At the men's lacrosse season opener Saturday, there will probably be thousands of fans cheering-but not many chugging beers.
Several students said they plan to grill and participate in informal tailgating in the parking lot near Koskinen Stadium prior to the game, and the pep band will start playing about an hour before face-off.
"It's going to be just like a basketball game," said senior Daron Gunn, co-treasurer of the pep band, about the band's performance before and during the game. "It's just great to support fellow Duke students in everything that they do."
Enthusiasm for the game has sprung from both the student body and the local community. By Thursday evening, a Facebook event marking the game had more than 1,000 confirmed attendees, about half of whom were Duke students.
Scot Meyer, creator of the Facebook event related to the season opener, is a junior at East Chapel Hill High School.
"A lot of people are on Facebook, so I figured I would get the best audience," he said.
He predicted a "wide variety of people" would attend.
"All the lacrosse community will be there," said Meyer, whose high school team won the 2006 state lacrosse title. "A lot of us are really excited. We love watching Duke play."
On campus, a Feb. 19 e-mail to the senior class included the season opener as one of two "senior class events this week."
The Senior Class Council decided to promote the game "mainly just to show the support to the the rest of the seniors on the Duke lacrosse team," said Class President Atin Garg. "We all, pretty much, do support the lacrosse team."
Jeffrey Au, director of the band, said the idea to perform at the opener came from a student member of the band.
Neither he nor Gunn could remember the last time the group played at a men's lacrosse game. Au noted, however, that before the 2006 season was cancelled, the band had been talking about playing at one of the lacrosse team's games.
Despite the enthusiasm, however, many students said they would be careful not to run afoul of rules outlined in an e-mail sent Feb. 20 by Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs. Police will be enforcing underage drinking laws, and students may not park in the Whitford lot near Koskinen Stadium, Moneta wrote.
Junior Elliott Wolf, president of Duke Student Government, sent an e-mail to leaders of selective living groups decrying the planned enforcement.
He said police had never carded before and encouraged students to prepare for the game in parking lots farther from the stadium, where he noted there would be little police presence.
Moneta explained that the guidelines were aimed at managing the large crowd administrators anticipate and "avoiding a large scene where there are substantial underage drinkers."
"There's no change in policy here," he said.
Several fraternity members confirmed that many of their brothers will be attending the game, although their organizations do not have official plans.
"We're going to approach this game kind of like we approached the first tailgate for football," said junior Rob Dehaas, president of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. "We don't want to kind of go out and be the guinea pigs and be the first group that gets in trouble."
Dehaas said he expected between 30 and 40 brothers to join in plans to grill before the game, starting around noon.
Garg said he and his friends will participate in "unofficial tailgating," beginning one to two hours before the game.
"We'll be a little more controlled, just due to the media spotlight," he said.
Garg added that they want the University to appear in a good light and that students would act in awareness of increased enforcement.
"People know how to take care of themselves, and the University knows how to keep people safe," said sophomore Will Matthews, assistant social chair of Phi Delta Theta.
"I'm interested in supporting the lacrosse team, and I'm also interested in seeing what's happening," he said.
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