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TOWERVIEW CONTENTS
VOL. 17 - ISSUE 5 | FEBRUARY 2016
5 9 12 18 22 28
CARLEIGH STIEHM
DEAR DUKE VOTERS
Student government, voter apathy and political engagement at Duke.
CLAIRE BALLENTINE
BE KIND, REWIND
A peek inside the Triangle’s last remaining old-school video store.
TOWERVIEW STAFF
QUIET BEAUTY
A photo essay of some of Duke’s most unexpectedly beautiful places.
SAM TURKEN
BLUE ZONE TOMBSTONES The Blue Zone holds something other than parking spaces.
GEORGIA PARKE
THE WAITING GAME
A retrospective of the famed Krzyzewskiville line monitors.
EMMA BACCELLIERI
NO SHORTCUTS ON HILLSBOROUGH ROAD Ten fast-food restaurants, one day.
ON THE COVER JI LING PHOTOGRAPHY
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FROM THE EDITORS
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the chronicle s news and culture magazine
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF emma baccellieri and nick martin
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Carleigh Stiehm, Claire Ballentine, Sam Turken, Georgia Parke and Jessica Williams
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Dear readers, February is an odd, cruel month. It is a time of sure frigidness. Though snow sometimes leaves itself in January, the following month seems to take pleasure in sending piercing wind that simply laughs at all our pea coats, hoodies and authentic Duke-Store bought Duke sweatshirts—you know the ones we’re talking about. The thick, dark grey ones with “Duke” printed on the front in bulging blue letters. Either you or your roommate has one, we know it. And even those $18 beauties can’t compete with what February dishes out. But somehow, through the seemingly endless walks across the East Campus tundra, err, lawn and against-all-odds treks from the gravel lot in Blue Zone, February—more so than its first semester counterpart, September—feels normal, even comforting at times. We’ve now begun to settle in, fully—or as fully as we can be—invested in our classes and back to normal with our friends, or soon-to-be-friends-but-current pledge masters. Rushing back to your dorm or apartment can feel like an endless journey, but as soon as you’re inside, you feel release. For the lucky ones, having a good roommate during this time is often a mutually helpful bonding experience. For the unlucky ones—Pitchforks is open 24 hours. For freshmen, this is a time some start to settle into their various organizations while others branch out and make their own direction. Seniors, on the other hand, start to peek ahead, but two-month cushion grants us the ability to breathe and enjoy our last chilling time at Duke. The time is relaxing but seems to pass by quickly—the countless days and nights spent in spacious off-campus apartments or cramped dorms or out at Shooters or Fullsteam seem to last now, unlike in May when we will count them down. Now is a time that we’re able to relish without worrying about wasting them. Are these days are most remembered? No. Will we miss the cold? No. But what we will miss is having time at Duke, even the frustrating occasions, that allows us to live without the hubbub of the initial sprint out for classes and fear of the end. Stay warm, Emma and Nick
Towerview is a subsidiary of The Chronicle and is published by the Duke Student Publishing Company, Inc., a non-profit corporation independent of Duke University. The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of Duke University, its students, faculty, staff, administration or trustees. Columns, letters and cartoons represent the views of the authors. To reach The Chronicle’s editorial office at 301 Flowers Building, call (919) 684-2663 or fax (919) 684-4696. To reach The Chronicle’s business office at 103 West Union Building, call (919) 684-3811. To reach The Chronicle’s advertising office at 2022 Campus Drive, call (919) 684-3811 or fax (919) 684-8295. Contact the advertising office for information on subscriptions. Visit The Chronicle and Towerview online at dukechronicle. com ©2014 The Chronicle, Box 90858, Durham, N.C. 27708. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior, written permission of the business office. Each individual is entitled to one free copy.
NICK MARTIN 4
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EMMA BACCELLIERI
DEAR DUKE VOTERS
why so apathetic? STORY BY CARLEIGH STIEHM
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How does this year fare? Senior Jamal Edwards’ election just a few weeks ago marked a 52 percent voter turnout for the Young Trustee election. This year there was increased dialogue surrounding voting day because of statements released by the other candidates in the days leading up to the election that indicated they would not meet with the Black Student Alliance for endorsement meetings out of fear of conflict of interest. It has yet to be announced who will run for president of DSG let alone the vice presidential candidates, but one can only hope that this trend of more than half of eligible voters turning out to vote can be replicated year over year, election cycle after election cycle.
Reflecting on freshman year of college, many students can identify a moment that defines their experience—a moment when they knew they had officially become a part of the Duke community. For some it is a late night with friends, for others it might be the first time they set foot in Cameron Indoor Stadium for a basketball game. For many students, though, this moment is far more of a quiet realization, a sense of purpose, maybe even a calling. Although there were many small moments throughout my first semester of college that made Duke feel like home, my revelation that I had a niche place in this community came in February of my freshman year. It was Thursday, Feb. 8, 2013 to be exact, though it quickly spilled over into the darkest hours of Friday morning. It was the night of the Young Trustee election, and I was the Chronicle reporter assigned to write the article on the winner. Based on the highly accurate scientific measurement of Facebook likes on campaign pages, I thought there would be a landslide victory and I would get to go home early. Expecting the results to be in around 11 p.m, an hour or so after the polls closed, I got to the office early to prepare for the numbers to come in.
My freshmanic excitement quickly wore away as call after call to the Duke Student Government attorney general went unanswered. Midnight came and went with no answers. Due to “technical errors,” polls hadn’t closed for two hours after their scheduled time. As 2 a.m. passed with still no winner in sight, we received word that the Duke Student Government Judiciary had been called to meet. I sprinted from the hallowed halls of The Chronicle’s office in 301 Flowers down to the nowdemolished West Union meeting rooms to hear the verdicts. Government was happening, decisions were unfolding all before my eyes. It wasn’t until 4 a.m. that the final results came in. Two of the candidates had been docked 30 votes from their totals for violations in DSG campaigning policy, and the winner was announced. For those who don’t know, 2013 was the year that Chris Brown, Trinity ‘13, won the Young Trustee election. But it was also the year that candidates had cared so much about the honesty and integrity of the election process that they were willing to file an official report with the DSG Judiciary. That amount of care and passion behind the Young Trustee
position and the regulations of the election committee was something that seemed so important to me as a freshman reporter, and I felt honored to be a part of it. Roughly 43 percent of the undergraduate student body voted in that election. For a position that allows a 22-year-old to sit on a board with people as distinguished as Apple CEO Tim Cook and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, supposedly granting them some sort of ability to influence the direction of the University, it seemed odd that less than half of the voters exercised their rights. As it turns out, however, 43 percent was far from the lowest voter turnout I would see in my time at Duke. To put that 2013 turnout in context, it came two years after one of the higher rates from a Duke election, when Michelle Sohn, Trinity ‘11, won in a contest in which 50 percent of eligible undergraduates voted. Also on the ballot that year was a referendum to merge DSG and Campus Council. It seems remarkable that even with that extra and seemingly important, incentive to vote, still only half of the undergraduate student body took the initiative. And of those that did, there TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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were a total of 212 different write-in votes, including ballots cast for men’s basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta and Karen Owen, Trinity ’10. Write-in votes have since been banned from the Young Trustee election. The following year, voter turnout fell to 46 percent when Kaveh Danesh, Trinity ‘12, won. After 2013’s turnout of 43 percent, the trend seemed to be reversing as Neil Kondamuri,
much because they have already felt called to pay attention in one election cycle. In just my four short years at Duke as a student and reporter for The Chronicle, I have seen the end of widely publicized and attended debates between candidates held on campus. At one debate I attended to cover during the 2013 presidential campaign between Stefani Jones and Patrick Oathout, both Trinity ‘14, the discussion was nixed after virtually no one showed up to hear
“ We h o l d o u r s e l v e s t o s t a n d a r d s o f p o l i t i c a l e n g a g e m e n t o u t s i d e o f c o l l e g e , so we do we as Duke students allow these elections to be so under valued?” Trinity ‘14, was elected when 53 percent of the student body cast ballots in 2014. After no candidate successfully received a majority of first-place votes, Kondamuri won through an instant runoff with 12 more votes than the runner-up. Although this seemed a hopeful sign for the future of voter involvement in elections, 2015 saw a major drop in votes with only 38 percent casting ballots. The winner that year was also selected through instant runoff, with Anna Knight, Pratt ‘15, besting her runnerup by a margin of 314 votes. All of these winners put in immeasurable amounts of work into their campaigns and preparation for the election, but it seems voters didn’t do their part in exercising their duties to be informed voters. Because the Young Trustee election is the first in the Spring election cycle, its turnouts often appear higher than the subsequent DSG presidential and vice presidential elections. By the time these latter two rounds come into play, many students are tapped out of any energy they had to care about casting ballots. But that isn’t to say these elections matter less for the undergraduate experience. Quite the contrary, as DSG presidents and vice presidents have historically had a significantly larger ability to influence campus than a single member of the Board of Trustees. Yet students fail to care about these elections as
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what the candidates had to say. The Chronicle isn’t the only organization that has noticed the low turnouts in these elections. For several years in a row, DSG has set forth initiatives to improve low voter turnouts, though it doesn’t seem that any policy changes have been effective given the devastatingly low sub-20 percent turnout for freshman elections last Fall. Junior George Mellgard, DSG vice president for residential life, was one of the students that reached for better voter involvement. In a September DSG meeting, Mellgard highlighted that at peer schools such as Vanderbilt University, 60 percent voter participation is considered low. Duke routinely has turnouts around 25 percent in second and third cycle spring elections. A quick peek on Facebook makes it clear that Duke students are highly interested in matters of politics. But these political interests begin in our own communities. Students have a lot going on at any given moment that can make student government and elections seem silly, but these votes have the potential to have real impacts on the future of the University and the undergraduate experience. We hold ourselves to standards of political engagement outside of college, so why do we as Duke students allow these elections to be so undervalued?
Be Kind, Rewind
STORY BY CLAIRE BALLENTINE
On a cold Tuesday afternoon, Avid Video is empty. But it doesn’t truly feel deserted; an adventurous customer who might wander in from Ninth Street would immediately be surrounded by faces. Hundreds of brightly colored videos and DVDs featuring images of their main characters pack the walls, making it difficult to even walk through the small, poorly-heated store. And then behind a counter filled with stacks of old records is the sole real-life face: Jason Jordan, who’s owned Avid Video for more than eighteen years.
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Amid the popularity of Netflix and online streaming, it’s a wonder that a video store in Durham still exists. To Jordan, however, its value is clear. “I think we’re a library of resources for things you wouldn’t find other places,” he said. “We have a lot of films that you can’t find online.” Jordan explained that he opened the video store at a time when the video rental market was thriving. Working at a rental store while pursuing a literature degree from Florida State University, he gained knowledge of the industry by selecting and purchasing films for the store. He gradually collected his own collection of movies as well. Eventually, he made the move to North Carolina and opened his current location off of Ninth Street because he could not find retail space in Chapel Hill, and the real estate market in Durham was cheaper. As for that degree in literature? “It was a crowded market, and I didn’t want to teach high school,” he said. “I didn’t want to teach ‘The Scarlet Letter’ to a bunch of high school juniors who didn’t care.” He said that he has been interested in movies since childhood. Growing up in small, rural town, watching films was one of the only ways to occupy his time, he explained. Then, living in Tallahassee, Fla., a “liberal arts town that locals support,” gave him the opportunity to view art films that he otherwise would not have. This interest in film has served him well as Avid Video’s
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owner, he noted, allowing him to ably select a wide range of movies for the store. The “mid-aughts” were Avid Video’s glory days, Jordan said. The store made a name for itself by specializing in foreign language films and independent cult titles, which separated Avid Video from popular chains like Blockbuster. Jordan added that the shop’s proximity to Whole Foods and Ben and Jerry’s likely helped as well. But the store has faced extreme struggles in recent years with the rise of services such as Redbox and Netflix. Avid Video has been able to stay in business only because of Jordan’s work selling films online on sites like Ebay. On a given day, just 10 or 15 customers visit the shop, mostly locals who have been stopping by for years. Jordan added that he runs the store himself, working every day from noon to 7 p.m. or later, because he can’t afford to hire employees. And now, Avid Video is truly one of the last of its kind— the only other video rental store in the Triangle area closed in December 2015. Still, Jordan noted that his store has resources unavailable anywhere else. Many customers visit the shop for TV series or classic films that they can’t find online. Others simply like the local feel. A customer named Nancy explained that she normally gets movies from Netflix but likes supporting local stores. She noted
that many of her friends have visited Avid Video as well and speak highly of it. Despite the local support, Jordan acknowledged that the end is near. “The plan was to close at the end of [last] year but that didn’t work out with my timetable for selling the videos,” he said. He said that he plans to sell part of his inventory either online or directly from the store, and then will place the rest in a warehouse that he is currently building. He hopes to support himself by selling films— collected from pawn shops, yard sales and flea markets—online. Still, as someone who experienced the extreme popularity of the video industry, Jordan has a hard time comprehending that it is now mostly obsolete. “You’d be surprised at how many kids I have coming in here who have never been in [a video store] before,” he said. “It’s just shocking because at one point it was just part of everyone’s experience.”
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TOMBSTONES IN THE BLUEZONE STORY BY SAM TURKEN
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“Although he sleeps, his memory doth live.” These words are among the first things you see when you walk into T.J. Rigsbee Family Grave Yard—a three-foot tall tombstone with an epitaph remembering Thomas J. Rigsbee Jr., a member of the family that helped pave the way for the creation of Duke’s West Campus. At the center of Blue Zone parking lot, less than 100 yards away from Wallace Wade Stadium, Rigsbee GraveYard is easy to spot— that is, if you are searching for it. A threefoot high stone wall and steel gate encloses approximately 12 graves set around two small pine trees. While the grass is kept short and fresh flowers often sit near graves, erosion has taken a toll on several tombstones. Some markers, however, such as Rigsbee Jr.’s , which is decorated with engraved daisies, remain in near perfect form. Its peaceful aura lives in stark contrast to the noisy chaotic scene around it—from cars whizzing by to hammers banging in Wallace Wade Stadium. As construction has enveloped West Campus, the graveyard is a remnant of Duke that will forever remain the same. Not only is Rigsbee Grave Yard the only piece of private property on campus, Duke’s administration and facility
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management recognize the historical significance of the cemetery. “The Rigsbee Graveyard is sacred ground for the Rigsbee family and an important part of Duke’s history. It will continue to be protected as the campus develops,” Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, said. Rigsbee is not completely unusual. Georgetown’s campus features a Jesuit cemetery just off its main quad. Several other schools, including Notre Dame and Richmond, offer to have their alumni and faculty buried on campus for a fee ranging in the thousands. And yet, the burial ground is eerily among the most unknown places on campus. Questions about the background of Rigsbee Grave Yard initially lingered for a while after Duke’s founding. Although the Durham Sun first reported on the graveyard in 1938, a Chronicle article from Dec. 18, 1956 refers to the history behind the burial ground as a riddle and says “a partial answer has at last been found to the mystery surrounding the graveyard on the field east of the stadium.” Two hundred years ago, the 200 acres that now consist of Blue Zone and athletic fields and facilities, belonged to Jesse Rigsbee and his wife, Mary Rigsbee. The farmland and pasture was isolated inside the dense Duke forest, and the Rigsbee hog lot and barn stood near a ravine that is now Wallace Wade. The Rigsbees were among Durham County’s most prosperous families— they helped organize Durham’s earliest schools and municipal government. Jesse Rigsbee ran a successful enterprise as a sweet potato farmer. One of his main specialties was storing potatoes during the winter, which he would then sell for seed in the spring. Jesse and Mary had four daughters and four sons. All the sons fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Upon returning home from the war, one of their sons, Thomas Jefferson “T.J.”, expanded the family’s holdings, building a house where Duke Hospital now lies, and soon assumed responsibility for much of the family property. Jesse first apportioned a quarteracre plot of land to bury his eldest son, Henry Jackson “Jack,” who perished during the first year of the war. Soon after, according to family
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legend, he and his wife added three Confederate bodies—found in the nearby forest—to the newly formed graveyard. During the next 60 years, the burial ground became the Rigsbees’ official cemetery. Nancy Rigsbee, who died during childbirth and was Thomas’ first of three wives, was buried in 1880 under a flat stone. After Jesse and Mary joined her several years later, Thomas and his son, Thomas Jefferson Jr. were the last family members added to the graveyard in 1917 and 1924, respectively. In 1929, the Duke family, neighbors of the Rigsbees, purchased approximately 600 acres of land from the heirs of the Rigsbee estate for $1,000. University archivist Vallerie Gillespie said that the Dukes purchased the land with the intention of expanding Trinity College into Duke University. There was not enough room on East Campus to expand, she said. The land that the Dukes bought consisted of everything that is now West Campus and Duke Forest. According to files in the University archives, James Buchanan Duke once sat on the stone wall surrounding the burial ground and unveiled his plans to build a Duke University to Thomas J. Rigsbee Jr. But the Rigsbees had one condition for the sale of the property: the burial ground must remain untouched forever. “The Rigsbee family shall have the right of ingress, ogress and regress over such part of said land as may be reasonably necessary for burying their dead and for maintaining, repairing and otherwise providing for the upkeep of said burying ground,” the deed reads. Since then, descendants of the family have helped maintain the graveyard, mowing the lawn, removing weeds, brushing off tombstones and placing fresh flowers near the graves. “The arrangement is that the family cares for the graveyard and maintains it as such, and the University provides them access to do so,” Gillespie wrote in an email. And so Thomas Jefferson Rigsbee Jr.’s epitaph still applies today 92 years after his burial. Although students may not know it, T.J Rigsbee Grave Yard has watched over Duke West Campus since its birth. And don’t expect that to change any time soon.
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T H E WA I T I N G The position of Krzyzewskiville line monitor is well-known across campus, with their signature blue jackets and clipboard and air of authority. But it wasn’t always that way. STORY BY GEORGIA PARKE
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Sunday, March 2, 1986 marked the end of a remarkable season for the Duke men’s basketball team. The Blue Devils were 282, undefeated at home and ranked No. 2 in the country leading up to their game against No. 3 North Carolina. And Duke students had noticed—a number had been waiting in line for a week see the team one more time. “It was the first game that people really camped out in significant numbers,” said Jose Isasi, Trinity ‘89. “Prior to that season people would camp out, but there weren’t that many and they weren’t that early.” While students waited in line, head coach Mike Krzyzewski came out to deliver pizzas to the crowd and walked recruits for future teams out to meet the tenters. Tents stretched from the Cameron entrance back to Card Gym. The night before the game, Isasi said, was just “one enormous party.” But even though the number of students in line grew each day leading up to the game, there was no system to determine the order of people in line or how long they had been there. Krzyzewskiville, as it existed in its earliest form, was policing itself, and with results
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highly frustrating to some. “There was more than one incident of people just having their tents moved to the back of the line [if no one was there],” Isasi said. On Sunday morning, those who had been waiting in line for multiple days and nights awoke to find that other fans had simply walked around the tents that had been pitched and had jumped— albeit rudely—the tenters’ place in the line. Isasi said the confusion resulted in a frantic rush to get to the doors before they opened. This incident sparked the need for more order in the line, but it resulted in the formation of an organization on campus that would dictate and influence K-Ville during the next 30 years. The early days Prior to that Carolina game, the order of those in line was documented by little more than a piece of paper with names on it, kept by one of the earliest arrivals at a given game. For many of those games, the guy with the paper was Jason Evans, Trinity ’89, who camped out for games as a freshman in the 198586 season. “I was the dude who was making sure that there wasn’t anything nefarious going on with the line,” Evans said. Evans would write down the student who was first for every game— usually a student named Andy Luks, he said—then himself and his friends, and he would add tent groups to the list as they showed up. Informal line checks would occur from time to time, but never on Friday or Saturday nights. After the Carolina game incident, Isasi became the de-facto Head Line Monitor for the 1987-88 season— though he stressed that it was in no way an official title but more of a general job description—through his affiliation with Associated Students for Duke University, the precursor to Duke Student Government. He passed a policy through the ASDU legislature that birthed what is now a cornerstone of tenting: the tent check. A far cry from today’s systematic process of Duke cards, digital rosters and
siren warnings, the original tent checks involved Isasi carrying a clipboard around K-Ville and looking for one member in each tent. “It was very informal,” Isasi said. “I walked down the sidewalk, called into tents and saw who was there and put a check mark. I could do a whole tent check in five minutes.” Black, blue, white Given the hype that Duke basketball receives across the nation, it’s not surprising that students would put in great effort to get into games for the low cost of zero dollars. But the excitement also had the potential to deter students from even trying, given the level of commitment that has been expected of tenters in recent years.
against Carolina in 2000, line monitors received complaints about the length of the tenting season. The amount of interest in tenting and the effort required to get into the game was becoming less realistic if the stands of Section 17 were to be filled. “There was a lot of peer pressure. Once tents started going up you had to get out there as soon as possible,” said 2000-01 Head Line Monitor Norm Bradley, Pratt ‘01. “A number of students and administrators were concerned about having students living outside for two months.” Enter Blue and White tenting. Bradley invented a system—the fundamentals of which are still employed today—which split tenting into two distinct phases. In the first phase, Blue, a higher proportion of a tent would be required to stay at the tent both during the day and at night. The second phase, White, would start later into the semester and require fewer tenters to be present. Since that year, the order of White tents has been determined by an annual “Race to the Secret Spot” in which a location name or clue to a location is posted online at a designated date and time. It is then up to the tenting teams to have one of their members reach the head line monitor at the secret spot before the last tent positions are claimed. Other secret spots have included hideaways on Central Campus, the Medical Center, as well as President Richard Brodhead’s driveway. Bradley put the White tenting secret spot at the 50-yard line in Wallace Wade Stadium. At 7 a.m. the location was posted to the tenting website, and by 7:03 Bradley could see students sprinting down the stairs of the stadium. “This was before cell phones,” he said. “It was wild.”
“IT WAS VER Y INFORMAL. I WALKED DOWN THE SIDEWALK, CALLED INTO T E N T S A N D S AW W H O WAS THERE AND PUT A CHECK MARK. I COULD DO A WHOLE TENT CHECK IN FIVE MINUTES.” — JOSE ISASI, TRINITY ’90 “There was this myth that you couldn’t get into games unless you lined up for five hours,” said 2007-08 Head Line Monitor Roberto Bazzani, Trinity ’08. “We tried to dispel that.” Years earlier, conscious efforts to make tenting accessible for both hardcore and “casual tenters” had been a focus of 200102 Head Line Monitor Greg Skidmore, Trinity ’02. Skidmore instituted a system in which students could go to K-ville in the early morning before classes started and get a wristband that would allow them into the game, saving them the trouble of running back and forth from. But trying to get into the Carolina game has always required unabridged commitment for the majority of the semester. Following a very late game
The perks of being a line monitor It’s well-known that line monitors have reserved space in Section 17 in some of the first few rows, directly across from the Duke bench—a position that has garnered some criticism in the past from students who have slept out for weeks for TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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worse seats. The issue of where to put the line monitors in Cameron wasn’t something that the line monitors themselves had considered at the time of their formation, Isasi said. At the first game in the 1986-87 season a staff member in Cameron called the line monitors to go in before the tenters, to their surprise. The line monitors ended up choosing to sit as a group halfway between center court and the basket across from the visitor bench, behind the first row, foregoing the alluring front-and-center seats for a lower profile location. “We talked among ourselves and decided that if we took those seats, everything we worked for would have been destroyed,” Isasi said. “There would have been a petition that Monday to cancel the program.” But even though the seats they took were not prime, Evans said there was plenty of noise from dissatisfied tenters as the line monitors would pass the line outside Cameron on their way in. “The line monitors would go in in front of everyone but they would not sit in the front row… They recognized that that wasn’t really fair. If you want to get the prime seats, then you tent,” Evans said. “If they had been in front, there would have been trouble.” The job also gives line monitors the chance to rub shoulders with athletics staff, basketball players and, on the rare occasion, Krzyzewski—Sheryl Morano, Trinity ‘98 and Head Line Monitor as a senior, once spoke alongside Krzyzewski to freshmen to excite them about basketball and tenting before the season started. But line monitors past and present note that the job comes with its own commitment and trials, as well as plenty of hours spent in K-Ville to show for it, with little recognition from the student body. Michael Marion, Trinity ’15 and co-Head Line Monitor for 2014-15, noted that he thinks the criticism stems from the thought that the line monitors don’t put in the work to earn their perks. “There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that people don’t see,” said senior Wendy Burr, co-Head Line Monitor this season. “It’s so much work.” Burr said she sometimes spends up to 10 hours a day in K-Ville, but the commitment feels nonstop with the amount she must keep up with emails, K-Ville social media accounts, planning ahead for upcoming games and meetings with athletics, marketing and administrators. “We worked really hard for everyone who wanted to get in,” Skidmore said. “It’s not like we were taking the center court. It was a fair trade for the work we did.” ‘A thankless job’ The mechanism for 1,200 students to
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guarantee their admission into the Carolina game is a direct result of the line monitor program, but that also puts tenters at the mercy of the line monitors and their authority. Past line monitors, as a result, recall being on the receiving end of a mixture of tenters’ feelings. “I have met a number of people who, after graduating, said ‘You were a jackass and I really hated you because you were strict,’” Burrill said. Morano admitted lying to tenters that tents set up before the start of the semester would be confiscated by the grounds staff—they weren’t, but there was a desire to limit the number of people who showed up before school started. Additionally, because some had pinned down her course schedule, she would sometimes miss class to call a tent check in order maintain the element of surprise. “I was known as a bit of a hard-ass,” Morano said. But despite their frustrations the tenters her year still showed affection, once in the form of a get-well card signed by many tenters after she suffered burns on her hand in a cooking accident. Still other line monitors were scolded for not being strict enough. Bazzani said he was relatively lax with calling tent checks, which garnered criticism as well. “I didn’t want the tenters to be miserable,” he said. “It’s supposed to be fun and it’s supposed to be about building community. It’s not supposed to be a punishment that is going to make you question why you’re even dealing with all this.” The line monitors’ relationship with administrators has also evolved over the years, resulting in changing expectations in what the line monitors are to be responsible for. Sue Wasiolek, associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students, said that in early years it was assumed that the line monitors would, in addition to supervising the line, police K-Ville to enforce University rules like preventing underage drinking and drinking games. Over time, though, this responsibility fell off from the line monitors themselves to lie with actual security personnel. Line monitors still keep a general watch and interact with administrators like Wasiolek and UCAE Director of Student Life David Pittman, and tend to pass along situations to authority outside of K-Ville. “No one ever came up to me and told me, you need to keep a watchful eye,” Skidmore said. “But I was in a position of access and… able to see things. There were a few times I’d… discreetly intervene. If I saw things that weren’t necessarily safe, I alerted the right people.” Marion noted that all line monitors today must undergo party monitor training even if they have already had it.
K-VILLE BACKGROUND
HISTORY
• 1980—Coach K arrives at Duke • 1986—Significant tenting begins before the DukeUNC game • 1991—Blue Devils win their first championship • 2000—Blue and White tent groups are created; “Race for the Secret Spot” commences • 2008—Firm starting date policy instituted
BY THE NUMBERS
• 29 current line monitors • 100 maximum tents • 30-page tenting policy • 48 hours for walk-up line before the UNC game
“There is the understanding between line monitors and administration that line monitors were expected to demonstrate leadership and make sure that people are staying safe,” Marion said. Others with less familiarity with K-Ville have had less faith in line monitors in the past. Burrill said he once received an email from a furious parent addressed to him and administrators including Wasiolek, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta and President Brodhead, accusing him of hazing their children and making them live in unsafe and inhumane conditions. In response he outlined the various safety precautions in place—including grace for tenters at freezing temperatures—but that it was an argument to take up with their child, not him. He emphasized that tenting is, after all, a voluntary activity. Keepers of K-Ville The line monitors can set the tone for the tent season and many have tried by planning events and surprises like hot chocolate for a midnight tent check, or getting students excited for a certain game. Skidmore, for example, put on outdoor screenings of classic Duke games leading up to the Carolina game
in 2002. Marion was known for his rousing speeches and leading the student section at the Final Four in Indianapolis. K-Ville existed before the line monitors, so one might wonder if it could live on after them. Originally a self-governing, selfsustaining piece of Duke culture, K-Ville today has 29 line monitors enforcing a 30-page tenting policy and running text message updates, a listserv, Facebook and Twitter accounts and a website through which students can register their tents. “My administrative colleagues are generally not as rule-oriented as students. When students are put in charge, what happens are more rules that we ever would imagine,” Wasiolek said. “I suspect that if students said ‘We are not interested in governing this,’ K-Ville would fall apart.” The institution of tenting and line monitoring as it stands has gone quite a ways from Jason Evans and his list of names on a piece of paper, but one thing that has remained constant is that the tradition has been run by some of the most passionate fans who would have been at the front of the line if not in charge of the line. “I remember saying when I had that job that I would never have a better job, and I
think that’s true,” Bradley said. Burrill said he still has his Head Line Monitor jacket, noting that he wore it to both the 2010 and 2015 national championship games. But although line monitors are in place to dictate K-Ville policy and keep crowds in control, the Crazies of old demonstrated that their authority is not meant to be absolute. In the 1980s there had been a tradition of bringing tennis balls into Cameron, and once the stands filled up the Crazies would thrown them across the court to each other. Cameron staff was, Isasi said, “rightly concerned” about someone getting hurt or balls falling all over the court. Isasi and the other line monitors dutifully passed the word to students in line to stop bring tennis balls. At the next game, the stands filled with students with no tennis balls in sight. They congratulated themselves on their authority, but the Crazies had other ideas. “We’re all looking at ourselves very happy that we were so persuasive,” he said. “Literally maybe 30 seconds after that, more tennis balls than I’ve ever seen go flying across the court.” In the end, instead of squelching the tradition, the line monitors decided to encourage the Crazies to do it more. TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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Admission is always free for Duke students.
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ESSAY BY EMMA BACCELLIERI
N O S H O RT C U T S ON
H I L L S B O RO U G H RO A D
Durham’s Hillsborough Road is not much to look at—its catalogue of gas stations, chain restaurants and banks is familiar to anyone who grew up in suburbia. A version of this street exists in every decently-sized town in the country. It is so generic that it might represent any street anywhere, and it is so wholly unremarkable that it might represent nothing at all. You could be forgiven, then, for thinking Hillsborough Road an unlikely setting for an epic journey. But you would be wrong—for there’s something about the street that is actually quite exceptional. Subtly so, easy to overlook, but exceptional nonetheless. In a stretch of scarcely half a mile, Hillsborough Road has 10 fast-food restaurants. Here, from east to west: Cook-Out, KFC, Taco Bell, Bojangles, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Zaxby’s, Chick-Fil-A, Arby’s and Biscuitville. To eat at all 10 restaurants in one day might seem impossible. If not impossible, it is definitely unhealthy and absolutely stupid. I did it anyway. Like most Duke students, my introduction to Hillsborough Road came with a trip to Cook-Out early in my freshman year. It happens in every East Campus residence hall—it is a little too late at night and no one knows each other quite well enough, but someone has a car and someone else knows their North Carolina restaurants and soon enough you are all laughing, music loud, as you speed along to your promised milkshakes. Apart from Cook-Out, though, I haven’t spent much time on Hillsborough Road. There have been a few hungover morning
trips for Bojangles’ biscuits, a drive or two for Chick-Fil-A’s waffle fries—but not much past that. Eating at every restaurant on the street is something I wondered about in the same vague way that I sometimes wonder how I would fare falling down a flight of stairs. To me, fast food is desirable almost exclusively at emotional extremes. That is to say: it is what you get with a car full of friends, when the sun has gone down and you feel so complete and so content that you can be a little reckless, go wherever, do whatever, eat whatever. And it is what you get when you are absolutely alone, when everything seems vaguely meaningless and nothing can stop you from feeling quite so hollow. This is when you get fast food. When, then, do you get 10 types of fast food? Technically speaking, a Saturday in February. Emotionally speaking, a Saturday in February when your upcoming graduation feels more like an apocalypse than a rebirth. A Saturday in February when the standard Duke bucket list (go tunneling! climb Baldwin! have sex in the stacks!) is far too much and ridiculously insufficient at the same time. A Saturday in February when you have a faint idea of how to go about this incredibly dumb and pointless task, and then you pick up your friends and you drive and you try it out together. But maybe the best answer comes from speaking neither technically nor emotionally. Maybe the best answer comes from paraphrasing that John F. Kennedy speech about space travel— “Why, some say, eat at 10 fast-food restaurants in one day? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why fly the Atlantic? Why does Duke TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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play Carolina? We choose to eat at 10 fastfood restaurants in one day. We choose to eat at 10 fast-food restaurants on this Saturday in February and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others too.” And so off I went, three friends at my side, not unlike a bizarre low-class version of Taylor Swift’s girl squad. The rules we set were fairly simple. We would have no set agenda—we’d choose the restaurants as we went along, going with whatever we wanted to eat next. To get the full experience, we would eat inside rather than using the drive-thru. The most important rule, of course, dealt with what we would actually eat. After spirited debate, we decided that one needed to order something emblematic of the restaurant. This didn’t necessarily have to be an entree, but we had to hold each other accountable so that no one tried to take easy outs in a moment of weakness (i.e., no apple slices at McDonald’s or anything of that sort). From the outset, my friends knew they would not attempt all 10 restaurants. They, unlike me, are not that dumb and idealistic. We would make the complete journey as a group, of course, and they would each eat in at least half the restaurants—but the stupid glory of actually eating that perfect 10 would be mine and mine alone. It started off easy enough. A bacon-egg-andcheese from Biscuitville, a mediocre warmup of sorts from a restaurant I would never otherwise visit (a restaurant no one should visit, considering that their biscuits pale in comparison to those of Bojangles a block away). Next was a medium order of curly fries at Arby’s, which earned points for its relatively wide variety of condiments. Everything was fine! It was great! My fears of immediate failure had been for naught! I erased the disappointing memory of Biscuitville by going to Bojangles next, basking in the culinary glory of a cajun chicken biscuit paired with sweet tea. But a funny thing happened on the way to finishing that beautiful biscuit—I started to struggle. The last few bites were a chore rather than a joy. The honeymoon period was officially over, I realized. This was when it would really begin. The next stop provided a philosophical debate to distract me from my discomfort, even if only momentarily: what were we to make of the combination KFC-Taco Bell? We had already determined that I needed to order from both menus, of course. But did I need to order the items separately? Eat them at different tables? Physically exit and enter
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the building multiple times to create the greatest illusion of separate restaurants? All of the above, we decided. For there are no shortcuts on Hillsborough Road. And then—oh! then—I entered into the lowest period of the day. The next 20 minutes were spent in abject misery at McDonald’s, full far beyond the point of comfort, repulsed by the hash browns in front of me (making use of the 24-hour breakfast menu was, in retrospect, a mistake). C-SPAN 2 inexplicably blared on above, and slowly, the four of us began to realize the gravity of our situation. It had been nearly three hours since we left campus. We still had four stops to go. The sun was beginning to go down, and we were beginning to grow tired of each other. What had been gentle words of encouragement became “come on, just eat your food.” I picked at the hash browns, numb. But we had come in together, and we would go out together—and the only way out was through, and through brought us to Wendy’s. Here, we were unified for the first time since early in the day, each ordering a small chocolate frosty with a side of fries to share. To say it was easy would be misleading, but it no longer seemed impossible. I was not alone, and I could overcome my weaknesses. We persevered—mock-studiously inspecting the decor at Zaxby’s while I made it through an order of boneless wings, re-enacting scenes from “The Bachelor” with the cheap floral centerpieces at Chick-Fil-A as I conquered half of a spicy chicken sandwich. And finally—gloriously, astonishingly— we were at the promised land of Cook-Out, blasting “The Final Countdown” as I prepared to order my regular milkshake, the tried-andtrue favorite of peanut butter fudge. I knew I would only be able to handle a few sips, and I didn’t care. It was the principle of the thing. It was over, and we had won. We tried to explain the situation to the cashier, to no avail—but it didn’t matter. No one else had to understand the unique flavor of our hard-fought success, so long as we knew it ourselves. To be clear: I do not support eating at 10 fast-food restaurants in one day, because it’s a stupid idea that has absolutely zero purpose or value, and I can now say with great certainty that you would have to be ridiculous to think otherwise. But I do—I think—support laughing as you drive a familiar road with familiar people into the night, realizing with a weird clarity that you are so much younger and luckier than you sometimes think, “One Shining Moment” playing in the background as you reach for a milkshake. Special thanks to Alexandra, Natalie and Cameryn for their company and encouragement on Hillsborough Road and everywhere else.
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TOWERVIEW FEBRUARY 2016
the chronicle’s news and culture magazine