Does It Suck Now as Much as We Think?

Lucie Milner, 1943

Dating Scene: "Girls lived on East Campus, men lived on West, and we had to be in during the week at 10:30. On Saturdays we could stay out until 11, though. Also, if you went to a dance, you had to be home 20 minutes after the dance was over."

Hangouts: "We used to go to The Goody Shop on Main Street, roughly across from where Brightleaf Square is now.... You could drink beer there.

"In what was originally the gym [now the Ark] three to five nights a week, there was a jukebox dance over there after supper. You never had dates--you just went and danced for maybe half an hour and then you went home and studied."

Shucks...: "Sunday night in the East Campus union we had a sing-a-long, and every year the sororities and fraternities had inter-fraternity, inter-sorority contest choruses who sang. We sang Glen Miller-type songs.... I could whistle very well, and they told me, don't sing--stand up and open and close your mouth like you're singing, but then I whistled solos, and we won."

In the dorm: "Each sorority had what was really a big living room, and there was a kitchen on either end of the floor that you could use, and there was a lady who sat downstairs, just inside the door when you came in and you had to introduce your date to [her], and then you could go upstairs and play bridge or listen to music. We all had record players."

--Macy Parker

Ruth Wade Ross, 1968

--Greg Veis

Walter Rogers and Gary Melchionni, 1973

Party Scene: "What distinguishes it from now is that there was an almost all-pervasive political consciousness about the whole thing. Everything anyone did, almost down to dress and entertainment, had some sort of political connotation" ~Rogers

Dating Scene: "I don't know, it probably was different then than it is today. I think there were a lot more couples around, steadier relationships" ~Melchionni

Hangouts: "There was an Italian place called 'Annamaria's,' but everyone called it 'Bat's' because Annamaria's husband went by the name 'Batman.' She ran the place and he entertained the customers with off-color jokes and the occasional song on guitar. You served your own drinks out of a cooler and flipped through his comic book collection while you waited for your pizza." ~Rogers

Underground Legends: "We had the quad dogs, free roaming dogs, including the legendary Boswell, who had the run of the campus. They seem to have been replaced by feral cats on campus as far as I can tell." ~Melchionni

--Macy Parker

Julia Wyatt Love, 1983

Party Scene: "Here's how it went... Wednesday nights, there were dorm parties. Thursday was fraternity kegs. Friday and Saturday were parties, of course, and then on Monday and Tuesday, we would go and drink at the Hideaway.... The drinking age was 18 for beer and wine, so people pretty much stayed on campus and drank, and they drank all the time.

"There were some off campus parties, but the fraternity scene was still really dominant there. It was more like frat guys who moved off campus, and they'd throw a party.... Most of the fraternities just had big parties, but Theta Chi was the disco frat, and every weekend some people would go and wear cheesy dresses and dance all night to disco!"

Deadheads: "There were some great concerts. The best one of all was the Grateful Dead coming on parents' weekend. Deadheads were coming up to Gucci-clad mothers saying, 'Got any acid,' and the gardens were crazy because people were dropping acid and dancing."

Love in the Air: "I guess the thing about Duke was: Everybody loved it. You could be the Theta Chi disco dancers or the J. Crew girl with the pearls and have your own experience, and there wasn't a lot of judging. I really felt like everyone was looking out for everyone else. It was a really warm place."

Dating Scene: "I was talking to my alumni friends last month, and someone brought up dating. And I said, 'Dating at Duke? When was there dating?'"

--Faran Krentcil

Kathleen Glynn-Sparrow, 1988

Party Scene: "Each night a different frat would have a keg. Monday and Tuesdays were on East Campus--the rest of the week was on West. If you felt like going out on any night, you went to the kegs. The frat guys would card, but they weren't very strict. I hate to say it, but of course, girls never had a problem. During the year the University passed a rule that said if a frat was having a keg or party, they had to serve food, and it kind of became a joke because they would put out a bag of Doritos or Oreos, and if anyone came they could say, 'There's our food.' East Campus was for the more studious types, but West was it.

"Off campus venues weren't really that popular at all. Satisfactions, Durham Bulls games, anywhere you could drink, kids would hang out. On campus we would go to the Cambridge Inn. We would grab a CI beer and a CI slice and discuss what we were going to do with the rest of our night. On Central there was a student-run bar called The Pub. That place was out of control: no regulation. Anyone could drink. The Hideaway was around, but it was a lot more restrained. Mostly upperclassmen went there."

Dating Scene: "You were either dating someone or you were hooking up. For the most part, I would say, for the lack of a better word, there was a lot of functional dating. A lot of times you just needed to take someone to a date function so you would be on a date, but it was no big thing."

--Jon Schnaars

Ershela Sims, 1993

Campus Life: "The East Campus food court opened my freshman year, so we didn't always have to go to West Campus for meals. There wasn't any food on points when I got here either, but throughout the years, we could order pizza and other off-campus delivery services on our food points."

Party Hardy: "There were kegs on campus every night at fraternities except for Sunday. People were always partying at the Downunder. There was a party called Purgatory in the East Campus food court each year. The parties I liked most were progressives at Mirecourt, Stonehenge, Purple Passion parties and Reggae Jam. Theme parties always centered on alcohol."

Duke Memories: "I was here for two national championships, back-to-back, and that made life on campus more exciting. I remember how we all banded together, pulling for the basketball team. After our first championship, students really united together for the second. I remember bench burning after the first win, and how someone was unfortunately really badly injured by it."

Events that Changed History: "The defining world event during my time at Duke was the Gulf War. Some students left my junior year to join the forces or fight. My friend's roommate jokingly called herself a super-senior because she had left for the war and then returned to finish her Duke degree. The war affected all of us in different ways."

--Kim Roller

Camilla Duke and Michelle Spencer, 1998

Party scene: "It was like when we won the championship every night on West Campus. Earlier on in my time, it would just be a madhouse on Friday and Saturday nights on West with kegs on the quads. You would be outside waiting in lines for 30 minutes to get into a fraternity section." ~Duke

Dating scene: "The dating scene was pretty much the same as the party scene: fraternity-oriented. It was not so much asking if you wanted to go to a movie, but if you wanted to go to a fraternity party." ~Spencer

Hangouts: "If I hadn't been back to Duke in the past five years, there would be nothing familiar to me. The Hideaway, which was the meeting place every night, is gone, and every fraternity I hung out with has been kicked off campus--Kappa Sig, SAE, Phi Psi, Sigma Ep and the Delts. And we'd go to the Power Company every Thursday night to dance--it's a nudie bar now." ~Duke

Biggest story of the year: "We actually beat UNC, and we had a foam party to celebrate because they didn't want us to burn benches. It was terrible. Basketball was in a slump the four years I was there, and then as soon as we left, they won a championship." ~Duke

Catastrophe!: "When we came back early for rush sophomore year, there was the big winter storm and this huge virus. Every time someone didn't make it to rush, we'd be like, 'Oh, she got the virus.' People were dropping off like flies--it was this big crisis on campus." ~Duke

--Whitney Beckett