Rob Harris Dallas, Texas Major: Public Policy Minor: Economics
If Rob Harris were to provide new Duke students with one bit of advice, it would be this: "I would want to tell them, ‘It's OK to get an occasional ‘C.' ‘C' stands for Character. You don't have to be perfect.'"
Harris is not suggesting that students should abdicate their classroom responsibilities. Rather, he believes that students at Duke should be adventurous in taking classes and trying new things, "whether sports or the arts, or whatever."
Harris has shown a willingness during his college career to try new things.
On campus, the former president of Kappa Alpha fraternity is a certified peer educator on sexual assault for the organization Men Acting for Change.
Off campus, Harris is a volunteer in Durham Community Credit Counseling. He is helping develop a program that will assist "unbanked" people regain or qualify for and learn to use banking services such as checking accounts and credit cards. The program will teach them how to write a check, keep good records, and balance their check books. Participants in the "Get Checking" program receive a certificate that serves as collateral with local banks in re-establishing credit.
Assuming things go as planned, Harris will be the third generation of his family to take up law. His maternal grandfather is a retired lawyer, his father is a litigator against the government, an uncle is an attorney for the tobacco industry and his older sister is in her third year of law school. Oh yes, he has a brother-in-law who recently passed the Texas Bar exam.
"I am interested in doing mergers and acquisitions law, but they all say I should keep an open mind," he reports.
The next Harris attorney may yet choose to take off some time before law school, however. He is considering offers to start work on presidential campaigns for Republican candidates after graduation. He has some political experience and a good deal of interest.
Last summer, he worked with the Republican National Senatorial Committee in Washington, D.C. He was a research department intern assigned to study opposition candidates in key races in Rhode Island, Montana and Minnesota for the mid-term elections. "Tabulating roll call votes, finding weakness in the opposition, stuff like that," he says. He believes his work may have helped Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee defeat a Republican opponent in a bitter primary battle, although Chafee was one of the Republican casualties on Election Day.
Before coming to Duke, Harris attended Jesuit College Preparatory High School, an all-male school of 1,000 students in Dallas. It is an experience he would not trade for the world, he says. He particularly values the school's focus on building character as opposed to building a resume.
Building character means taking chances, trying new things. For those who follow that advice, Harris has the perfect T-shirt message, he says with a laugh. "It would say, ‘Duke: Where perfection comes to die.'"