You've heard it before.
Or maybe you've even told a story yourself.
"When my Dad went here they drank from kegs on the quad every night."
Or "This never would have happened at Old Duke."
As the hordes of Rainbow, Reef, New Balance and Birkenstock trekked from Georgian dorms to off-East bungalows promising free alcohol, they heard of the glorified Old Duke. And they learned it was a thing of the past.
This year Alcohol Law Enforcement agents came to the party, too.
Agents surrounded houses, checked IDs, breathalyzed suspected offenders and issued citations to almost 200 students in the best-coordinated enforcement campaign in recent Duke memory. And with reports of ALE undercover agents-one seen sporting a pink polo shirt (collar popped, of course)-students weren't really sure what they were dealing with.
But when the smoke cleared and pink citations had been doled out to underage drinkers, many students started to wonder: What happened to Old Duke? Are scared underclassmen afraid to leave campus? Is SWAT-team style alcohol enforcement the New Duke?
And while Old Duke is legendary and mythical, students understand New Duke even less.
"The center of campus social life was primarily [keg] parties and campus-based," said Jonathan Kaden, Trinity '96, who said he entered Duke at the tail end of Old Duke. "One thing that was very nice about that was that it created a really nice sense of community, a sense of social vibrancy."
At Old Duke-the campus social scene during the '80s and early '90s-kegs were allowed and easy to find. Back then, the state drinking age was 18 for beer and wine, an on-campus bar attracted students of all years, and drinking laws were less strictly enforced. Several times a week students threw on-campus section parties on West and East Campuses-until 1995 East housed students from all classes and wasn't yet dry-alumni said.
Duke's battle against the bottle has come in waves over the past decade. In the mid-90s administrators and law enforcement officials stepped up their efforts to crack down on large-scale underage drinking. North Carolina's drinking age was now 21-meaning that many undergraduates could only sip in secrecy. The first assault-on campus drinking-resulted in a ban on kegs on quads without University personnel manning the pump. The drinking-related death of junior Raheem Bath in 1999 only further intensified the administration's battle against underage drinking. The result was a social shift off campus, and more recently, in responding to complaints from residents off East, ALE has taken a special interest in eliminating underage drinking there.
Kaden remembers during his freshman year in 1992 there were kegs on campus most Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. But by his final days at Duke as a senior, kegs were banned without University bartenders and thus largely absent from campus.
Kegs-with the requisite University bartenders-were most recently available to large numbers of students on the quad Spring 2005 at Campus Council's "Old Duke Party." But really, as some alumni said, University bartenders manning taps were only introduced as Old Duke was dying. Even students' attempts at a modern-day reincarnation of Old Duke fell short of the mark.
But a shift back to the "good ol' days" of 20 years ago seems unlikely now. ALE's stringent enforcement of off-campus drinking has left many with few options, as the University has said publicly it won't play host to large-scale underage drinking events on campus.
And alumni-who lived, and loved, Old Duke-express a twinge of disappointment when they learned of this year's enforcement efforts.
"I think that alumni always want to think that kids at Duke now are having a positive experience like they did," Kaden said.
The campus social scene was a key component to their Duke education, they said.
"I feel that the social scene today confines the spirit of a college education that we were able to enjoy," Bill Fieber '82 said. "There is as much to learn from someone sitting across the table drinking a beer as there is from someone in the classroom."
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