It doesn't matter if Blue Hens are 20 years removed from their last university fraternity party, or if they're a mere eight months out of high school - they've experienced the party scene. They've seen (or at least been to the tailgate of) a football game, they've been on Main Street when the bars let out at 1 a.m., they've taken a walk down East Cleveland Avenue on a Friday night and (they thinks) they remember spending an entire day at one of the countless "fests" that are conveniently spread throughout the year.
Darren "Digger" Kane, a 1995 university alumnus, survived all of these typical Delaware experiences and now enjoys reminiscing about them.
Two years ago, Kane started a MySpace page for university alumni to talk about things they remember, post stories and think back to the good old days.
Kane says he knew early on, after thousands of current students and alumni viewed and posted on the site, that "this could be a book."
A year and a half later, "Glory Days at Delaware" was published, consisting of countless anecdotes and detailed accounts of the buildings, restaurants, bars, dining halls, residence halls and just about everything else that could be associated with the university.
In his book, Kane presents a variety of stories and comments from university alumni and current students spanning the past 20 years. Alumni stories relating to the party scene in Delaware from 20 years ago offer a different account than those of the party scene in recent years.
"Glory Days" focuses on the bars that used to be a big part of Newark, but few have survived to see 2008. Keith W., a 1998 graduate and a contributor to Kane's book, says "the bars have lost a lot of momentum." And, according to any alumni that graduated before the Stone Balloon closed, they have.
"The Stone Balloon was, like, the epicenter of all bars," Keith says. "Friday nights were the Stone Balloon and then Kate's."
Kane remembers the same thing, along with others that offered their perspectives in the book. He mentions 20 different bars throughout the book, only eight of which are still up and running.
The bars aren't the only things that have changed. In 1997, the university received the Robert Wood Johnson grant to reduce binge drinking. Kane calls this the "watershed moment"- when the university started to crack down on students' excessive alcohol consumption.
Keith talks about his freshman year, when he and the other students in his building would walk from room to room carrying big, square backpacks blatantly filled with cases of beer. The building resident assistants would see them walking around with the backpacks.
"But as long as you weren't drinking in the hallway," he says, "you wouldn't get in trouble. More people got in trouble for burning candles and incense than for drinking beer."
Of course, there are some things that haven't changed when it comes to the university party scene, and perhaps they never will.
For instance, Skidfest. Founded in 1990 by Kevin Francis, a 1990 university alumnus, Skidfest is still going strong. Skidfest, a backyard, block party-type event, started out as a way for all the people living on Skid Row to get to know each other, and ended up being a way for half the kids on campus to get to know each other.
Francis says he and the rest of the SkidRowers decided to charge $2 at the door and ended up making a profit of $850, which they donated, an act that has become tradition for all those who later inherited the responsibility of perpetuating Skidfest semester after semester.
Francis says every new generation of students thinks, "It sucks now, it was better back then," but he doesn't think it's any different. He says he's come back to go to at least 10 different Skidfests.
"When I close my eyes and just listen, the people, the music, the laughter, the camaraderie, it's no different," Francis says. "The only difference now is that every kid has a cell phone."
And maybe that is the only important difference. Kane says if every university student knew only what they've experienced, they would all think that it's just as big a party school as ever.
"You can't miss what you never knew," he says.
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