Moneta is right, Tailgate needs to change

For decades, fall Saturdays have been the nadir in a Duke student's week.

On weekdays we absorb our professors' latest recondite theories, we volunteer at orphanages and schools and hospitals, we stay up late and get up early and still eke out time for a workout at the gym. On Sundays we're productive-we have to be in order to complete the mounds of homework that we neglected all week long. But on Saturdays we sleep late, sit around doing little school work and blithely ignore our Division I football team as it gets pummeled by some of the wimpiest opponents out there.

Or at least we used to.

Now some of us use Saturday to get up early, get hammered and get angry. We sit around in the Blue Zone and drink cases of alcohol and whine like petulant children about how Tailgate used to be so much more fun. Maybe if we keep getting more drunk year after year, we'll just forget that Saturdays happen. For good measure, we'll dress up like hooligans and toss loaded cans at bystanders and flagrantly eschew Wally Wade. Worst of all, those of us who recognize Tailgate for the Dionysian Bacchanalia it is will just quietly go about our business, letting the vocal minority in the Blue Zone dictate the public image of our student body.

Listen, I'm just as critical of Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, as the next guy. But-perish the thought-I think he's right on this one. Tailgate is a destructive activity. It's destructive for the participants who get trashed, and it's destructive for the abstainers whose Duke degree is devalued by the very public, irresponsible acts of their peers.

Let's take back Saturday. Let's go out there on Saturday mornings and responsibly tailgate and then support our football team. If you don't care about football, that's fine, but at least have the decency to drink and act responsibly. As Duke students, for better or worse we are already associated with a pathetic football team. Let's not compound our notoriety by associating ourselves with Saturnalian revelry.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Jonathan Russell