DURHAM, NC—Controversy arose last night after a whistleblower leaked secret instructions from Project Wild orientation leaders, telling their first years to stop showering all semester.
At 7:33 PM last night, an anonymous email titled, “On the Subject of Project Wild” was sent to the student-body from user belle.hernandez@duke.edu, detailing the user’s experience as a freshman in Project Wild. It revealed that students were not only instructed to stop showering but to avoid, “just all forms of general hygiene altogether.”
Project Wild, a program from Duke’s Experiential Orientation, requires students to spend five days camping in Pisgah National Forest. Students have no access to bathrooms while camping, prompting orientation leaders to recommend they stop showering for the week. This year, however, they extended the no-shower rule to continue all semester, despite having access to bathrooms since O-Week ended.
The leak sparked many opinions from students. Jonah Granreitz (T’28), who participated in Project Wild over a month ago, expressed his slight discomfort with the situation. “My shirt has fully fused into my skin by now,” Granreitz said. “I’m genuinely afraid I’ll remove flesh if I attempt to take off the shirt I wore on our orientation hike.”
However, not all responses to the orientation’s odd request were negative. A few minutes after the email was released, responses supporting Project Wild erupted on social media. “I don’t know why some people are complaining,” Graham Gosser (P’28) wrote in an Instagram post. Gosser, a former Project Wild participant, attributed the complaints to simple sensitivity. “You’ll never catch me or my fellow Pratt stars complaining,” he wrote.
Project Wild orientation leaders refused to comment.
It is unclear whether the leaked instructions are related to last week’s sightings, in which a former Project Wild member was spotted eating out of trash cans and chanting, “LNT, leave no trace, LNT.”
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