Page 3 of the Valentine’s Day 1992 issue of the NCC Chronicle, as it was known at the time, features a photograph of an NCC student pounding raw eggs from a beer bong hoisted over his head. “Perry Shaw inhales 10 eggs with a bong on Tuesday night,” reads the caption. “One girl drank half a gallon of milk and didn’t throw up!”
That’s the funny thing about college campuses and college newspapers. When your jurisdiction is such a tiny microcosm like, for example, a small liberal arts school in Naperville, Ill., the events that are important and newsworthy to your readers can be far different than outside its hallowed halls. Sometimes that includes the “Milk 2” contest in Seager.
Other times, the most important issues covered across the globe can encroach on the little campus. April 18, 1980’s issue features “The Plight of the Black Student at North Central.” “In case you haven’t noticed,” says a quoted black NCC student, “a lot of whites don’t like to be associated with the blacks.”
There’s definitely a lot to be found in the Chronicle’s over 150-year history that feels not only archaic, but truly cringe-worthy and offensive to a 2018 audience — and rightfully so.
Indeed, the late 1970s were pretty loose with the term “transvestite” even when they were talking about a play on campus that involved men wearing 19th-century women’s dresses. The headline reads “Transvestite Found on NCC Campus.” While that headline aged more like bread than fine wine, most of what has not aged particularly well isn’t nearly as bad — and there sure are some doozies.
“There are a couple of fun and unique items that we have that stick out in my mind,” says North Central archivist Rebecca Skirvin. “One is our small collection of North-Western College (as North Central was known before 1926) tobacco rugs.” These were little mouse pad-looking mats embossed with the school’s logo that were given out as collectible prizes in cigarette packets. It’s nice to know there was a time before drawstring bags and NCC souvenir pens.
There’s also the Jan. 29, 1993, article that talks about the potential of condom machines to be installed across campus. The administration even went as far as to contact companies that could supply the machines, but, alas, 25 years later, we still wait.
Other issues raised on campus in the ’90s are still on our minds, including tuition and the future semester system. The Chronicle’s “Photo Opinion” column in October 1990 asked four students if they would like NCC to shift from trimesters to semesters.
Half of the students thought semesters were a better option, while one of the dissenting students objected that switching to semesters would “leave more time for partying.” Cardinals will find out soon enough if that’s true.
As for tuition, the Chronicle shows it skyrocketed to $9,870 in 1991. That’s $9,870 per year, by the way, in case you need to find a dim corner to cry in.
We have so many strange and different relics at NCC and the Chronicle, but one of Skirvin’s favorite pieces to talk about shows the real human side of our history — a World War II service jacket that belonged to North Central’s first chaplain, George St. Angelo.
“In an oral history we have in the archives, he had mentioned how his Army service had made a big impact on him, especially since he was at the liberation of a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany in 1945,” said Skirvin. “It’s a great artifact and a great example of why I love sharing what we have in the archives with the NCC community.”
