Your entire statement is subjective. There are other places better than Duke "to you." Your Duke hate is no secret to anyone here. I do have to wonder why you go on and on so, though? It's weird to me. Whatever.
I don't think one can make a blanket statement that one university is better than another. It depends on the individual and what is being studied. The perfect fit for one student may not be the perfect fit for another. Believe it or not, someone who cares a little less about "prestige" and a little more about being in the right school could actually pick Duke over Harvard. And, yes, I do still think Duke can be the right school for many reasons.
So, prestige aside, what should one consider? Yale may have a department that is better than Harvard in a particular discipline. Cornell may have a school that's better than Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Duke and just about anyone else. Certainly, what you plan to major in and how a particular school ranks in that discipline is key in making your choice. My student applied to schools with a great reputation in the discipline being pursued. Student was accepted at 12 very fine universities - some of them even on your "good list."
Living conditions plays a part. On campus or off? Cold winters or mild? Near the ocean or near the mountains?
Student body plays a part. My student did not want to go to a school where the students were competitive to the point of being cut-throat.
I totally disagree with your statement that Stanford academics outshine Duke academics. I went to Stanford, I did not want my student to go there as an undergrad. Heavy on prestige; light on learning. (Sorry fellow Cards.) As I've noted before, and as the parent of a current Stanford student has acknowledged - lots of TA's, some of whom can barely speak English. You know how they say that Cornell is "Easy to get into, hard to get out of?" With Stanford, it's the opposite.
Sports was not a factor for my student in making a choice.
Money? Costs me less to send my student to Duke than it would have to send my student to Cal. (But, gee, William Hung would have been a classmate at Cal!) Schools with great endowments can be a plus.
And whether you like it or not, Duke does have prestige. Again, maybe not to you, but to enough so that your opinion does not matter.
I am not going to comment on voter registration at Duke because I have no idea how many students will or will not register to vote in Durham. I will say that I don't think it's right to expect the student body to do the work that the citizens of Durham should be doing. Can we and they do what we can to help educate Durham voters? As long as it's not done in an "in your face" or "how stupid can you be?" manner, absolutely. And I will concede that your statement that the time to work behind the scenes is after the election is idealistically appropriate - although I believe most political maneuvers take place behind the scenes period.
First, I replied in the post after yours before I saw this one. [I wrote, went away for awhile, came back, finished may post and posted.]
So on to your post:
1. Of course selection of college is subjective. But having the law after Duke students in general trumps all the rest to me.
2. I don't hate Duke. One Duke rah-rah has accused me of that. I have a neutral to positive view of Duke. I just recognize the Duke faculty and administration is greatly at fault here and should be sanctioned.
3. You went to Stanford, but not to Duke. You know that TODAY Duke is better than Stanford despite the general perception how? Your child may tell you that Duke classes are hard while you remember Stanford classes as easy, but I have news to you children don't tell their parents the truth all the time and you are in no position to make that comparison about classes at the two schools today. BTW, I doubt the 88 have tough classes. I suspect they are very political and pretty easy, if you go in there an say the approved things.
4. I lived in Durham after college with a good friend who went to Duke. My antedotal stories are that some cut-throat Duke students would not talk to dorm-mates about classes because they did not want to give away an idea they might use to impress a prof and the library had a problem with students taking wet string in the library to quietly take pages out of journals. That said, I have no idea if the current Duke student body is more or less cut-throat than those days.
5. Not being a Duke rah-rah, I don't buy all the hype. I have never argued that Duke is not a good school. It is not an Ivy/Stanford. Some would say it is not as good as Chicago and Wash U. I was conservative in my view on Duke since the Duke rah-rahs are here crying that I hate Duke for not buying into the Duke Alumni Association scrip on how Duke really is better than any of the Ivies and was actually founded before Oxford.