The Duke Edge

The Duke Edge

The new freshman class of 2069 had moved and the 2065 Duke school year is about to begin its Fall semester. The university was able to easily hit its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 and actually achieved that goal in 2025. Under leadership of a collection of independent Californian scientists and the Nicholas school professors, Duke University became the world’s most advanced environmental academic institution. Every student graduated as a double major because every student majored in environmental science and then any other major they wanted. The school’s interdisciplinary outlook allowed for incredible environmental sustainable progress in any every area from Economics to Computer Science. The campus had become a laboratory for students to try their inventions (many of which were based off of ideas from the Californians scientists).

 

There were no cars or buses on the campus. The entire campus was an integrated bike exchange. Everyone had access to bikes as a student. Bikes were parked at parking stations in front of every building on campus and when a student used their ID card to swipe to pick up a new bike, that bike would make modifications off that person automatically. Everyone lived in dorms on campus for all four years so there were no long commutes that would make bicycling difficult. The parking lots were all torn up and turned into farm land that worked as the campus food provider as well as out-door lab space. The school was able to produce all food on campus because 100% of the student population was a vegetarian.

 

All of the dorms on East and Central Campus were destroyed in 2030 by a freak earthquake and the university took the opportunity to recreate university housing. All the dorms were made out of old freight cars and stacked so that a dorm was four stories tall and had 12 students on each floor. Each floor was made of groups of 6 who shared a bed space with each other and a common space with the entire dorm. The dorms had solar powers on top of the roof to power the dorm. Each dorm also had garden space in front so that residents could grow their own vegetables and fruits if they did not like what the university was serving in that growing cycle.

 

Duke quit the ACC sports league since the airplane and bus rides added high amounts of unnecessary carbon. The school now focuses its sports energy on inter-dorm Softball league. The entire university takes the year-long contest very seriously because the winning team gets to play the winning softball dorm team from UNC! (The Duke – UNC rivalry luckily did not have to end due to their close proximity.)

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