Going Back, Part Seven: Syracuse University

In writing about the places we lived in our years at Syracuse University, I failed to convey just how much SU meant to me, and since so much of our visit this past May involved simply walking around campus together and remembering what those years were like, I feel compelled to talk more about SU.

In the last few entries, I wrote about how I felt trapped and lost once I figured out that I didn’t want to be a newspaper journalist. It’s such folly that we expect 16-year-olds to decide their future careers and set an unalterable juggernaut in motion at an age when we don’t even yet really know who we are, let alone what our place in the world should be. Even though it turned out that I didn’t want to be what I wanted to be (cue Amanda Palmer), I was always very pleased with the education I received at Syracuse – a newspaper degree was as close to a liberal arts degree as a career-focused program could get. By its nature, it encouraged a broad course of study and exposed me to a wide variety of disciplines.

Right from the start, my SAT scores let me place out of the universal freshman English requirement, and I was able to take art history in its place – which absolutely blew my mind. Back home, I’d grown up with the Time-Life Library of Art, but had no other exposure to art or art history, and the year-long survey course (taught from Janson) was an incredible mix of art and western civilization, giving me history and perspective I’d never had before (I’m well aware of the shortcomings, but this was 1978). I don’t think any course of study has had a greater impact on my life; there’s certainly no class that I remember more of.

I had a year of Soviet foreign policy (rendered temporarily, but not permanently, useless just a few years later), a year of medieval history, philosophy (ugh), enough science to prove I was never going to be a biologist, and a raft of classes on the history of the civil rights and antiwar movements. I learned about the historical foundations of modern law, I learned about revolution. I took drama and prose, rhetoric and music history, and all kinds of political science, along with the courses actually required for my newspaper major. My level of effort, unfortunately, directly correlated to my interest in and respect for the class, which does me no credit, but that’s how it was. If it turned out I didn’t care about the subject matter or the instructor, that coursework wasn’t prioritized. When I got behind because of pneumonia, incompletes turned into failures because I lacked the desire to catch up. I wish my GPA had been higher but it reflected that dichotomy – A’s where I cared, C’s where I didn’t.

As much as I complained about being unable to get out of a major I no longer wanted, I loved the education I got, and I loved SU.

I loved the city of Syracuse as well. Coming from another depressed upstate city, it felt very familiar but bigger, and with much more going on. It had a superb museum in the Everson, and an excellent symphony. I loved its raggedy downtown and homegrown department stores, not yet destroyed by leveraged buyouts. I loved the Syracuse Chiefs AAA baseball team, where we could get box seats, food and beer and still not spend $20 between us. When we had access to cars, we went roller skating, miniature golfing, and bowling, all over the city and beyond. We lazed away the summer days at Green Lakes State Park, or at beautiful Emerson Park on Owasco Lake. We would try to escape the brutal summer heat at the city’s swimming pools. In winter, of course, it snowed a lot – nearly 10 feet a year, and often a bit every day – and it felt like my feet were never dry.

I’ve been back on campus many times since we moved away in 1989, but this trip felt different. More than ever before, I could see shadows of our former selves all over the campus. Walking into the Noble Room in Hendricks Chapel, changed but not beyond recognition, I could smell the coffee and super sugary donuts, even though People’s Place, still in existence, wasn’t open that day. I could picture the friends I would regularly encounter there – I almost expected them to appear. Walking the echoey halls of Crouse College felt the same, that feeling of entering the Newhouse I lobby was very much the same. We walked the lawn in front of the Hall of Languages, recalling when it was a sea of mud our entire freshman year (except when it was frozen) as HL was under renovations, and we had to try to leap around where the steam lines would make the mud a bit more dry. We crossed University Place and I remembered dropping my keys in the snow, never to be found again. We cut through Newhouse I to Newhouse II like it was second nature – it still is, apparently. We walked past all the various dorms and off-campus apartment buildings, remembering who had lived there back in the day and where the parties were. How young we all were, how beautiful.

I had five years of undergrad and another two years of grad school there to cement my impressions of the Hill, so nearly every place we visited on campus brought back some kind of strong memory – the insane registration process in Archbold gymnasium (and the much nicer one in Steele Hall when I was in grad school); the soda machine in Lyman Hall that required a certain amount of skill in coin insertion in order to actually get a vital morning Coke; the hours spent in the Community Darkrooms in Watson Hall; the incredible concert by the Psychedelic Furs in Walnut Park. We still remembered all the small frame residences dotting the north end of campus (known as Area or Village housing – just look at this incredible list of “women’s cottages” that no longer exist.), the Bauhaus, the building that housed Spectrum and Student Association. I was there in the years when students were routinely calling for a student union building, and I was there, as a grad student, when they had gotten what they asked for. Hell, I was there when you could still walk through the unenclosed lower stories of both the Physics Building and HBC. I never attended a game at Archbold Stadium (though I worked there during the Empire State Games), but we were there for the “lid-lifter,” the opening game of the Carrier Dome. (However, I don’t follow or care about SU sports, and don’t own a single piece of orange clothing.) Yes, a lot of campus has changed, but a lot hasn’t.

When I pick up next time, I’ll tell about moving off The Hill for the first time in our years there. I’ll even tell you how I graduated. But for now, enjoy some more pretty pictures of a pretty university: