An inside look at one engineering student’s journey tenting in Duke’s famous K-ville over four years.
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Tenting is Better with Engineers
Krzyzewskiville has become a staple of the Duke undergraduate experience, ever since its inception in 1986. What started as a few tents pitched on the lawn in front of Cameron Indoor Stadium has expanded into a well-oiled, outrageously enthusiastic machine.
In recent years, students have spent their winter break scrolling endlessly through Duke Men’s Basketball players’ social media accounts to study for the Black Tenting Entry Test and come into the Spring semester equipped with 12-person tents, tarps, palettes, and overwhelming amounts of cardboard.
This year, 41% of the Duke student body took the Black Tenting Entry Test for the 2025 home UNC game. That’s 221 groups of 12 according to the Duke Chronicle’s report. For reference, this is more than double the number of students in the Pratt School of Engineering.
Cameron Crazies get ready for a game at K-ville.
What did that competition mean for this year’s tenting season? It meant that these were the craziest of the Cameron Crazies, and each tenting group would need to go all in to win points toward their spot in line. Points are awarded based on attendance at specific events, spirit competition wins, and placement on the second test of the season, the Duke Men’s Basketball History Test.
Although every tenting group has their own ways of going all-out, for engineering students this is a great opportunity to show off their skill sets in untraditional ways. I have been a Krzyzewskiville (KVille) resident since my first year at Duke, when making my shifts on time depended largely on the reliability (or rather, unreliability) of the C1 bus route.
That year, eight of the 12 members of our tent were engineers. Since first-year engineers have almost identical course loads, we spent our first tenting season carefully juggling schedules (and often alternating who skipped a lecture we all had). The theme was “Duke United Tenting,” or DUT more affectionately, a spin-off of Duke United Testing and a nod to COVID-19 conditions in the spring of 2022.
Tenting with engineers means there will be plenty of spreadsheets, constructed decorations, and a very logical approach to the entire tenting process.
Ryan HamnerDuke Sophomore Studying Environmental Science & Policy
Ryan Ringel, a member of the tent, used his newly developed 3D-printing skills to make coins that we used as tokens for taking on extra shifts when needed. If you took someone else’s tent shift at the last minute, you got one of their tokens and earned yourself an extra opportunity to get out of a shift later on.
By sophomore year, our group changed significantly, especially due to a few of the original tent members becoming part of the Line Monitor organization. The Line Monitors are the students who run KVille, and their responsibilities include (but are not limited to) organizing game day operations, tenting tests, tent break down and set up, and, of course, running around with a bullhorn when a tent check is happening.
That spring, we rallied around a “Proctor and Gamble” theme (an homage to Tyrese Proctor). The engineers in our tent had developed skills a bit further by then. Emma Fleischman, Pratt ‘25, created a “Welcome to Fabulous KVille” sign that appeared multiple times on Duke Men’s Basketball social media that year, and in the years since.
Scenes from Eliana Durkee’s years of experience tenting at K-Ville.
On top of this, she created stickers with our “logo” in the Innovation Co-Lab and started a makeshift PB&J selling business during tent checks. Meanwhile, Ben Perry, Pratt ‘24, passed a semiautomated spreadsheet down to us from former Pratt students that streamlined our shift scheduling process.
Spring 2024 was my personal favorite—we had selected the theme “Mojo Dojo Casa Tent” as a reference to the Barbie movie that had come out the summer prior. Determined to make it the best year yet, our tent (now seven Pratt students and five Trinity) went all out on decorations. We brought back Emma’s signage and built a shoe rack and functional saloon doors for our little plot of land. Emma, Rodrigo Bassi Guerreiro (Pratt ‘25), Michael Bryant (Pratt ‘25), Lilly Chiavetta (Pratt ‘25), Jaeden Toy (Trinity ‘25), Chris Johnson (Trinity ‘25) and I spent hours in the Foundry creating, staining, and customizing decorations for the doors.
When I asked how being an engineering student has affected her tenting experience, Lilly said, “The best part about being an engineer is that you have access to the design spaces so you can build really cool decorations for your tent!” Most of the materials were free for us to use, and many were returned at the end of the season and recycled into projects for courses such as EGR 121.
The best part about being an engineer is that you have access to the design spaces so you can build really cool decorations for your tent!
Lilly Chiavetta Duke Senior Studying ECE and BME
This year, our tent “Kon on the Cob” had a farm-style theme, complete with a made-from-scratch picket fence, barn doors with homemade hinges, and 3D-printed corn decorations. The same members spent our first weekend back at Duke this spring in the Foundry, alternating between building the decorations and studying hard for the entry test. After all, none of the decorations would matter if we didn’t get a plot in KVille.
Emma Fleischman with Coach Jon Scheyer.
When we reflected on the season afterward, Michael explained that “as a Duke Engineering student, two of my favorite things are making projects and going to Duke basketball games. So it’s especially exciting when these two interests overlap.” And, of course, we would never be able to get our tent set up in the first place without our two civil engineering and camping enthusiasts, Maya Reeves (Pratt ‘25) and Kennedy Robinson (Pratt ‘25).
Ryan Hamner (Trinity ’27) has tented with me for the past two years. In a group with seven Pratt students and five Trinity students, Ryan noted, “Tenting with engineers means there will be plenty of spreadsheets, constructed decorations, and a very logical approach to the entire tenting process.” It can also mean senior design meetings in KVille, having SolidWorks crash on you in a cold tent, and a very packed schedule.
But there is no better way to do it in my opinion.
Outside of my own tent, I’ve watched fellow Pratt students construct decorations and costumes such as a life-sized Maliq Brown and custom space suits. Although every Duke student in KVille has an enthusiasm and commitment to tenting, being an engineering student brings extra challenges and advantages to the season.
Eliana Durkee is a senior majoring in mechanical engineering.
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