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It's both. DD is now attending the same U I did 30 years ago. In fact she lives in the same dorm. When we go to visit, for me, it's like I never left. True, it wouldn't be the 80s, but the students are the same. Sure, the names change. So do the faces and haircuts, but the people are the same. Same excitement. Same worries.
If I could, I'd love to retire back there. Feels more like home than any place else.
No more bonfire, no more quadding ("you will engage in harmless pranks.......during wartime, these are often known as atrocities"--a 50's MAD magazine about Frats)
The people may be different but yet the same. They are not the big hair, dance aerobics, leg warmer, Reagan era I was in..and yet, I wouldn't doubt if I was told they saw the world after graduation with the same high, idealistic hopes that I probably did.
Perhaps different in content.....but still idealistic.
Little by little they chipped away at the student experience.
Sold off the student seats at the football stadium.
Got rid of student parking.
Got rid of the cool mom-and-pop Union Underground and replaced it with chain restaurants.
Got rid of mid- campus gym and pool space at Anna Hiss...
My college campus got nailed by an F-5 tornado my junior year. In the intervening years (approaching twenty), the restoration to the campus has been phenomenal, but the effect is that it also looks considerably less like the place I attended, and more like some other college campus that is not so familiar to me. It's largely unrecognizable to me, other than a few landmarks that now look incongruous because they are surrounded by so much new. The loss of nearly all the trees had a jarring effect, as well. They were able to reforest by transplanting many adult trees, but there's really nothing you can do to replicate 100+ year old trees in just a couple of decades.
My college was old at the time I had attended and I swear it had not been updated since the 1940s; there were exposed pipes all over the place and everything inside of the building seemed to have been painted gun-metal grey. Air conditioning? Nope, had to open windows. And I am sure the exposed pipes were to provide heat. It reminded me of the inside of a Navy vessel. The labs were just as old, sometimes downright scary. These days the lack of air conditioning and old as heck labs would likely be seen as "abusive/endangerment", but hey, those were the times.
When I was in attendee there were just over 3K students total, including the handful of graduate/professional students. Since then, the campus has expanded and nearly tripled in size with the inclusion of a giant, expanded, business and law schools, a new science campus that is also just as huge, and a ton of dorms including apartment suites. There are now men's and women's ice hockey teams, too.
It's rural setting is also changing as suburban developing creeps closer and closer to campus. When I was there if you did not have access to a car you were SOL most of the time. There were shuttle busses that picked you and dropped you off within reason (I mean, not like 20 miles away from campus but they would pick you up late night if you lived on campus from nearly anywhere. This was a service offered by Security). Now the shuttles run more frequently and there is even pubic transportation on and off campus.
Also, when I was a student most buildings were "open" 24/7, in particular the main library. Now, doors are locked over night and you need your student ID/card key to enter.
I haven't been back there much since I graduated but I do keep in contact with some of my old profs, read the blogs, student newspaper, and alumni magazine. Despite its massive expansion, it sounds like the same old place.
Little by little they chipped away at the student experience.
Sold off the student seats at the football stadium.
Got rid of student parking.
Got rid of the cool mom-and-pop Union Underground and replaced it with chain restaurants.
Got rid of mid- campus gym and pool space at Anna Hiss...
Meh. Lame.
I was never really a UT student except for two summers at UT Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas. One did do all their registration up in Austin, got their photo ID card there, (and goes through there anytime they need transcripts these days) though.
I miss informal classes for they got rid of those a few years ago, too. First, they took our belly dance classes out of the tower but that was a safety issue in that there was only one exit. Still, though, there was a very "artsy" feeling walking across campus at night, knowing you were going to a dance class. When they stopped doing them in the tower, we had to do them more and more in a dance company away from the university.
Then informal classes got axed in a budget crisis (but it was more like, "See, I am doing something, I'll cut this (minor, non educational program)" and that was that.
But it was something of that "artsy" feeling that were brought back in the memories of TAMU when I saw this https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net...03905942_o.jpg
for it reminded me of a dance friend who once commented about her going to and fro her dorm room and the dance studio in leotard, tights, leg warmers, & old ballet slippers (maybe), people looking as if to think, "she really goes to class like that?". And, yes, she was like that, even doing pirouettes along the side walk once, spinning off into the curb, and spending the rest of the semester on crutches.
By the way, don't bother trying to find a picture of me in that album; I'm not to be found. Like my life afterward, I don't appear easily; I guess it's just my nature.
No more bonfire, no more quadding ("you will engage in harmless pranks.......during wartime, these are often known as atrocities"--a 50's MAD magazine about Frats)
The people may be different but yet the same. They are not the big hair, dance aerobics, leg warmer, Reagan era I was in..and yet, I wouldn't doubt if I was told they saw the world after graduation with the same high, idealistic hopes that I probably did.
Perhaps different in content.....but still idealistic.
We had many bonfire and prank war at SIUC
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