Duke's Random Roommates

When Duke University (NC) announced that this academic year the incoming batch of first-year students would not be allowed to pick their roommates, the headlines exploded.  Pundits espoused the benefits of students interacting outside their cultural bubbles, and online debates raged whether Duke’s reasoning on the shift was sound: that when too many students self-selected, they were not exposed to the type of diversity that is a hallmark of the college experience at many institutions. But one semester into the experiment, the university has been quiet -- intentionally so.