Student Government Association Vice President of Academic Affairs unveils “Beat Duke Week” promotional T-shirts at a Friday senate committee meeting.

This year, the university is fighting fire with fire.

In hopes of preventing the chaos that followed the Terrapin men’s basketball team’s last face-off at home with Duke — students flooding the streets and setting fires as police unleashed pepper spray, rubber pellets and officers on horse back into the crowd — university administrators, police and student leaders have joined together to create alternative venues for students after tomorrow’s showdown against the Blue Devils and have inundated the student body with messages about proper fan behavior.

At tomorrow’s game 100 seats of the student section at Comcast Center will be taken up by student leaders and others who have pledged to promote good sportsmanship throughout the game, leaving other ticket-holding students to fill in rows around them.

And in the final event of “Beat Duke Week” — what the student groups and university officials have dubbed the week leading up to tomorrow’s basketball game — students will be invited to celebrate or sulk around an enormous bonfire that will be lit on the Chapel field tomorrow night. Police and student leaders have said the positive post-Duke event should discourage students from rioting by providing them with something else to do.

“It’s a constructive place to go and celebrate a win,” Student Government Association President Steve Glickman said, adding he sees the fire as a distraction from destructive riot activities, not a deterrent to celebrating.

To ensure things don’t get out of hand, about 100 volunteer student marshals will patrol the field along with plain-clothes police officers and fire fighters, an effort organized by Love Movement President Ben Simon.

“We didn’t want to have riot cops this year. Riot cops were not a big hit in years past,” Simon said. “Instead of having an overbearing police presence, the university trusted us to have students maintain the event.”

While to some, leaving safety in the hands of students may seem chancy, both Glickman and Simon said they remain confident the event will stay safe. The student marshals have been instructed to alert police if any attendees become too rowdy.

“We do have to be there just in case there are those who decide to take things further,” Prince George’s County Police spokesman Cpl. Clinton Copeland said, adding he hopes the event is fun and runs smoothly.

With 100 wooden pallets and about 15 tree trunks worth of wood, student leaders said the fire will be so hot no one will be able to get close enough to do anything stupid. A disk jockey will provide music for the fire, and a handful of iPods will be raffled off. Students will not be allowed to throw other objects in the fire.

“The biggest concern is actually people bypassing the fire and going on to the city instead,” Simon said.

Other university students are literally praying that last year’s riot doesn’t repeat itself.

Kenneth Theodos, a senior environmental science and policy major and member of Faith Community Network of College Park, helped organize the UMD v. Duke Prayer Rally for Safety and Sportsmanship — a simple service in the West Chapel of the Memorial Chapel tonight at 7 p.m. The university’s Methodist chaplain Rev. Kim Capps and Fr. George Wilkinson, a priest at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, will lead the prayer rally, and members of the Prince George’s Police Department are expected to attend.

“We all know what happened last year with the riot,” Theodos said. “It’s important to be supportive of our school, be supportive of our team, but do it the right way.”

Though Christian student organizations will host the rally, it is open to students of all faiths.

“It’s a chance to focus ourselves to make sure we have the right mindset, the right perspective, going into the game,” Theodos said.

meehan at umdbk dot com