For the past three Spring Breaks, the Lambda Iota fraternity at the University of Vermont crowded into a hearse, hooting and hollering all the way to Fort Lauderdale.

This year, 22 of The Owls, as they are known on campus, crammed into an old school bus stocked with beer and landed on a sliver of blacktop one block from the beachfront Strip.

After a few days of partying, the group came to the collective conclusion that they should have brought the hearse.

“It’s like a cemetery,” said 22-year-old senior Erik Gray. “It looks like a ghost town compared to what it used to be like. There is nobody here.”

The brothers of Lambda Iota had decided to give Fort Lauderdale one more chance on Spring Break. They quickly changed their minds and left for the Keys last week after discovering that the once-raucous Strip had turned sedate.

With only two weeks left, Spring Break is a shadow of its former self. Crowds are running at least 10-15 percent behind last year’s estimated 200,000 students, according to Fort Lauderdale police. Rates have dropped at many beach hotels.

Even staunch supporters of the college season admit that it will never be the same as it was in the early 1980s, when students jammed bars and beach traffic backed up for miles ’round the clock. Now there is plenty of room on the sand, and a sidewalk stroll is possible.

“I don’t expect it to get any better,” said Paul Lorenzo, manager of the Candy Store bar. “Spring Break is dead.”

No longer student-dominated, the Fort Lauderdale Strip now features a mix of tourists: couples, some families and corporate businesspeople.

After the city tightened its grip on the college season in 1986, students stayed away in droves last year. A group of beach businesses and the Tourist Development Council advertised to attract some of them back.

Still, many headed elsewhere.

“I thought it would be more wild,” said Brenda Falcon, 19, a University of North Texas freshman, waiting to phone home at the Budweiser beach tent. “It’s not Daytona.”

Indeed, MTV’s live broadcasts from Daytona Beach this weekend highlight the Spring Break actitivies that the city expects to draw 480,000 students. In contrast, when MTV taped segments at the Candy Store last week, the crowd barely filled one side of the pool.

“I was expecting wall-to-wall girls,” said University of Kentucky senior Chris Berling, 20, after a day on the beach. “So far, it’s no big deal.”

For the hotels, the big money is gone. Although room occupancies have increased from last March, operators say revenues are down because rates are lower.

At the 185-room Lauderdale Beach Hotel, only about 40 rooms a night were occupied last week, operations manager Susan Gebhart said.

“We’re not doing very well at all,” she said. “The kids just aren’t coming.”

Only about one-fifth of the rooms at the Days Inn-Lauderdale Surf Hotel are occupied by students. Overall, occupancy has increased from last year, but revenues were down about $30,000 for the month because the average rate dropped, regional sales manager Caryl Sickel said.

“We’ve given a low rate to companies that stay with us year round,” she said. “I know a lot of people are hurting, but it’s one of the best things for the Fort Lauderdale beach. Every year, we will try to get more corporate business.”

Next door at the Holiday Inn Oceanside, projections of average occupancy as high as 85 percent failed to materialize. The hotel has been about three- fourths full for the month, but room revenues are down 30 percent, said regional manager Marko Milobar.

Crowds have been so sparse at the Holiday Inn’s Button bar that the hotel began allowing 18-year-olds inside this weekend to boost sales at night — a policy that other beachfront bars started during last year’s Spring Break. The underaged drinkers can purchase only soft drinks.

“I’m disappointed that we aren’t doing better, but I don’t think it’s a surprise,” Milobar said. “It’s going to mean a lot of belt-tightening for the rest of the year.”

Several smaller hotels, such as the Bahama, Merrimac and Jolly Roger, reported occupancies of more than 90 percent last week. Again, rates are down. For example, the cheapest room at the Merrimac cost $65, compared with $85 last March.

“If we stay full the rest of the month, we’ll come out ahead,” said Bahama Motel manager Jim Bolt.

For hotel owner George Gill Jr., the lack of students is an advantage: He wants to attract families and couples to the Sheraton Yankee Trader and Yankee Clipper hotels. Fewer than 10 percent of the rooms at the Trader, in the center of the beach, were occupied by students last week.

“We are definitely getting families,” said Gill. “Now the kids aren’t crowding them out.”

The Tourist Development Council spent $35,860 for ads in campus magazines; the ads were designed to attract juniors and seniors. However, hoteliers say many of the students are freshmen and sophomores.

“We gave it a shot,” Council Chairwoman Nicki Grossman said. “The community is just about ready to write off Spring Break. My problem is they’ve written it off with nothing to fill in the blanks.”

Among the casualties of the evaporating college season are small motel owners who bought their businesses within the past two years. Eleven beach-area motels will be auctioned off on April 7.

“We’re in the healing process,” said Parrot Lounge owner Tim Schiavone. “It’s just like if a hurricane hits a city. I don’t have an encouraging attitude for the rest of the season.”

For the brothers of Lambda Iota, the disaster struck the moment they hit the Button for the annual series of college contests. The University of Vermont is a perennial winner for best party school.

Steve “Mad Dog” Kimball, 22, a senior, remembers the wild banana-eating contests from 1985. Describing himself as “the last of the diehards,” he has vacationed in Fort Lauderdale every Spring Break since freshman year.

Last week, Kimball and the rest of the Owls headed out of the Button to their 15-year-old bus, parked on a small private lot on Seabreeze Boulevard beside the Days Inn Lauderdale Surf Hotel.

The Lambda Iotas arrived last Sunday prepared to stay a week, bunking down in sleeping bags inside the bus and on a roof platform. But, after two days, they decided they’d had enough. They headed for the Keys.

“We are just trying to keep the place alive, but it’s not like it used to be,” Kimball said.