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Guest Column

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Good news for frats: No more footing bill for booze!**

Last Sunday, I, the Chicago bum, wanted to find a place to watch the Bears game. After unsuccessfully trying the Rat, I went off campus to a bar I will just call "Away to Hide."

Now, being new to the Durham area, I expected to find this place full of Durham citizens, looking to wash their troubles away in a brewskie before they returned to work the next day.

But as I sat down at the bar (to consume a lemonade, of course), I looked around and saw many Duke students--at least fifty. Then I turned to my left and saw a Trinity senior, who shall remain nameless, whom I met at an anonymous fraternity party before a nice gentleman from Public Safety asked us to disperse because we were making too much noise.

"Hey," I began "Still bummed about the new alcohol policy?"

"No. That's when we throw our parties off campus. There will be enough publicity by word of mouth and we can still get enough people to have a good time."

"But what about the freshman girls. I've seen you with your GQ smile and cologne. Are you just going to retire your face book?"

"Are you kidding, Mark? This is the best part. You see it is much easier to put a move on a freshman girl off campus than it is at the house. You see, lowly freshman, when we have a girl off campus, she is not going anywhere. She either walked here, drove or got a ride. Anyway, there is no way she is getting home by herself. She will have drank so much she won't be able to drive and if she tries to walk home she might end up dead."

"Aren't these girls smarter than that? This is Duke."

"Well, these are smart girls. But come on, they just got here and they are not going to say no to a big guy like me, especially when it's hard to leave. Anyway, they think they can't get into any trouble."

"So basically, this is a good thing for you guys?"

"We'd still like to be able to drink in the center of campus. But we found a new way. It works for us. Plus, we can also do whatever we what. No Public Safety officers are going to ask us to keep the noise down or ID-check anyone."

"What about real police? You aren't in Duke wonderland anymore."

"Police don't care. It's not like we are really hurting anyone. Besides you've seen Durham--I think they can find some other things to keep them busy.

"Are you sure people are still going to come to your parties?"

"Freshman, freshman. Mark, this is the one thing you need to figure out about higher education. Every night on the weekend, most people here are looking to party and get a little bit wasted. Nan, the board of trustees or anyone else is not going to change that. So we just move the beer. Now that we have it off campus, we have more control over the people who come anyway."

"This doesn't sound like the same school I visited six months ago."

"It's not. As long we are forced to have our parties off campus, that rah-rah Duke thing just ain't going to happen anymore."

"That doesn't tick you off at all?"

"Well, I'd still like to have a thousand people on West every weekend just having a great time. But no one's gonna take the chance of having their house caught and kicked off the campus. I mean, that "we are Dukies" thing really worked for a while. But the new policy just took that away. The new policy just told us that the school doesn't really want to take responsibility if anything happens on campus during the parties."

"Did anything bad usually happen on the weekends before the policy?"

"No."

Mark Johnson is a Trinity freshman.