Every week, we use STATEside to take a look back at the recent and not-so recent past, using the archives at the Vidette.
If you recall any of the campus happenings referenced in our “This Week in Illinois State History” feature, feel free to post in the Comments below.
15 YEARS AGO
It’s 1998, and for the first time all incoming freshman will soon be required to take a mandatory introduction to speech communication course. The “Language and Communication” course is part of a new general studies program that will be implemented next year, also requiring new students to take a writing and “Foundations of Inquiry” course. “Students will have more classes in common in their freshman year, so I think it will give them a more common experience,” said Brian Hamilton, coordinator for the Academic Advisement Center. Today, COM 110 (Communication as Critical Inquiry) is one of two courses all ISU students must take in their first-year experience, along with ENG 101 (Composition as Critical Inquiry).
20 YEARS AGO
A one-two punch of disasters on the East Coast in spring 1993 means that some students at Illinois State are running out of money–cash, specifically. Most automatic teller machines, or ATMs, across Bloomington-Normal are now out of commission. A key central switch computer, which serves as the digital “traffic cop” on ATM transactions, was disabled by a big spring snowstorm on the East Coast. The backup site is headquartered in the World Trade Center, which was recently targeted in a terrorist bombing. “Typically you don’t get two disasters so close together,” said Terry Nichols with Bloomington’s Champion Federal Savings and Loan Bank.
25 YEARS AGO
A Normal Town Council vote in March 1983 paves the way for construction of a new biking and jogging trail that will run across and through the Twin Cities. Construction of the trail, which will be built on the old railroad right-of-way purchased by the Bloomington-Normal city governments, is expected to begin in summer 1988. (The initial idea for the trail was proposed by Hugh Atwood, an alderman on the Bloomington City Council, in the early 1980s.) “It’s a development that will generate considerable use when it first opens,” says Ron Blemler, director of Parks and Recreation in Normal. The Constitution Trail’s grand opening was May 6, 1989. Today, the 24-mile trail is a big draw among Twin City residents, including Illinois State students.
60 YEARS AGO
It’s 1953, and a student council committee has put together a checklist for students, faculty, and staff, to help rank the features they want in the planned Student Union building. Those getting the checklist are asked to rank the possible Student Union features, gathered by student leaders on a recent trip to four Indiana colleges, as “essential, desirable, or necessary.” President Fairchild plans to use the rankings when he goes to Chicago this week to have tentative plans for the new Illinois State Normal University union drawn up, the Vidette reports. That Student Union later opened on the Quad in 1956. It was also called the Educational Media Building and Media Services for a time after it was no longer the student union. President Strand named this building “Old Union” during his tenure as president in the 1990s. Today, the Old Union Building is home for of the School of Information Technology.
Ryan Denham can be reached at rmdenha@IllinoisState.edu.
