Meanwhile, Back On Campus...

You know, nothing spells spontaneous bench-burning like a miraculous overtime double buzzer-beater in Chapel Hill.

However, that sort of thing has to be permitted and Dean Wasiolek, fondly known far and wide as Dean Sue, had a very practical response: she got on the bench and refused to get off, even though students were offering her alcoholic incentives to let them have the bench. Not even the menace of a blowtorch could get her butt off of it.

As she explained, there’s a time for drinking and burning benches, but that wasn’t it. Duke has four permits to burn benches annually and the deal is if they burn without them, they’re going to be revoked.

So Dean Sue resisted the passions of the moment, the booze, and even the blowtorch to preserve that bench for its proper fate: when Duke beats UNC again in Cameron.

Here’s what she had to say:

“What I didn’t want to have happen is any students get in trouble by burning the bench,” Wasiolek told the Chronicle. “It’s not a matter of whether we could have controlled it and tried as best we could to make it safe, but it’s illegal. It’s against the law. I’m not sure students understand that. I don’t mean that in a condescending way, but the law is very clear.”

”I didn’t think it was going to happen tonight because of the weather. And then I called Duke Police just to see if they knew of anything going on, and they called me back and said it might be helpful for me to find my way to the main quad.”