Student to student: 4 ways the university has changed, according to my mom

In the spirit of Homecoming Week, when alumni migrate back to UW to relive their college days, I met with Whitney Schorr, my very own mother, for pizza. But it wasn’t a free meal I was after (although that was definitely part of it), but insight on how the campus has changed since she attended the university and how it has stayed the same.

What I learned is that it was in vogue for fraternity men to wear oxford button-ups over top a polo golf shirt, with both collars popped, the Memorial Union Terrace was tragically not a thing, and four other ways UW has changed through the years.

Class registration used to be downright dangerous

When she attended UW from ‘86 to ‘89, registration was not as it is now, where the biggest challenge is seeing who can sit closest to the wifi router. Instead, registration meant a several thousand person, campus-wide sprint.

Students would be delivered a hulking book of available classes detailing how many people could be enrolled in the classes. Then they’d plot their attack like a military general, sketching the optimal path around campus for getting into the classes they want before herds of students took their spot. Sweating and panting in long lines, they wouldn’t know if they had succeeded until they reached the registration table, where you’d learn for the first time whether or not the class was full.

Although my mom declined to comment if this set-up resulted in any injuries, it’s hard to imagine skirmishes didn’t erupt between students who desperately needed second semester German but not at 7:45 a.m. each weekday.

The “popcorn” tradition at football games

Maybe the biggest difference between UW then and now is football. Nowadays, football games are not just campus-wide events, but practically city and state-wide holidays.  In contrast, fewer people went to football games when my mom was in school. She characterized it as boring.

But they did have one thing that we don’t have: a tradition where students pretended to be popcorn. The movement is simple: “you bounce around like a piece of popcorn,” she said. While “Jump Around” and “If You Want to be a Badger” are classics that rank among the best sports traditions nationwide, there is something fearsome in the simplicity and innocence of thousands of rowdy college-aged kids acting like kernels of popcorn.

And while to the rest of the stands and to the players on the field it may have appeared that the student section was simply jumping up and down like they always do, the students knew that what they were participating in was much more coordinated, collective, and nuanced than that.

Halloween was actually scary

According to my mom, neither the campus or the city had much control over Halloween celebrations. They didn’t have the security we do now, nor the ticketing system, nor the metal detectors. They didn’t even have the live music or events Madison does now.

Instead, as she puts it, the city was, for one night, “mayhem.” If only in Madison, Halloween was legit scary in one place in the country.

“Freshman year, my friends and I came out of the Towers and turned out onto State Street and there was insanity,” she recalled.

Eventually, the city government came to the conclusion that this was too large a cost for Halloween festivities. Today, students dress in scary Halloween costumes to watch D.R.A.M. or Third Eye Blind perform in 40 degree weather.

Relationships were different in some ways (but mostly the same) 

Before dating apps introduced innovative and never-before-seen ways for people to embarrass themselves, students flirted and humiliated themselves the old-fashioned way: face-to-face.

The way my parents met while both at UW is a classic yarn: she drops a pencil, my dad picks it up, they make eye contact, he insults her shoes. After class, she acts aggrieved that he doesn’t know her hometown – Winnetka, Ill., where they shot Breakfast Club? They end up talking for two hours, sending her roommate into a panic when my mom, always punctual, doesn’t show (no cell phones at the time, my mom reminds me.)

But the sense of community seems the same now as it was then. Even in apartments, neighbors would congregate in the hallways, play video games together, and hang on Bascom Hill just as they do now. The restaurants may have changed – they ate at Porta Bella’s on North Frances and Ella’s Deli on State Street, we eat at Ian’s Pizza and Paul’s Pel’meni on State – but the Badger pride has stayed the same.