Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for May 8, 2006 TURN OUT THE LIGHTS...

...the party's over...they hope!

From the Southern Illinoisan...

The party's over: Some say SIUC has finally shed rowdy school image

BY: CALEB HALE
THE SOUTHERN

CARBONDALE - Here's a bit of movie trivia: The infamous "College" sweater John Belushi wore in National Lampoon's Animal House was printed in Carbondale, when he was a student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

However, the late Belushi and the sweater aren't the only connections SIUC holds to the 1978 comedy about a rowdy college fraternity. Like the fictional Faber College depicted in the film, SIUC was once characterized as party school, due in large part to the riots that occurred in downtown Carbondale on Halloween and Playboy magazine's top party school list, which the campus graced more than once.

Which brings up another piece of "party school" trivia: contrary to popular belief, Playboy doesn't compile its "Party School" list each year. Instead, it has included lists put together by others. In fact, the last time it published its own list was in 2002 - the year SIU received honorable mention.

Until this year, the magazine's previous list was published in 1987, the year SIU was listed No. 17.

List or no list, school administrators say times have changed at the university, but that doesn't mean anyone has let their guard down. To use another cue from Animal House, SIUC's status as a party culture is still on "double secret probation" with officials.

Last week, Playboy released its 2006 top 10 list of party schools. SIUC is not on the list.

"It never happened while I've been here," said SIUC Chancellor Walter Wendler, apparently not counting the 2002 honorable mention as a legitimate ranking.

Wendler has led the campus for five years. In his time, the chancellor also has not seen a Halloween riot in the downtown section of South Illinois Avenue, known as "The Strip." Ending the Halloween "gatherings," in fact, was one of Wendler's first priorities when he came to Carbondale.

"I thought if it was approached correctly ... we could change the culture, and I think we have," he said last week.

SIUC's image as a party school is more fleeting than in-your-face these days, but even Wendler admits the campus hasn't washed its hands completely of its raucous past.

"When I've been in schools with our recruiters, speaking with guidance counselors - and this was a year ago - we asked students what comes to their minds when they think of Southern. The first words out of people's mouths are party school," Wendler said. "We're trying to do away with that image, because first of all it's incorrect.

"This year will be my fifth anniversary at Southern," he continued. "I find the people of Southern Illinois to be committed to doing things well, doing things right, and I think the whole party image is an insult to the people of Southern Illinois. In fact I find it to be a tremendous insult."

James Carl, the assistant director of admissions � the office that handles recruitment efforts for SIUC � said he thinks the party image persists among some people on false pretenses.

"To tell you the truth, anymore in the last several years it only ever becomes an issue when the media brings it back up," Carl said, noting various local and national media outlets drudge up old footage and anecdotes surrounding Halloween at least once a year.

Carl and his staff rarely hear about Halloween or the party school image from outsiders anymore.

"Over a period of time that image thing has come to an end, but as far as it actually being true it died a long time ago," Carl said.

The last time a Halloween riot occurred on The Strip was 2000. Even then SIUC Department of Public Safety Director Todd Sigler said problems were really only associated with Halloween. Yet, he said when he began working at the university roughly 20 years ago, problems sometimes were happening every weekend. In short, Sigler indicated SIUC has not been a rowdy in recent years as some people still claim it to be.

"I don't know that I put a lot of stock in how a school comes to be tagged with an image," Sigler said. "I think a lot of it is perpetuated without a lot of knowledge of what goes on. Certainly the instances we had in Carbondale were pretty high profile, but then again, with SIU, if this university hiccups bad news. It's news in Chicago, and I don't particularly know why."

Sigler said SIUC has a history involving students actively protesting social issues, but he noted such protests aren't the same things as crowds gathering near the bars on the weekend.

Both the university and the city of Carbondale have taken coverall measures to end student mobs, specifically at Halloween, by closing all liquor establishments along South Illinois Avenue. The closure has helped keep Halloweens quiet in town for the last five years. Maybe too quiet, as Wendler said he's heard some discussion from some of the bar owners they'd like to reopen the weekend of Halloween.

"I will speak publicly and privately about what a grave mistake I think that would be," Wendler said, adding SIUC and Carbondale are lucky no one was ever killed in one of the riots on The Strip. If the problem resurges, he said, it could only be a matter of time before someone dies.