When 147 students were cited at Finnigan's Irish Pub the Thursday before fall break, they faced a possible fine and community service. The University also stepped in and scheduled ResLife hearings where students might face additional community service and alcohol counseling.

For Fritz Holegrefe, Class of 1964, the stakes were much higher when he was caught in a bar as an undergrad.

"If you got caught in a raid, you were gone," he said.

Holegrefe went to a vastly different Notre Dame than the school under the Dome today. The rules were strict, stifling and unforgiving. At the then all-male school, dorm room visits from girls were forbidden, daily mass was practically mandatory and most of South Bend was taboo. The Fathers of the Holy Cross tried to make certain that their students weren't spending time in the pool halls and bars of the city.

"You'd sneak around if you could, but certain parts of town were off-limits," Holegrefe said. "Probably 3/4 of the city of South Bend was off-limits. If you were caught, it didn't make a darn bit of difference when you were caught, you were out."

So when South Bend police raided Joer's Bar and Grill in South Bend, as a 19-year-old student, Holegrefe knew he was in trouble.

He first tried to hide from the cops in the women's bathroom, but it was already full of frightened underage patrons. Next he ventured to the basement where there was a special room for avoiding the officers. But again, he was too late. The backroom was stuffed with students.

So Holegrefe went back up to the bar and sat down between two older men — one in his mid-50s and one in his early 60s.

"I said `Guys, listen to me and let's carry on a conversation. We are going to talk about how lousy a day we had at work,'" Holegrefe said.

So the Notre Dame undergrad and the two older, bluecollar workers began to complain and gripe about how awful their jobs were. They traded made-up stories about overbearing bosses, back breaking labor and lunch breaks that were too short.

Soon the officers reached Holegrefe and the two men. They asked the man on Holegrefe's left for his ID.

"The cop came by and we're sitting here raising hell about work and they card this guy next to me — he's 55," Holegrefe said. "So the other guy says `What are you carding us for? Me and this guy [Holegrefe] had a really bad day at work.'"

The embarassed officer just walked away without carding Holegrefe. Thanks to some quick thinking, Holegrefe remained in school long enough to earn his degree and graduate in 1964.

Graduates from Notre Dame in the 50s and 60s remember the University being a much stricter school with rules like bed checks, morning checks and dress codes.

"Notre Dame was a whole lot different than it is today," said Tom Rohrer, Class of 1956. "We weren't allowed to wear shorts — except on the golf course. We weren't allowed to have bicycles and, of course, there were no girls."

Notre Dame wasn't just an all-male school before 1972; women were barely allowed on campus — and never into a student's dorm room.

"It was all you could do to get your mother in your room on a football weekend," Holegrefe said. "When I was here, you had four service academies in the country — Army, Navy, Air Force … and Notre Dame. And in this place, the rules were probably tougher."

While alcohol was banned from campus, students still found a way to keep a little beer around and, like today, administrators usually turned a blind eye to the occasional on campus alcohol violation.

Jim Haering, Class of 1955, said he and his fellow Howard Hall residents used to keep bottles of beer in the flush tanks of toilets to keep them cold. Little refigerators didn't exist yet, so the cold water kept the beer at least a little bit cooler.

This method worked for several months without a problem until a notice was tacked to the bulletin boards by the rector asking students to stop putting beer bottles in the tanks. Apparently, the labels kept falling off the bottles and clogging up the plumbing.

A few weeks later, another notice appeared on the boards thanking the students for switching to canned beer and ending the label problem.

Another alumnus relates a story from the 60s when several students rigged one of the soda fountains in the dorm to dispense beer rather than Coke. Although the keg was seized as soon as the rector discovered the alteration made to the machine, he did not investigate who was responsible for the keg. He supposedly was too intrigued by the inginuity shown by the students to prosecute anyone.

Despite stories of unpunished alcohol violations, Notre Dame administrators mostly kept a vigilant eye on students when they were on campus. Students were expected to be in bed at 11 p.m. on weeknights — no exceptions.

"Lights went out at 11," Rohrer said. "The electricity went out at 11."

Rectors came around to the rooms to make sure that everyone was in bed and, if a bed were empty, that student would be reported to the Prefect of Discipline."

When he lived in Howard Hall as a freshman, Rohrer's rector used to brag that he had thrown a famous football player out for missing bed check. Community service, probation or counseling were hardly ever the punishment for breaking curfew. There was only one consequence for staying out late and it was not negotiable.

"If you weren't in the dormitory, you were gone," Holegrefe said. "You were grass — out of the University. First offense, you were toast for one semester; second offense you were out for life."

The administration kept a careful watch over students in the mornings as well. Three days a week, all students had to report to the dorm chapel at 7 a.m. fully dressed for morning check. As part of Rohrer's athletic scholarship, it was his job to check off the names of everyone in his dorm.

"Mass wasn't mandatory, but they encouraged you to go three times a week by being down there fully dressed," he said.

Rohrer said Notre Dame has become a much more secular University. When he attended Notre Dame, he said mass attendance was better and the students kept more to the traditions of the Catholic church.

"Confessionals in Sacred Heart were lined along the wall, and on Sunday morning, the lines would be a mile long, with everyone going to confession," he said. Apparently there were still plenty of sins for Notre Dame students to commit before curfew.

The strict rules and curfews kept everyone in line and preserved the learning environment, according to Rohrer.

"There were no pranks," he said. "Everyone was there to study."

While the restrictions may have fostered a better academic environment, Holegrefe said the restrictions were overbearing and insulting.

"In a lot of respects it was demeaning. It was horrible back then," he said. "You're 22 years old and you have to be in by 12:30 on a Saturday night. It was ridiculous."

Beginning in the mid- to late 60s, however, the rules and regulations that held students in check began to crumble. While it was once required that students wear a jacket and tie to dinner, when almost every student student showed up for dinner one night wearing nothing but a jacket and tie, that rule was dropped. Bed checks, morning checks and travel restrictions fell by the wayside as well.

The Vietman protests that filled campuses across the country did not bypass Notre Dame. In 1969, 10 students were expelled for protesting on-campus recruiting by Dow Chemical and the Central Intelligence Agency. The 10 students expelled were the leaders of a group of students who blocked access to the interview rooms by jamming the Main Building and refusing to leave.

The social unrest caused on campus by these and other protests left administrators more concerned with preserving general order on campus and less interested in regulating every aspect of student life.

When John Peloquin arrived as a freshman in 1971, he was a member of the last all-male class admitted to Notre Dame. But Notre Dame was a changed institution.

"I get the impression that things were much rougher and woolier and there was certainly more `inappropriate behavior' in my day," Peloquin said.

In 1972, women were first admitted and although there were parietals, "I don't remember anyone getting the boot for violating them," Peloquin said. "I also don't remember what they were — as you might guess, I didn't pay them much attention."

Peloquin and the rest of the students at Notre Dame in the early 70s were more interested in one thing: beer. The more beer the better.

Once a year, a group of students would rent out the South Bend Armory and throw a massive drinking party. Buses would run from campus to the Armory to safely transport students, and for a small fee, you got all the beer you could drink.

Inside the Armory, there would be several beer trucks dispensing 16 oz. cups of beer. Students could drink all they wanted. The trucks would always leave the Armory empty.

"Needless to say, it was a bacchanal of huge proportions. The trucks would be drunk dry almost as a matter of perverse pride," Peloquin said.

On-campus parties were also wild and crazy affairs. The architecture students would put on a Beaux Arts Ball every year in the old architecture building. Peloquin said he preferred the archie party even though the Ball featured less alcohol than the Armory parties. The Ball was always well decorated and humorous, he said.

While the early 70s were wild and crazy times, Peloquin admits some of the student parties weren't the safest things in the world.

"In retrospect, many of the situations I enjoyed were unlawful, abusive and dangerous — I would not want my son to do these things," he said.

Over time, the social protests died down and the administration regained some control over the social activities of the students. Today, the parties aren't as wild as they were in the 70s, but the rules aren't as restrictive as they were in the 50s or 60s. Today's campus is a bit too secular for Rohrer's tastes and the new rules are a little more than Peloquin would prefer.

But for all the complaints that Notre Dame students register while on campus as undergrads, most look back at their days under the Dome fondly.

"You were frustrated sometimes, and let's be honest, there is no worse place in the world to be than Indiana when it's 20 below, snowing and that wind is blowing like mad. You would love to be somewhere warm, but come on, why would you want to be anywhere else?" Holegrefe said. "Notre Dame is Notre Dame. There is nothing like it in the world. It's not Harvard. It's not Yale. It's Notre Dame people and there is nothing like it in the world."

• When I went to Notre Dame ...