Northern Illinois University - Norther Yearbook (DeKalb, IL)

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tu at clues the future hultl Your alma mater . . . what will you encounter when you attend NlU's 1984 Homecoming? Or will it be a Peacecoming? What will the world and life be like during the Orwellian era beginning in the year 1984? Will Big Brother be watching? Projected NlU enrollment . . . 35,000 . . . 40,000 . . . 100,000? Who can tell? The crystal ball can tell us that Northern will be a graduate university with undergraduate populations comprised of juniors and seniors. This is due to Phase lll and other state master plans. Junior college students from the Chicago area and around the state will flood Northern. Major concentration at this school will be physical sciences and education. Long lines will probably endure the 12-year time span to test the patience of the students of 1984. Computers. . . computers . . . IBM . . .Control Data.. . They are the masterminds. They will spit out tests, give lectures, plan courses and filter various student files, records and other assorted data. All this with a flick of a button, a whirl of a spool and the feeding of a punched card. Yes, students will remain a number. That is their identity. lVlaybe students will no longer have a name, forgetting them due to lack of use. Just a digital identity. Hey 365-66-6783! How are you? Teachers will become mere television images spewing their lectures and critiques from their offices. Televisions will beam those lectures to students seated ,in their dorm rooms listening and taking notes in front of their multi-media resource center. The center is even capable of producing a daily newspaper, a best seller, or a reference book. Grading-1984 style. Tables may be turned, students may be grading teachers in addition to teachers conventionally and traditionally grading the student. Self evaluation and pass-fail, plus-minus will probably outlast our present a, b, c, d, f system.

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students Entertainment is part of the life of today's college student. It can be as carefree as a concert during lVlay Fete or Homecoming or as serious as a speech by Jesse Jackson or William Kunsler. Friday afternoon parties . . . Friday night parties. . .all nighters . . .all day Saturday parties . . .all Saturday night parties. . . form part of a college student's life--the leisurely part. A part of life that's just as important as that part of his life that's filled with studying and learning. Greeks . . . frats and sororities . . . all vying for brothers and sisters with like interests and spirits. A life that could be dying today but is still a very much alive scene on lXllU's campus. An ever-rising tuition has students wondering when inflation will be curbed. A price freeze keeps them OVG wondering. lt could be another strike for or against Richard lVl. Nixon. Every student on this campus, over age 18, may now exercise his or her opinion on political, social and economic problems in national and state elections, the national being only months away. Politics on the local scene are just as important. Stu- dent government keeps alive the questions: What is wrong? Who gets this much money? Who doesn't. E2 o Life today breeds many hostilities, and so too does college life. Hostilities which can be relieved by throwing a rock, cheering a team, participating in a sport. All this is part of the college scene. All must be encountered and conquered so that we may endure a lifetime . . . make a better place in society, a place which will help mankind to better itself. rest

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F-lTl ElE'i'Ul'l fur nerr ern? Dorm food may be condensed into a squeezable tube, supplemented by a vitamin pill, causing the pain only a few seconds rather than a few months. Campus traffic could consist of machines run on non- polluting freon. There may still be students who will be forced to take their place on DeKalb streets with rundown '72 Fords and Chevys showing signs of age. The parking towers, now in the planning stage, should be completed, adding many homes for these freon eaters. Overcrowding will probably still prevail. Advice for today's pre-schooler: Purchase a bike. Athletics. . . the big time . . . Huskies could be as common a word as lllini, Boilermakers, Fighting Irish. Yes, national television could bring NlU athletics to the NCAA Game of the Week or Wide World of Sports. A new stadium should be packing them in while a new addition to the old Huskie to last stadium will handle the overflowing football crowds. Dress styles . . . trends . . . fads . . . sex . . .drugs . .. what will the outlook be? Student government. . . may be hiring and firing all the staff in the university as well as budgeting the entire university. Life in 1984 could possibly go on without your ever leaving your room. It sounds impossible, improbableg but in 1969, the United States put a man on the moon In 1984 manned excursions to lVlars could be a regular trip . . . for Easter vacation maybe? Progress seems to be the University's destiny. As long as man continues to encounter life, and keeps trying to understand and improve it, progress will always go on. Come back to NIU in 1984 and encounter a new way of life. Remember the days when you were a student and then try to understand the youth of this day---1984 and Beyond. 13