part of lunch. Your dinner swipes work differently, in that if you don’t use your dinner swipe that day, they carry over to the weekend and you can use it as a brunch swipe for Saturday or Sunday. Aside from this, the meal plan also covers food points, which is the currency used to pay for meals. Depending on the meal plan you get determines how many food points you get for the semester. If you do run out of food points before the Fall semester, you can add food points and pay for them through the Duke Bursar. If you have leftover food points from Fall semester, they roll over to Spring semester.
This system is relatively similar once you become a sophomore and the last two years, however the food swipes don’t carry over. Instead, you get more food points as that is how you pay for meals and food. The good thing about food points, from freshman year to senior year, is you can use them at any eatery on campus as well as delivery services from approved vendors available on Duke’s Dining website.
This is about as detailed as I can get when it comes to something generic. If you have more specific questions about your own situation, feel free to come off anon and I can give you more information.
-Cameron Crazie 2015Go Blue Devils!