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I was born and raised in Durham and have always been close to Duke through friends, family, and business connections. Although I went to school primarily at UNC, I took a couple of regular undergraduate courses at Duke. Actually, I have never much been aware of all this so-called town/gown tension. Duke has a huge footprint in Durham, so naturally there will be some little issues such as rowdiness where a lot of houses have been rented by students.

I live nearby, in Raleigh, and am delighted to be out of Durham, which I do not especially care for, not because of Duke, but because there are too many gang-banging drug dealers and out-of-control black teenagers. Most of the hardcore rednecks don't infringe much in the areas of the city that I ever frequented.

I remember as a child that there was the feeling that Duke undergraduates were brats. Nowadays, it seems to me that the undergraduate college is hardly noticed by the community, except in basketball season. For most people in Durham, I think that "Duke" means an institutional behemoth, mostly medical, that employees 30,000 people.

I am a little surprised to see myself so furiously offended at a slight against Durham. Of course, Durham has some major social pathology in its large black population. Ironically, Durham wouldn't be such a poorly governed town with ridiculous spectacles like the shop-lifting school board member if it were not for the very liberal Duke community reliably combining with the block-voting blacks to give Durham a city government that looks like a miniature Detroit.

In spite of all Durham's problems, I have consistently found in my adult life that people whom I have known from around the country who move to the Triangle area, are always trying to get me to go with them to Durham to see the famous Durham Bulls or otherwise hangout. People rag on it, but they think it is "hip." There are plenty, plenty of very sophisticated people in Durham.

But as to any Duke undergraduate brat swaggering around with a general feeling of disdain for the “locals,” such a person would be not only a brat but also a fool. If the arrogance of youth did not diminish with maturity, I'd say that we have evidence that even the finest education can not make a silk purse from a sows ear.

(I believe I have exhaustively answered your question as to whether Durham was my hometown. LOL)