"Your weekend mantra is to let people know that whatever problem they're having, we can solve it," DeDe Olson, reunions staff member, to student workers.Photo:Les Todd

Mid-February of 2004, while Walton is still refining his vision for the Big Dance, reunions staff member DeDe Olson is preparing to brief the forty or so students who will help out on reunions weekend and the weeks leading up to it. She recruits through ads in The Chronicle, but a lot of students are veterans of past years who re-up, or initiates who sign on after hearing from friends that it is, in the words of one, "a really nice gig."

"It got a really good review from a friend who did it last year," says John Rimel, a junior, from Charlottesville, Virginia. "He said he met a lot of interesting people and that it was a good way to make money in a short time." The students crowd into the conference room. The tangy smell of the outdoors follows them in and is overlaid with the odor of young people packed together in a warm room--sweat, deodorant, cologne, hair gel.

Olson has a gruff, crusty manner, like the no-nonsense schoolteacher who at the beginning of the year you thought was too strict and by the end of the year could do no wrong. "Alumni really look to you as ambassadors of the university," Olson tells them. "Your job is to think on your feet, to solve problems, answer questions, and check tickets to make sure they have registered."

"Your weekend mantra is to let people know that whatever problem they're having, we can solve it. You'll have a phone and a radio; it's up to you to find a solution."

Adds Dilts, "We get letters from alumni every year saying that the interaction with you is one of the highlights of their reunion experience."

"Dress code," Olson says, moving resolutely through her printed agenda. "Dress comfortably but neatly. Wear your reunions T-shirt with jeans or khakis--no ripped jeans. If it's hot, you can wear shorts, but down to here," she says, hunching slightly, stretching her fingers to their full extent, and tapping her thighs along a relatively demure line of demarcation.

"Punctuality: On Friday morning the start of reunions weekend, be there at 7:15. Don't make us wake up your roommates at 7:20."

"Each of you will be assigned a class, unless you're working the information tent." For the weeks leading up to the reunion, the students will work on stuffing registration packets, creating nametags, and putting together photo collages for each class. (Over the weekend itself, three students are assigned to each class; the rest work at the information tent, greeting people and answering questions.) Olson tells them that she will send an e-mail message letting them know when she needs them. "Please respond promptly," she says. "Don't make me nag."

Hiring and managing the students are Olson's main responsibilities. But she is also in charge of transportation and parking. (Dilts works with five classes, in addition to overseeing the whole weekend, and a third staff member--for 2004, it was Whitney Dunlap '01, who has since taken another job--works with the other seven classes. Bridgette Colton, a staff assistant, rounds out the reunions staff.)

Olson is an ¸ber organizer, a self-described "list kind of girl." "Everything goes onto my list, and I recycle and refurbish it from year to year. I keep copious lists. Of course, I'm also the kind of person who calls myself at home to leave messages of things to remember." Over the reunions weekend, she is in charge of triage. When she's not checking on students, she sits at her desk, with a half-dozen radios and a pair of cell phones in a little clearing of papers and folders.

Months of planning telescope into weeks. Days begin to blend in a whirl of activity and detail. "If I could just get some sleep," says Dunlap. Friday, April 9, is D-day minus one week. Seated in the special-events-management office in the Bryan Center, Dilts and Slaughter have finished exchanging war stories for now, though Slaughter can't resist a parting shot. "Every year I ask Lisa, 'Do you want sprinklers or no sprinklers with that?'"

It's on to the business of the day--finalizing which classes will be in what tents and where, based on guesstimates of final attendance. John Best of Best Rentals (tables, chairs, dance floors) is also there, along with Dunlap and Windy Jacobs '80, coordinator of special events and Slaughter's right hand. Jacobs had remarked in a previous meeting that she keeps her reunions file on the top of her desk all year. "So if we have a fire, I can pick it up and run."

"The attendance numbers are getting wild and wooly," Dilts tells the group. "The numbers are growing by, literally, 200-300 a day. The Class of '89 has already broken their attendance record." Because of the increases, they've moved the Class of '64 from Craven Quad to the quad in front of House P, and have had to rent a larger tent for '79.

"When the numbers increase," Dilts explains later, "it doesn't just affect the caterer. It affects the dècor (flowers and balloons), police, tables and chairs, tablecloths and napkins. It starts affecting our transportation resources--number of buses, parking--and classrooms." As the numbers climb in the days to come, Slaughter phones to tell her, "Remember, there are no tent stretchers."

By Monday of the week of the reunion, people walk around looking strained and tightly wound. Monday is the start of an anxious consulting of the five-day weather forecast. Dunlap is momentarily elated when told it will be in the mid-70s and sunny on Friday and Saturday. Then her face falls. "But I heard it might rain on Sunday."

The reunions office and the halls and living room of Alumni House are filled with stack upon stack of big white boxes, labeled variously, "Big Dance," or "Info Tent Supplies," "1949," "1974." You have to pick your way over students splayed on the carpet, working on photo collages, to get to Dilts' office. At 4:45 that afternoon, she takes a look at the latest attendance counts. "I tell you, we're forty-four people away from breaking the all-time reunions attendance record--3,458. That was in 2001."

"We've run out of everything--pocket guides, magnetic Duke cards. We're practically out of folders."

"Tomorrow," Dilts says, mustering a laugh, "we're going to play psychic catering."

Not surprisingly, current students have a range of responses to the massive influx of alumni on their campus. Some see it as an alien invasion by people old enough to be their parents, who take over their quads and embarrass themselves trying to recapture the exciting days of yesteryear, which were, everyone knows, like, eons ago. Others watch with the detachment of anthropologists. "Old people have funny names for bathrooms," says one student. "Like 'water closets' or 'powder room.'"

"Have you seen the show?" an undergraduate asked her seatmate on the bus from West to East Campus. She was referring to a current student production of West Side Story.

"You mean the alumni this weekend?"

"That's another show," the first woman said. "That's the show where alumni get drunk and sit on our benches and litter--like they were still in college."

The students who work the weekend and have the most contact with alumni say they look forward to the interaction. "I had a lot of fun last year," says Jenny Marron, a senior. "I had the fifty-year reunion. They like to tell you about how things have changed. And the women like to tell you about the Woman's College and how the rules have changed. They said during the week they had to be in by seven or some ridiculous time. And if you weren't back, they'd lock you out, and you had to knock and then they'd know you were late. It was hard to believe!"

It's junior Ian Byrnside's second year working reunions, too. "I had the oldest class last year--'43. It was a lot of fun. I also met some guys from the Class of '83 from my frat, Theta Chi. They were interested in what was going on in the frat, and they had some interesting stories." He declines to share them, instead giving a mischievous grin. "Alumni from the Class of '43 were interested in more general things," he says, "what I'm studying, what I want to do when I graduate."

Tuesday afternoon, Marron and a dozen other students sit around the table in the conference room of Alumni House, putting together name badges and weekend packets, which include booklets and information on parking, classes, arts performances, Duke Chapel services, and the Sunday champagne breakfast in Duke Gardens.

"I recently went through a job search, and a Duke alum was helpful," says Michelle Hurtado, a senior from New York, explaining why she took the job. "This is a way of returning the favor, as well as making money. I have '44. I'm hoping to hear stories of traveling and some life advice. I could use some of that."

The veteran student workers had some advice for first-timers: "Listen," says Byrnside.

"Listen," repeats Marron. "Smile. Sleep a lot Thursday night."