The Lincoln Hall Project « College of Liberal Arts & Sciences « University of Illinois

“I think we won over half the medals that the U.S. team won in 2008, and we might have won about half the medals that the U.S. team won in the 2012 Paralympics as well.”
—Adam Bleakney (BA ’00, English; MA ’02, journalism) and Josh George (BS ’07, journalism) discuss Illinois’ world-renowned tradition of wheelchair racing and innovative coaching.

(Length: 4:10) | Transcript

“Two other [band] members moved to Champaign specifically to help form the band because of the history of bands that play original music having success coming out of Champaign.”
—Bill Johnson (BS ’89, psychology; MBA ’91) and Michael Roux (BS ’86, finance) remember how their 1980s bands, Bad Flannel and Last Gentlemen, found support in the campus community.

(Length: 4:03) | Transcript | Video

“Now I am here again because not having a degree never got in my way until now. I wanted to become a Buddhist chaplain.”
—Alanda Wraye (BA candidate in creative writing) recounts why she left the University in the 1970s and returned today, and how history classes have changed in the meantime.

(Length: 2:45) | Transcript

“They were dead. And I was alive. And I kind of owed it to the fact that I took that electronics test.”
—Leon Gottfried (AB ’48, general curriculum; MA ’51, PhD ’58, English) describes changes to campus during World War II and how taking a test as a chemical engineering student probably saved his life.

(Length: 3:08) | Transcript

“What would that be like, to play with the people that I learn with, to learn with the people that I play with, and to not have them so oppositional?”
—Rashid Robinson (BA ’93, English; PhD candidate, educational policy studies) recalls how a pick-up football game on campus led him to rethink the identity he’d created for himself growing up in Chicago.

(Length: 2:48) | Transcript

“The least we could do was to organize protests and to show the powers that be that we cared about this country and that we were going to question authority. Sometimes it got ugly. The Dow chemical protest was about as ugly as it got.”
—Carolyn Sharp Kelley (AB ’71, English education; AM ’72, teaching of English) compares her experience as a student protester during the Vietnam War era to those of her father, who attended the U of I in the 1930s.

(Length: 2:59) | Transcript

“We had some animal encounters as well. One night I woke up with army ants in my bed.”
—Katherine Amato (graduate student, Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology) discusses the nitty-gritty of research in Mexico with friend and financial supporter Roslyn Snow (AB ’58, philosophy; AM ’59, English).

(Length: 2:48) | Transcript

“It would be fine for maybe a week at a time. But then my joints would just start to ache like crazy, like I was already old.”
—Brian Kung (AB ’11, East Asian languages and cultures) describes to his friend, Sarah Farrukh (senior, journalism), his decision to live part of a school year in a car.

(Length: 3:00) | Transcript

“But then I saw a flag, an American flag, hung upside down with a peace symbol spray-painted on it. And I got livid.”
—U.S. Marine Corps veteran Ceasar Perez (AB ’06, speech communications) describes his encounter with anti-war protesters on the Quad.

(Length: 2:59) | Transcript

“I got a very late start. But it didn’t matter. I spent those nine very productive years writing and teaching and meeting all manner of people in many classes of American society.”
—Acclaimed novelist Rolando Hinojosa-Smith (PhD ’69, Spanish), discusses a late start, living with dignity, and “the luckiest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

(Length: 2:53) | Transcript

“And Stan Smith suddenly came alive, literally jumped off the stage at Lincoln Hall, and went chasing after this rabble-rouser, with his fists shaking, out of the room and said: ‘Don’t disturb my class again!’”
—Penelope Soskin (MS, ’93, social work; senior assistant dean, College of LAS) and her daughter, Philippa Soskin (BS ’03, biology), discuss the uniqueness of Lincoln Hall and the Quad.

(Length: 2:59) | Transcript

“And one young man, in particular, wasn’t getting it. And he raised his hand in class and said to me, ‘Perhaps it would be better if your husband came in and explained this.’”
—Diane Musumeci (AB ’74, Italian; PhD ’89, Italian/SLATE; associate professor, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese; and associate dean, College of LAS) and her advisee, Silvia Kunitz (at left, graduate student, Italian), talk about the pros and cons of teaching younger college students.

(Length: 3:42) | Transcript

“If you looked at the top 10 schools in this country...every student in there was in one of them except for yours truly. And the first assignment that we had, we turned in the papers, and the faculty member came in the next class and said: ‘Who is Clinton Pettus?’”
—Clinton Pettus (PhD ’81, psychology) talks with Kathryn Pettus (EdM ’78, education) about a confidence-building moment.

(Length: 3:32) | Transcript

“I remember I think easily six days a week, sometimes seven days a week, I don’t remember doing almost hardly anything else but going into the lab. It was like a complete dedication.”
—Former students Alan Burnham (PhD ’77, chemistry) and Terry Balle (PhD ’80, chemistry) discuss the life and untimely death of promising chemistry professor Willis ‘Bill’ Flygare.

(Length: 4:23) | Transcript

“I didn’t know what I was going to do; I just knew that I would somehow stop this thing. And eight years later...we stopped the dam.”
—Geography professor emeritus Bruce Hannon (BE ’56, civil engineering; ME ’65, engineering mechanics; PhD ’70, engineering mechanics) discusses how a family vacation led to a career in environmentalism.

(Length: 4:00) | Transcript

“We alerted University police [of the bust’s whereabouts], and certainly we were not responsible for any damage or any scratches that appeared later.”
—An anonymous member of the Statue Liberation Society confesses to stealing the Abe Lincoln bust from Lincoln Hall in 1979—but denies claims that it was roughed up during the heist.

(Length: 7:22) | Transcript

“Undergraduates, often, they’ll come in and they did really well in high school ... top of their class ... and then come here and everyone else is at the top of their class too.”
—Alexiaa Jordan (junior in molecular and cellular biology) and Adrienne Pickett (AM ’05, art history, African studies; graduate student in educational policy studies; and academic advisor in the English department) talk about the challenges of coming to the University and overcoming pride in order to succeed.

(Length: 2:56) | Transcript

“For the first time I was a little bit of an outsider....”
—Clare Gaynor Willis (AB ’04, history; AM, ’10, library and information science; reference librarian at the U of I Law Library) and her husband Christopher Willis (BS ’03, psychology) discuss the divisions between students from downstate and the Chicago area.

(Length: 3:31) | Transcript

“And the place went wild.... You never knew what was going to happen. And it was music that brought it all together.”
—Willard Broom (BS ’72, advertising; EDM ’78, education) and Dan Perrino (BME ’48, MS ’49, music education) discuss organizing the first Quad Day in 1971.

(Length: 2:37) | Transcript

“One mother called up and said, ‘I understand there’s a machine gun nest in the administration building.’”
—Willard Broom (BS ’72, advertising; EDM ’78, education) and Dan Perrino (BME ’48, MS ’49, music education) discuss how administrators coped with campus demonstrations.

(Length: 2:24) | Transcript

“You do learn things in plays, even though you go for entertainment.”
—Jean Weigel (AB ’57, speech education) describes the life lessons she learned while helping produce performances in Lincoln Hall Theater.

(Length: 2:58) | Transcript

“This year they did a crossword puzzle at Thanksgiving, and it was quotations from A Christmas Carol. It was the easiest puzzle we ever saw.”
—Martha Landis, (AB ’57, history; MS ’59, library science), remembers the life and times of her father, English professor Paul Landis, who read A Christmas Carol annually on the U of I campus until 1960. She is accompanied by a recording of her father’s voice.

(Length: 4:59) | Transcript

“It remains one of the highlights of my life—that three weeks that we had going across Tibet.”
—Margaret Leinen (BS ’69, geology) and her son, Dan Whaley (AB ’90, English), describe how an urge to learn about Tibet led to one of their most cherished memories.

(Length: 2:58) | Transcript

"Literally it was down to the last minute where she would have walked out the door and vanished maybe forever....”
—Doug Peterson (BS ’77, journalism), tells his son, Jason Peterson (BS ’11, English), the story behind a quirky family tradition and how he met Jason’s mother in Biology 100.

(Length: 2:56) | Transcript

“On the first day he promised to blow up at least one thing every class.”
—Jason Peterson (BS ’11, English), tells his father, Doug Peterson (BS ’77, journalism), about smoke bombs, damming up the Boneyard, dynamite scares, and other details about one of his more memorable classes at U of I.

(Length: 2:47) | Transcript

“Champaign was the first time that I understood myself in the political context of being a woman, or being Asian American....”
—Jenny Choi (BS ’00, English) tells her best friend, Holly Rushakoff (BS ’98, journalism), how black feminism classes, and lectures by Maya Angelou and Pearl Cleage, influenced her.

(Length: 2:32) | Transcript