As we may have mentioned, this weekend we journeyed to No'th Cackalack as guests of the illustrious, happily moneyed Duke University. Between Skoal, sweet tea, and other firsts (hotel staff calling us "mister"), we took in the first Duke lacrosse game since The Business.

We tried mightily to prepare for our trip to Duke, but plans were thrown into chaos early: the Drawl-English language cassettes we ordered were lost in the mail, nowhere in Brooklyn would serve us sorghum, and then, the day of the trip, airport security confiscated our brand-new Axe Body Spray. How would we blend in with the natives now?!? We arrived in Durham in a fever, feelin' swell on 105 minutes of sleep, and set off for Duke's Koskinen stadium anyway. Historic game, versus hated Dartmouth, beautiful crisp afternoon: we don't need a map, sir, the sweet strains of ACC tailgating in the air will point the way.

Except. The pre-game tailgate in the stadium's lower parking lot -- the upper one was closed to accomodate the national media, which didn't really show up -- was nearly dead. A few SUVs with beer in the trunk; a coupla lifer Dartmouth fans with great-great-grandchildren swaddled in green. But nothing like the rollicking beerfest we'd imagined. Later, we found out a school VP had emailed the entire campus with a request to wear official Duke apparel proudly, leave signs at home, and generally put the ix-nay on the ape-ray okes-jay. ("We have much to gain as a community with our best effort and even more to lose with our worst") Amazingly, the students played along: not a single violent Dartmouth chant, no burning Mike Nifong in effigy, no nothing to make for the ultimate IvyGate post. It was clear, though, fans had done some research on the enemy for heckling purposes; one Dartmouth player with by the unfortunate name of Tim McVeigh got special attention. But for the most part, Duke lacrosse fans were ridiculously well behaved, especially for a sport where the goal is to crosscheck your opponents' faces in.

The few references to last year's non-season were remarkably mannered: girls wearing Reade Seligmann No. 8 jerseys. A lone parking lot banner supporting the players.  Ubiquitous "innocent" blue rubber bracelets.  T-shirt report: there was, like, one guy with a "Disbar Nifong" [Ed.: we really wanted to buy one, but couldn't find a seller -- little help, Duke readers?], and a couple creepy more were trying to sell a model with a circle-and-line-through "Duke Administration" -- they actually talked us out of buying one.

When the team took the field, it was to the crowd's unqualified roar. Lacrosse games usually get decent attendance, regulars there said, but nothing like this. In the crowd, there was a consensus that nobody was winning Duke's first game back but Duke, in a massacre. And so it was: After a year off the field, the Blue Devils turned an early 1-3 deficit into a 17-11 pimpwalk. They despatched Denver the next day too, 13-9, in the rain.

Where we went to school, most people think that you can have school spirit without sports. Some kids there even take pride in having crappy teams. But as we sat there on the bleachers, mint tobacco firmly implanted in lip, tongue conspicuously not in cheek, we found ourselves actually caring what happened to the kids running around the field with sticks. And it felt great. We're as lazy as ever, but suddenly the 40-minute bus rides uptown to Columbia's Baker Field seemed like they might have been worth it.

We're off, we're off to Duke! Bright and early tomorrow! (Odds we miss the 7:55 a.m. flight: 2:1.) It's feeling like a serendipitous weekend. The first men's lacrosse game since The Business is at 12:30, it's sunny, and we can't wait to blow through as much of the university's cash as possible. Wooo!

We asked our Duke correspondent for a fare-thee-well -- let's listen in!

What the hell are you two talking about? People: When these idiots cross the Mason-Dixon line tomorrow, they're in for some fun toxic culture shock. But they will also see a lacrosse game -- and all the of the attendant fatuousness that comes with the "healing" of an institution. While lots of people (esp the flagrantly unethical prosecutor Mike Nifong) have misbehaved since that awful party went wrong in March 2006, the worst are the "Group of 88" --  faculty members who are genuinely disappointed that a rape didn't occur, and some of whose number just today published another column in the Duke Chronicle.

Given their appalling assumption of guilt way past when it was defensible, it's hard to seriously listen to this long list of empty academic platitudes. But let's give it a whirl, because you smiley guys seriously have no idea what you're getting yourselves into. The following list of "facts" represent such a smug departure from reality as to cause one to file a transfer application:

Whatever happened at the lacrosse party last spring, three facts remain undisputed: racial epithets were used; a Duke student group hired two female strippers for the entertainment of young men; and underage drinking was encouraged.

Oh, those are the three undisputed facts? Not that three students were indicted for crimes that, the nation now agrees, so obviously did not occur? Not that the name of an institution was dragged through the dirt by overzealous media? Not that Duke's own faculty are still, one year later, trying to trash several students who have been all but exonerated by the accuser herself?

So what I suspect our pair of Ivy League ink-slingers will find this weekend is a student body sick of the sanctimony of its own faculty. Whatever happens, tomorrow's lax game will be one hell of a circus show. But what you won't see or hear much about is the latest woefully under-reported tidbit. Oh, you didn't know there was a new rape allegation? Thanks to Nifong, God knows what the truth is here, or in the future. Have a great time, guys!! XOXO, write me!

Us again. Well, now we're in the mood!! Seriously though, we have a big weekend planned. If you're at Duke and you want to show us around, get in touch. Everybody else, we'll see you lateish Monday.

Whoa, today's Brown Daily Herald has a major scoop: Brown is actively recruiting Reade Seligmann, one of the three Duke rape case defendants, to transfer and play for its lacrosse team. That's it, basically -- no other details, besides Coach Lars Tiffany saying  Seligmann likes Brown, and Brown likes him likes him back. We'll hold the editorial comments as we get ready to visit Durham this weekend, but obvs, this is a huge vote of confidence in Seligmann's innocence. Anyone at Duke or Brown have more info?
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Say you're a world-class institution whose public image has been badly damaged in the past year. It's time to restore your reputation as a haven of knowledge and scholarship, a destination for respected lecturers the world over. Who would be on your guest list? 

Um.

For reasons that remain deeply baffling, Duke University has invited us to talk to a group of students about blogging and new media. More ridiculous, they're flying us down and putting us up here. Frankly, it's the best argument we've ever heard against huge university endowments; we'll be handing out tuition refunds on frathouse porches when we head south on Feb. 24.

Just to make it loud and clear that our coverage can be bought and sold (Stanford! Universidad de Cancun! You listening?), we asked two Duke guys to explain what makes their school tick, and why IvyGate readers should care.

"Excuse me? Could you please get your God-damned hands off Duke's God-damned fully equipped 2007 Escalade?"

Ah, Duke: Often called the last exit on the New Jersey Turnpike, but with racial politics reminiscent of the first stop on the Underground Railroad, Duke is a study in country-fried contradiction. Like their spray-on tans, students walk around with an Ivy inferiority complex you can almost touch -- matched only by a funner-than-thou conviction that dare not be questioned. Steel your Ivy egos, kids: most Duke students actually did apply here as a first choice, and aren't using the school as an Ivy fallback.

Much of that is due to the fact that among the elite schools, Duke truly has one of the best social scenes. And by that I mean one of the most dangerous. This is not a laid-back place. In recent years, thanks to a heavy-handed crackdown on frats, the scene has shifted from kegs on the quad to dorm-hallway bottle shots to closed-door coke parties to tacky New South off-campus bars to sleazy off-campus houses to inevitable five-alarm national media crises.

There's no equivalent to Skull and Bones at Duke; our one secret society is, like, 40 years old. There's no Hasty Pudding, passing its grads along to Julliard ever year. Duke -- because of its youth and location -- is a place for people who aren't tapped into the ultra-premiere pipelines of the elite, but want to be. Hence the overwhelming hordes of "outer-outer borough" types from Long Island, Pennsylvania and Jersey crowding out the once-dominant Southern bloc. Hence the Escalades and tricked-out Beamers. Hence the all-consuming basketball worship and its implications of wealth redistribution. Also: birthplace of postmodernism. That's probably not even true but fuck it, nothing's more Duke than claiming to be the absolute first, best, biggest, whatever, even in the face of reasonable arguments to the contrary.

Duke is a place still unleavened by the WASPy pretensions of "subtlety" and "taste." Think of us as your wealthy country cousin who remains unaware that her antidepressants are not dinner-table conversation. We're Penn with a mastopexy; Dartmouth rolling on Sprewells; and Princeton rubbing your purple tracksuit and wondering aloud: "Is that velour?"

The national media has already pointed out, ad nauseum, how Duke can be tacky and classy at the same time. And that was before the lacrosse scandal. More on that later. For now, raise some SoCo to the enormous gothic phallus us Dukies live under for four hot years.

Hey, Yale Herald guys -- congrats on the mention in the education issue of the New Yorker! We think.

Is that a good or bad thing? Eh, Sarah Raymond can probably use it to get laid at a lit mag party. Meanwhile, our friend Duke Obsrvr landed this quote in the same issue's long piece on the Duke maybe-rape scandal:

A sharp-eyed campus social critic, the widely read anonymous blogger known as DukeObsrvr, summed up the men's lacrosse team's place in the social hierarchy this way: "Let's not kid ourselves, what frat doesn't hate these fuckers? The lacrostitute is a notch higher on the social scale than the 'frat slut.' And dammit that's something worth fighting over."

So, yeah, maybe not so illustrious a week for the student writer set.