Lincoln Hall Project
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.
Dan Perrino: Some students were angry at the University. And if there was something wrong, they were angry enough that they didn’t want to correct it. As apposed to these other students, who would identify a problem, and we had to figure out a way to correct the problem, which is how Quad Day came about. And that is, students were not talking to faculty. And it always sticks in my mind that sometimes students were not even talking to their parents.
Willard Broom: Right.
Dan Perrino: They were just in general angry with the adult population—they didn’t trust them. So, we wanted to do something where by students and faculty would talk to each other. That was the original idea, at least from my point-of-view. Other people might have had other ideas for Quad Day. It wasn’t a means of showing off, or displaying, student organizational information. You know, I don’t know who started that, Willard.
Broom: The student organizations? The Union Board, when they took over.
Perrino: But we also had some students that first Quad Day. There were a couple of tables. I don’t know how many.
Willard: Oh yeah. I don’t know.
Perrino: We tried to give it to the Union. They didn’t want to do it. The first two years they didn’t want to do it. But it was the third year that they took over
Broom: Well, Quad Day was an example I think of Dan pulling people together and letting them see each other in a different light. That evening, the first Quad Day, Dan’s idea was to have a student/faculty talent show…
Perrino: (Laughs) Yeah. That was fun.
Broom: …And one of the administrators that students didn’t like was in the discipline office. But he was also a former opera singer.
Perrino: He was a tenor, yeah.
Broom: So, he did an operatic piece…
Perrino: Called Granada.
Broom: Granada, yeah. The students got to see him as a person versus as a …
Perrino: An administrator.
Broom: … A faceless administrator.
Perrino: I think Hugh Satterlee said there were 7,000 students on the Quad. And you’ve heard that piece somewhere along the line. And there’s a certain part of that in the middle of it, where the piece stops, and the tenor comes in with a very high note—a real powerful, high note. And the place went wild.
Broom: Oh yeah.
Perrino: Yeah. Just crazy. You never knew what was going to happen. And it was music that brought it all together.
(Length: 2:37)