"Barbarians At the Tailgate?; Students Accept Drinking Rules, But the Alumni Strike Back"
"When Yale University distributed new rules last month to curb binge drinking and public drunkenness at football games, the reaction was swift. But the loudest outcry came not from students but from alumni who have returned here for decades to watch the Yale Bulldogs and to fraternize at often-elegant tailgate parties.
The rules, first posted on Yale's Web site, were succinct. Drinking games were banned. Yale's residential colleges and their visiting counterparts would be limited to one ''U-Haul type vehicle,'' otherwise undefined, to transport their beer to parking field parties. Sitting or standing on vehicles was prohibited. And there was the rule that has caused the uproar among alumni: tailgate parties would have to shut down by the end of halftime.
''It will never happen,'' said Stephany Haines, a Vassar graduate married to a Yale man, class of 1959, who had just been handed a copy of ''The Rules of the Game'' as she and her husband pulled into coveted parking field B for the Yale-Brown game in New Haven two weeks ago. ''There are enough people with deep pockets and positions of power that it won't happen.''
It turns out she may be right. An alumni exception appears to have evolved on the eve of what is known as The Game.
Yale officials have been backpedaling over the last week on the rules concerning alumni tailgating as they prepare to meet the Harvard Crimson at the Yale Bowl, when the crowd is expected to swell to 64,000 people, more than four times its normal size.
The gridiron rivalry between the two schools is one of the most storied in college football, and one of the longest. They played their first game against each other the year before George Armstrong Custer met his fate at Little Big Horn. Today's game will be the 122nd meeting of the two teams.
Last year, they met on Harvard's turf. Anticipating problems, Harvard banned beer kegs from parking fields and required students who were 21 or older to wear wristbands and do their drinking in a roped-off area.
Even so, more than 50 students ended up in hospitals or first-aid tents after drinking too much. About 100 were ejected from the game for public drunkenness. Several got citations for drunkenness from the police.
As the uproar over the Yale rules first began to spread last month, the school stood behind its effort, including the rule limiting tailgating, though there was little evidence that the older alumni who donate millions to the school were a problem.
''It's obvious the older folks don't present a problem,'' Steve Conn, the assistant director of athletic and sports communications, said nearly two weeks ago.
''I don't blame them for wanting to tailgate after the game, but we can't discriminate between students and alumni. The rules are the rules.''
That did not satisfy alumni. In a letter to The Yale Daily News, George Stapleton, class of '96, made their case: ''For many of us, tailgating all day on game day has become the most vital ritual in maintaining our desire to support and participate in Yale's future. It requires no advance ticket purchases, no fees, no reservations. It encourages only a love for Yale and old friends.''
A few days after Mr. Conn made his initial comment, and in the face of a continuing onslaught by angry alumni, he said that people were misinterpreting the rules, and that he expected alumni to be able to continue their tailgate parties after the game ended.
''They can do whatever they want to do as long as they don't get the funnels out,'' he said, referring to the now-banned equipment some students use to guzzle alcohol more quickly.
Mr. Conn's comments will come as welcome news to thousands of alumni and fans like the Haineses, who pondered the rules as they dined in casual elegance before the Yale-Brown game at a small folding table covered by a checkered blue-and-white tablecloth -- Yale's colors.
A wine bottle and glass stemware sat beside a basket of apples and liver pâté on china. Similar affairs were under way across the grassy lot, reserved for alumni. There were cocktails, ramekins of almonds and olives, wedges of cheese and crackers. Bloody marys and screwdrivers were consumed from monogrammed tumblers; station wagons were provisioned with liquor and mixers.
''After the game, you have some hot soup or another pop of liquor because that's what alumni do,'' said Peggy Reeves, who was tailgating with her husband, Bob, class of '73, and their daughter Kathleen, class of '06.
But students and their socializing is another matter. While alumni gathered around vintage Bentleys and new Mercedes-Benzes at the Brown game, which Brown won, 38 to 21, hundreds of students were in another parking field across the street and up the road, gathered around about a dozen U-Hauls bearing kegs and other alcohol.
The air smelled of beer, hot dogs, bacon and eggs. The Eagles played loudly on the radio. Nearly everyone wore a smile and was holding firm to a plastic cup of beer or other alcoholic beverage, often the hue of a tropical sunset. Others drank straight from a bottle.
At one fraternity gathering, where upholstered chairs had been hauled in and set up on the grass, girls in cable-knit sweaters swigged from bottles of Champagne, some of them perched on the laps of boys wearing tweed jackets and glassy-eyed expressions. It was slightly before noon. Most of them remained there through the first half of the game.
Yale officials say no one incident led the school to issue the new rules, which were put together with the help of six university organizations, including the campus Police Department.
''There have been incidents on campuses across the country of students drinking to excess, and we just thought it was time,'' said Gila Reinstein, a Yale spokeswoman.
Yale is one of several universities moving to cut down on student drinking at football games. Earlier this fall, Columbia banned alcohol from being carried into Baker Field through the pedestrian gate.
New restrictions on parking further inhibited student tailgating, as reserved parking passes were made available only to donors of $1,000 or more -- $2,500 for the main tailgating area -- and to season-ticket holders.
As a result, student groups that had been planning barbecues with alcohol canceled or moved them.
At the Brown game, the test run for the rules, Yale students peaceably ended their tailgate parties at the appointed time.
''We reminded them, but they were kind of resigned to it anyway,'' said Lt. Mike Patten, a 14-year veteran of the Yale Police Department. The alumni, meanwhile, continued their more sedate tailgating well past the end of the game.
Whether students will be as orderly today remains to be seen. ''They're going to need a SWAT team to enforce it,'' said Bill Deitch, the president of the Yale chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, which he said would abide by the rules.
Lila Sherman may have spoken for all alumni as she presided over a barbeque at a tailgate affair before the Brown game. An elegantly coiffed woman of a certain age with a Yale Law School tag around her neck, Ms. Sherman gripped a margarita as the end of halftime approached.
''Tailgate rules?'' she said, laughing. ''What new tailgate rules?''"