Most of the students who populated Krzyzewskiville found themselves happily seated inside a sweltering Cameron Indoor Stadium Saturday afternoon and pumped up for the basketball game against rival University of North Carolina. But, after camping out for a number of weeks, about 150 tenters found themselves watching the Blue Devils defeat UNC back in their dormitory rooms-some livid, others disappointed and most just downright frustrated.
Residents of tents numbered above 91 were rejected before setting foot in the stadium that they had watched for weeks from the outside; they were turned away at the door and told that there was simply no more room.
Trinity senior Lisa Shah, a tent 91 member, said that at first she was angry, then just shocked that she had tented for six weeks and been locked out of the game.
"I'm a senior and I will never have the opportunity to do this again," she said. "I did this not to see any other game but Carolina. We cried for 15 minutes outside."
Shah said she and the other members of her tent were escorted to the entrance of the arena, waited while the line monitors went to find them seats and were escorted back out when stadium officials locked the doors and no one returned to seat them.
But Trinity senior and head line monitor Kevin Kiefert said he has been emphasizing for the past six weeks that only 85 tents were guaranteed seats.
"We even did a lot better than we thought we could do," he explained. "They were pretty upset, and that's unfortunate, but we squeezed in as many people as we possibly could."
Although some students were aware of the 85-tent limit, most were not. Although the information on the Duke Student Government tenting home page sets a limit of 100 registered tents, it does not specify how many are guaranteed entrance.
Trinity freshman Nicky Hedgecock, a tent 103 resident, was disappointed because she thought they had limited the number of registered tents to 100 to guarantee that everyone in that range would get into the game.
"I cried," she said. "I was more disappointed than anything else. I love this school so much and they took away the one thing that was so important to me."
Head line monitor and engineering senior Rajeev Chopra sent an email message to all tent leaders last night apologizing to those who were rejected at the door.
"I tried my best to fit as many tents as I could inside Cameron," he wrote, "and did what I could to sneak some past the fire marshals. It was an unfortunate and unexpected situation."
Both during and following the game, accusations flew and reports circulated that some had gained entrance to game unfairly.
Some Chronicle staffers gave first-hand accounts of graduate students in the undergraduate section, while others accused Tom D'Armi, director of games, operations and facilities for Cameron, of allowing some varsity athletes to take portions of the undergraduates' seats.
But D'Armi denied the accusations and maintained that the only students in the undergraduate sections were undergraduates who had tented.
"The accusations hurt me because we worked really hard and did as best a job as we could," he said. "I wanted to have everyone in, and I've done that about 99.9 percent of the time, but Saturday was impossible. It was like the Super Bowl because Duke is number one."
D'Armi said that several students were escorted out before halftime-some for replicating tickets and others for photocopying bracelets given to tenters.
Kiefert said that one student colored light blue stars on a bracelet to try to sneak past the monitors.
"We stopped 30 people from getting in with fakes," he said. "People were kicked out at halftime, some who were even Carolina students. Some probably did get in, though, because it's hard to catch everyone."
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