Campus
My Northwestern Direction
Finding Harmony in Different Voices
When I reflected on my time at Northwestern, I realized that the undergraduate experience was built on crossing paths. This was a common theme among my fellow students — creative and analytical thinkers who had diverse interests.
As Arnold Weber prepares to leave the University in August, he is remembered for enhancing Northwestern’s reputation as one of the country’s great teaching and research institutions.
In the early morning of May 3, 1968, approximately 100 African American students entered Northwestern’s business office, chained the doors and posted a sign on the revolving door: “Closed for business ’til racism at NU is ended.” Prepared to occupy the building at 619 Clark St. until the University met their demands, the students wanted an African American studies course, a black student union and other measures meant “to counteract the physical, emotional and spiritual strains we have been subjugated to,” as they had written in a petition to University administrators nearly two weeks earlier. Against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, student activism was spreading on college campuses across the country.
These rock and jazz acts played Northwestern in the 1980s.