N.C. State's Image of UNC-CH Mirrors Our Image of Duke

"What do you want?!?"

"Well, I'm writing a column about what N.C. State students think about Carolina, and I was wondering if you ..."

"Listen dude, I'm not the man you wanna be talkin' to ..."

"Oh, come on, please? Surely you must ..."

"Dude, I said I'm not the man you wanna be talkin' to! Now get..."

And so I got.

What you've just read is the transcript of a tense interview I had this past weekend with a student at N.C. State University. He was decked out entirely in Wolfpack red, from his pants to his cap to his flushed, angered face.

After exploring the huge experiment in smokestacks and bricks that is State's campus, I did eventually find a few students who were willing to tell me their feelings on UNC-Chapel Hill.

Merging all their stereotypes together, their conception of the average UNC-CH student is an exceedingly stuck-up, exceedingly liberal, exceedingly wealthy person who's too stupid to understand engineering but too nerdy to know how to have a good time.

In short, we have an image problem on Hillsborough Street. And that's fine; we'd be a little ornery too if our football team had lost eight out of the last 10 times we'd played them. But unfortunately, we deserve a lot of their flack.

We are certifiably, unquestionably stuck-up. As Lola, a junior at N.C. State studying computer engineering, succinctly put it, "Y'all think you're all that or something." Almost every complaint I heard about UNC-CH revolved around our arrogance and condescension toward their school.

Some students I talked to expressed their distaste for our University based on what they perceived as the relative wealth of our student body.

Colin, a graduate student, told me, "The more expensive a school is, the more people think that the students are spoiled. It's like all your daddies bought your SUVs. N.C. State isn't like that; we're one of the cheapest schools in North Carolina."

Although he's wrong about the relative cost of educations at N.C. State and UNC-CH -- tuition at his school is only $40 less than it is here -- his perception of Chapel Hill as being unwelcoming for people of modest means is troubling.

While part of this perceived arrogance stems from wealth, other students complained about our snobbery. Chapel Hill has long provided a haven for people who don't fit into mainstream N.C. society.

Lindsay, an English major at N.C. State, told me, "I guess that humanities people just tend to be weird and unconventional. I look around my English classes and I think, Lord, what would an entire university filled with these people be like?"

Although we should always celebrate our unconventionality, we sometimes assume that it makes us better than the rest of the state. Our self-respect turns into snobbery, our intellectualism into pedantry and our social activism into self-righteousness.

The worst thing about our arrogance is that we can dish it out but we can't take it. We'll call N.C. State a cow school for dumb hicks until the cows come home, but we still lay claim to the mantra that we're "the university of the people."

The full extent of our hypocrisy comes into view when you ask UNC-CH students about Duke University. Here's what some of my friends had to say a few days ago about our rival up U.S. 15-501: "I hate them because they're rich, spoiled snobs.

"They come over on the Robertson Scholars bus all the time; those dorks don't have anything to do over there because they study too much! They're too elitist; UNC is the university of the people!"

If we really want to deserve that title, we can start by adopting some of the humility that should come with it.

Reach Jim Doggett at jdoggett@email.unc.edu.