The complaints from Krzyzewskiville began to fly almost as soon as Cameron's craziest pitched their tents in early January. The tenters' grievances have ranged from too many tent checks to useless and vaguely defined grace periods.
The latest issue regarding tenting policy has surfaced in the form of allowed absences for women's basketball games. Currently, Head Line Monitor Jeremy Morgan's policy is that at least three people from a given tent have to attend the women's game in order for that tent to receive a grace period for the duration of the game. For both home and away men's games, however, there is a blanket grace period. That is, every tent receives a grace period for the length of the game.
Three days before the UConn-Duke women's game that took place in Cameron Indoor Stadium this past Saturday, Morgan took the unusual step of granting a full grace period for the contest.
Most women's games traditionally draw a few hundred students, well below the turnout that has become automatic when the men play. This would seem to support the current women's games current grace period policy, which has come under attack in recent weeks. Morgan defended his grace period policy in a statement that he issued via e-mail Sunday.
"I started out by giving blanket grace for women's home games, exactly in the same manner as for men's home games," Morgan said. "Unfortunately, people were using the grace to have time for themselves and not to actually attend the women's basketball games."
Morgan's method has raised mixed reviews from both tenters and women's basketball players
"It's ridiculous that the tenters received a grace period for a Duke men's game at Maryland when they don't even get full grace period for most of our home games," junior forward Iciss Tillis said. "There shouldn't be any minimum number of people coming to our game for there to be a grace period. I think that the grace period for women's games should be the same as it is for the men's games."
Senior forward Michele Matyasovsky, expressed a more favorable opinion of Morgan's policy, however.
"I think it's fair," Matyasovsky said. "I think that it's a good way to get people to come to our games."
Tenters did not seem to convey much emotion either way when asked about Morgan's policy.
"It seems legitimate to me," freshman Krzyzewskiville citizen Pat Cachio said. "I mean, the point of the grace period is so that people will go to the game, not to do other things."
"I think it encourages the tenters to attend the women's games," added freshman Diana Tracy, echoing the sentiments of Matyasovsky.
The issue at hand is an example of the attendance problem that the sport of women's college basketball has faced as a whole. The current policy for women's grace period has been seen as both helping and hindering scarce attendance at Duke women's games.
Regardless of its overall place in the scheme of women's basketball attendance woes, Morgan's intentions of the policy are clear.
"The policy was made to encourage tenters to support the women's team....," Morgan said. "I simply wanted to ensure that if I was providing grace for tenters that they were in fact using it for its intended purpose."
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