Although basketball season is still months away, some fans are already tenting. Graduate and professional students begin their 36-hour campout for season tickets tonight at 7:30 p.m.
"It's different than [Kzyzewskiville]," said Drew Brown, a third-year law student. "The only thing it can be compared to is the night before the UNC game, because everyone has to be there, and everyone is so excited."
This year, the campout will offer many new additions for its participants, including T-shirts commemorating the event and a big-screen television that will play the Duke-Virginia football game and past basketball games. There will also be social events and opportunities for community service.
"It is similar to the undergraduate camping experience in that it is very fun," said Will Tyson, a third-year sociology graduate student who helped plan the campout. "It's an older crowd, but we still know how to have fun. Campout is basically the crown jewel of the graduate and professional student year."
Unlike undergraduates, graduate and professional students do not camp out for each game, but instead use this one opportunity to win season tickets.
"As graduate students, we have many more responsibilities and do not have the time to devote to getting tickets that undergraduates do," said Amy Goodman, a graduate student who also tented in K-ville when she was an undergraduate at Duke. "We prefer being able to go out for a weekend and get a season pass."
Over 1,700 people registered online for this weekend's campout, but Daniel Rosenthal, who helped organize the event, said he does not expect all of those people to come. Other time commitments and bad weather have decreased attendance in the past, he said.
"It's really difficult to tell how many people will actually be there," Rosenthal said. "We have a similar number registered this year as the last two years, but last year we had a tropical storm... so we only had 1,200 people. This year, weather permitting, I would guess that there will be about 1,500."
He said many students miss checks and become disqualified before the end of the campout at 7 a.m. Sunday, often because of oversleeping or slipping home. And not all students that do weather the weekend will get season passes. The students who do endure the entire 36 hours are entered into a computerized lottery that will select 700 winners.
"Graduate and professional students consistently pack Cameron with the seats allotted to us," Rosenthal said. "[The campout] is different from the undergraduate task because it is only a weekend, but we want to make sure it is still a difficult enough task that the best fans get into Cameron."
To increase their chances of having tickets for the season, many graduate and professional students informally pool their tickets, making an agreement with one or more other students to divide any tickets the group wins.
Graduate and professional students can also sell their tickets for face value to other graduate and professional students and their spouses.
For the last two years, Brown has camped successfully for tickets, and he said he will camp again this weekend. Although he is optimistic that he will receive tickets again this year, he has back-up plans, as well.
"The best part of the graduate and professional student line is there are other ways of getting in," Brown said. "I will be at the games no matter what."
Holding a season ticket won through the campout guarantees students spots in the graduate section if they arrive before tip-off. However, if the section is not full at tip-off, other students are admitted.
"The goal of this whole process is to fill Cameron and have it as loud and... fun as possible," Goodman said.
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