University of Illinois - Illio Yearbook (Urbana Champaign, IL)

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Always Find Fun for All on a Football Weekend Each year throngs of spectators avidly witness perennial football games in Memo- rial Stadium. Glancing at the stands, one per- haps is bewildered by the many spectators wearing orange capes. These spectators are members of Block I, the largest card sec- tion of its kind in the university world. Through much intricate and tedious planning, patterns are developed by the members of the Block I committee. Chief Illini and the American Flag are just two of the many pat- terns that decorate the stadium on those fall football weekends. The bright array of dif- ferent colored cards, contrasted against a multitude of people is so characteristic at the games. The shining cards scintillating in the Saturday afternoon sunlight is truly a stun- ning spectacle in itself. The usual half-time festivities are an attraction that make going to a football game more than just watching the fighting Illini pugnaciously penetrate the opponent's line. Be that as it may, through a medium of colored cards, a message is con- veyed. This colorful message, sometimes pa- triotic— other times comical, is really only appreciated after one has seen it in operation. An annual event of the Illinois-Purdue game is the firing of a small can- non. The winning team keeps the Civil War replica as a traveling trophy. Rosemarie Reasor and Shirley Ross, Block- 1 co-ordinators, keep close contact with the West Block by telephone. The famous Block I card section i s pictured in operation. Looking at the East Block, the West Block realizes that it's an Indian they're forming.

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This is University Hal!, Illinois' first building. When it opened in 1885, it stood unfinished in the middle of a field so muddy that for years faculty and students wore rubber boots when crossing it. A collapsed ceiling in 1938 led to its being torn down. Homecoming Displays Depict Land-Grant Centennial Homecoming decorations at Armory House's Hall of Fame'' pursue the weekend's theme, the Land Grant act. This year the University of Illinois is joining with sixty-seven other colleges and universities across the country in celebrating the centennial of the Land-Grant Act. It was an Illinois reformer, Jonathan Baldwin Turner, who proposed a system of education adapted to the needs of the common man, and Justin Morrill whose driving force eventually pushed the bill through Con- gress. The results gave states federal land on which to establish and endow colleges within reach of all Americans. In 1863 the Illinois Legislature unanimous- ly accepted the Morrill Act, under which the state re- ceived 480,000 acres of land to found a university. Five years later it opened, under the name of Illinois Industrial University, with an enrollment of fifty and a staff of three teachers and a head farmer. From its modest beginning, when a single building was its home and when students sometimes came downstairs from their rooms to recite in bathrope and slippers, the Uni- versity has grown tremendously, and continues to ex- pand in response to the problems of our day. 16

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A ■ £«• 'V «•' ,' 'J : , - . . ' m 1 1 i ■ f f ' i r. I i t i » i y M , 0 f % v . '■■ :.- ■ X S « Marching lllini Contribute Sparks of Enjoyment ! i .• i i ' een halves of the Purdue v. Illinois football game, the Marching lllini, forming a treble clef in a mountain, play a score from the Sound of Music. Under the direction of Everett Kisinger, The Marching lllini thrill crowds of enthusi- astic football fans with their halftime per- formances. One hundred seventy-five men students from the Concert and First Regi- mental Bands and selected members of the Second Regimental Band are led onto the field in ILLINI formation by the drum major. Following this, Chief Illiniwek performs his well-known war dance, after which the band plays the Alma Mater. The Block I stunts are often coordinated with the band numbers. For a change of pace, the band plays one semi-classical or classical number every per- formance. This year, the Marching lllini performed at all Illinois home games and also went with the team to perform at Ohio State. The members practice forty to fifty forma- tions a year in order to give a unique per- formance.