Head Line Monitor Greg Skidmore presented and defended his tent policy for Krzyzewskiville at Wednesday's meeting of the Duke Student Government.
Responding to criticism in The Chronicle's Wednesday editorial, Skidmore discussed his two major changes to last year's policy--the creation of walk-up line guidelines and the reduction of the Blue tenting cap from 50 to 30 tents. DSG legislators were allowed to ask questions regarding the policy, but will neither debate nor vote on the plan until DSG's Oct. 3 meeting.
"The self-regulated walk-up line was pretty much a disaster last year," Skidmore said. "In this year's policy, each person can only save a spot in line for one other person."
Skidmore said that in the past, people could save spots for 10 to 15 of their friends, allowing them to cut into line shortly before tip-off. In the new policy, line monitors will distribute color-coded wristbands to walk-up line members at a random, unannounced time during the day of or day before the two tenting games.
At the time of distribution, each person in line may give the line monitors the name of one other person who is currently not in line. Wristbands will be distributed two hours later to those on the absentee list.
The head line monitor said that allowing students to wait in line for 50 percent of the time will let them attend classes, eat meals or go to the bathroom--activities that members of previous self-regulated walk-up lines have had the freedom to do.
Skidmore also addressed the reduction of Blue tents from 50 to 30, pointing both to statistics from last season and the early timing of the Jan. 17 game versus the University of Maryland as justification for the change.
"There was a three to four day break between the 31st and 37th tent last year," Skidmore said of Blue tenting for the 2001 Carolina game. "And most of the tents between 40 and 50 registered the day before White tenting began. They were not hard-core tenters."
Skidmore said he did not want to repeat what happened in 1999, when he and his co-tenters arrived the day before dorms opened after Christmas break and 56 tents were already registered.
With 30 blue tents, the 360 early tenters would constitute 5 percent of the entire student body and 25 percent of the number of students who would be allowed into the games, Skidmore said.
Executive Vice President Drew Ensign said that the policy can still be changed before next week's meeting when it will be debated and voted upon without the option of amendment, and that DSG members or Duke students may still offer their input on the plan this week.
IN OTHER BUSINESS: The Student Organizations Finance Committee elected five new members--freshmen Philip Kurian, Karan Maheshwari and Christopher Scoville; sophomore Eric Nicola and junior Kevin Williams.
Two Duke community organizations--Korean Undergraduate Student Association and Raleigh Chinese Christian Church College Group--were officially recognized by DSG. Two other groups--Where's Gus? Theater and Pakistani Student Association--were granted charters by the legislature.
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