Commencing a New Era
A look back at campus life since the last Camp Randall graduation in 1990.
Graduates celebrate completing their UW degrees at Camp Randall in this 1978 photo. In May, commencement will return to the stadium for the first time since 1990.
This May, UW graduates will go where no commencement robes have gone for almost a generation: Camp Randall.
After a twenty-four-year absence, spring commencement will once again be held in the stadium, thanks to the efforts of a small group of persistent undergraduates who worked closely with campus administrators to make the big move.
Commencement was shifted from the stadium to the Wisconsin Field House in 1991 and then to the Kohl Center when that facility opened in 1998. At the time, event planners hoped dividing the graduating class into five smaller, college-based ceremonies would create a more intimate experience for all. Yet something was lost in the process. Lori Berquam, vice provost for student life and dean of students, says that small ceremonies make it more difficult to comprehend the number of graduates coming out of the UW each year — and to imagine the impact those graduates will make on the world.
“All of our students are going to go forth and do great things, and it’s hard to get the enormity of it when you see it in little, bite-sized pieces,” Berquam says.
Discussions for a return to Camp Randall began four years ago, but the plans were put on hold when former Chancellor Biddy Martin PhD’85 left campus. Shortly after Chancellor Rebecca Blank took over in fall 2013, she approached senior class officers to resurrect the idea.
Sarah Neibart x’14 was part of the early discussions, and she’s excited to see the idea come to fruition — and to walk in the new ceremony she helped design.
“This is going to be an incredible ceremony filled with Badger pride,” she says. “I really cannot wait to see the image of the six thousand students tossing their hats off in the middle of Camp Randall.”
In 1990, the last time spring commencement was held in Camp Randall, most undergraduate members of the Class of 2014 were not yet born. We figured it’s time to look back at how things have changed.
Notables
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Alvarez
Barry Alvarez started his first season as the head football coach, beginning what would become the longest football coaching tenure in UW history. When asked about his hopes for his inaugural season, Alvarez answered: “My number-one goal is to have a team out on the field that people in the state of Wisconsin can identify with and be proud of.”
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Shalala
Donna Shalala was two years into her tenure as the first female UW–Madison chancellor. She was also only the second woman ever to lead a major research university and the first to head a Big Ten university. Five chancellors later, Rebecca Blank is finishing her first school year as the UW’s third female boss.
Student Life
- College Library went smoke-free. One year later, UW–Madison implemented a smoke-free policy in all campus buildings. (A Wisconsin-wide ban on smoking in enclosed workplaces went into effect in 2010.)
- Three residence halls were still all-women: Chadbourne, Barnard, and Elizabeth Waters. Elizabeth Waters Hall was the last to go co-ed, which it did in 2006. The smaller Cole Hall then shifted to all-women for one year before reverting to co-ed.
- The first student computer lab — the Media and Microcomputer Center — opened in College Library. It housed 22 Macs and more than 70 PCs.
Athletics
- Bucky Badger turned 50.
Bucky at 50.
- At the end of the 1989–90 season, the Badger men’s hockey team won its fifth NCAA title with a 7–3 victory over Colgate University. (The team has won one additional championship since, in 2006.)
- The Badger women’s ice hockey team did not yet exist. Its first season was 1999, and since then, the team has won four NCAA championships, most recently during the 2010–11 season.
- During Fifth Quarter, the UW Band debuted a couple of new songs: “Father Abraham” and “Sh-Boom (Life could be a dream).”
Academics
- Automated student registration (represented by the “Touchtone Lady”) was still a very new process, having launched in fall 1989. This cutting-edge technology enabled students to register for classes by typing course numbers in via a telephone pad. Previously, students had to race around campus and wait in long lines to register in person. Online class registration wouldn’t begin until 2003.
Touchtone registration.
- The UW’s ethnic studies requirement was established. Since then, all UW–Madison students have had to earn at least three credits studying another ethnic group.
Student Activities
- The Onion was still a fledgling student publication. Founded in 1988, the editorial team that would oversee the satirical newspaper’s rise to national fame was in place by 1990 and had begun expanding the paper’s distribution to a handful of cities beyond Madison. (The Onion continued to print in Madison until July 2013.)
Published in the Spring 2014 issue
Comments
Elizabeth Maier Marietta March 8, 2014
I am very proud to have been there then! From The Onion (which every time friends mention it or post articles from it I have to tell them it began at the UW in my day), to dinner at Donna Shalala’s (who would one day become Secretary of Health & Human Services) home to honor UW Student Volunteers.