If you were to go on YouTube right now and search for “college vlog”, you’d get a plethora of results. There’s a lot of variety in the schools represented online – public universities like Penn State, historically black institutions like Howard, and of course, no one can forget the seemingly infinite number of Ivy League videos. However, for a long time, one school seemed to be practically non-existent in the world of college YouTube despite its notoriety elsewhere: Duke.
This is not to say that there aren’t people posting videos about Duke – there certainly are – but we don’t have the numbers that Harvard or any UC school has. We’re typically not on the first page of results when you search for videos unless you specify that you’re looking for Duke, and even then, I could never find any dorm tours or locate content related to some of the things I was interested in learning about. I remember reading messages on GroupMe over the summer about how there weren’t as many videos to watch about Duke besides what the university itself publishes. This isn’t about competing with other schools so much as giving a bigger picture of what Duke is really like.
Probably the most recognizable Duke vloggers are Kathryn Mueller and Symphony Webber, both of whom graduated in spring 2019. The former is especially popular among pre-health students since she often discussed her journey on the pre-dental track. The latter makes more fun and relatable videos, like Different Types of Duke Students. Both give great insight into what the life of a Duke student is like, but incoming freshmen would benefit from having more current videos, and not just videos about the application process.
Sure, pfrosh can learn about Duke by watching “30 Days to Duke”, perusing Reddit threads or becoming dedicated members of The Chronicle’s reader base, but there is no doubt that YouTube as a medium is evolving. It has become a space where you can actually see someone and feel connected to them, for better or worse. Duke may not need a “face of the school” (we’ve already got athletes anyway), but it’s nice to see that someone exists beyond all the promotional materials.
There’s bound to be at least one person on Duke’s campus who is filming videos to share with the world – but there’s enough room for more than one person. We’ve just got to make time in our schedules first.