The traffic clogs on Main and Broad streets, the jam-packed sports utility vehicles and bleary-eyed and weary parents are the telltale signs that another Durham summer ritual is underway.

The Duke University freshmen are moving in to East Campus residence halls.
Most of these students about to jump into college life were born in 1990, a year when rising fuel prices were forcing airlines to make cuts and a different President Bush was sending troops to the Middle East.

Beloit College in Wisconsin, which for the past 11 years has released an annual College Mindset List, noted the similarities in today’s headlines.
Tom McBride, a humanities professor at Beloit, and Ron Nief, the public affairs director, also had this to say about the almost 2 million first-year students who head off to college campuses this month.
The mindset of the class of 2012, the list creators say, is very different from the freshmen of 1990.