This is a pretty cool interview in the Duke Chronicle with Kimberly Reed (Trinity ‘86) who helped start the tradition of tenting.
In her day it was spontaneous and unregulated and a very different thing than it became.
It’s become a legendary thing of course but also like any other institution, subject to human corruption as we’ve seen on a couple of stories in the recent past.
The story of how it all started is pretty cool and spontaneously innocent and perhaps on surprisingly involves a game of quarters.
We realize that alcohol is now frowned upon at Duke and most universities and causes a lot of sad and unfortunate stories, but despite that, it has played a major role in not just university life but in basketball as well.