Duke University may not be keen on its portrayal in season three of The White Lotus, but its students seem to share a different sentiment about the show.

On Feb. 16, HBO viewers were introduced to the Ratliff family, a quintet of dramatized North Carolinians who seem plagued by a century-long rivalry — that of Duke versus its neighboring school, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As matriarch Victoria Ratliff (Parker Posey) explains in the premiere, “I was also a [Unc] Tar Heel, but [husband] Timothy went to Duke. [Son] Saxon graduated Duke. [Son] Lachlan, our youngest, just got accepted to both. So, you can imagine it’s a whole thing.” While the resort staff and vacationers were actually unaware of the competitiveness lying between Duke and Unc, it’s a theme that remained a prominent storyline for the Ratliffs, and one that their students know all too well.

Nayeli Chowdhury, a Duke doctoral physical therapy student,...