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Since those on-campus parties have now been shut down by raising the drinking age to 21 for everything, and zealous enforcement by Duke and Durham police, the weekly parties have now moved to off-campus houses where there are more potential conflicts with the neighbors and from which everyone has to drive home. The law of unintended consequences has struck the do-gooders again.

Exactly. Social life at Duke traditionally revolved around the fraternities and sororities, whose members lived on campus and had parties in their fraternity houses and dorms where, as will be the case with college students, alcohol was consumed.

What appears to have happened is that the prior Duke administration, in which the woman who was president was a liberal academic from New England, saw the school as too much of a party school and, believe it or not, too Southern, and, with a rather utopian goal in mind of eliminating the "culture of alcohol" and reducing the influence of the greek system on Duke social life, essentially persecuted all partying activities and drove them off campus, where the Durham community and the local police have ended up dealing with it. It has been a prohibitionist mindset, with predictable results.

You would be referring to Nan Keohane formerly of Wellesley. Look where she is now

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/12.09/01-nan.html

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/04/q4/1014-keohane.htm

To be fair, with the alcohol specifically, that's a nationwide trend. I think you are largely correct about the rest of her attitude towards Duke as she found it. Her successor, Brodhead, is from Yale where he was Dean of Yale college.

North Carolinian and former Governor, Terry Sanford was President all nine years I was there. One of his very last duties was to hand me my final diploma. His previously announced retirement was the next day. He was considered pretty liberal for the North Carolina of the time. On the other hand, he was an FBI agent and in the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team including service in the Battle of the Bulge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Sanford

The man had some life experience on him which is more than I can say for the last two Duke Presidents who have been strictly academics.

Another historical footnote: After some of the "B.S." chants regarding bad officiating at one of the basketball games got broadcast on national TV, "Uncle Terrry", as he was fondly known by the students, wrote an open letter in the student newspaper the text of which was basically "Would ya'll behave please". Such was the students' respect for him, in successive games, after a bad calls by the officials, the students chanted in unison "we beg to differ". One little letter - no muss, no fuss, problem solved.

At times like this I miss his leadership. Uncle Terry would have known how to have kept this problem from getting so out of hand. As far as his understanding of Durham and local politics, Brodhead might as well be from the moon. Same with Keohane for that matter. You can't learn about race relations in the south by reading a textbook in New England.