College in the 80s (eBook)

One Syracuse Story

Dave Rotell (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
298 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-3389-7 (ISBN)

Infos

David Rotell's stories from Syracuse University in the 80s usually garner one response: ''There's no way that happened.' When attending college, you assume every school in the country is just like yours-students enjoying antics while pursuing their degrees. But most of the crazy stories Rotell has heard from other universities sound like an average Monday or Tuesday night at SU. Rotell and his friends learned some of our most valuable lessons in life by making mistakes. 'College in the 80s: One Syracuse Story' is a collection of gnarly, tubular, and bodacious stories from one of New York's finest-and sublimest-institutions.

---

The girls' dorm rooms were filled with Patrick Nagel prints. The bars smelled like Polo and Giorgio. And David Rotell can still feel the soft grass in front of Hendricks Chapel on the quad of Syracuse University. The 1980s are defined by the music, the movies, and the fashion. But for Rotell, going to college in the 80s was the ride of a lifetime. His stories from his alma mater usually garner one response: "e;"e;There's no way that happened."e;When attending college, you assume every school in the country is just like yours-students enjoying antics while pursuing their degrees. But most of the crazy stories Rotell has heard from other universities sound like an average Monday or Tuesday night at SU. The classroom education at SU was paramount, and the students were there to get our diplomas, but they also had the opportunity to learn about life. Many of them learned their most valuable lessons by making mistakes in college. Rotell made just about every mistake in college-some more than once-but those mistakes would shape the path he would follow for life. He still relives those experiences with friends that he cherishes to this day. He can still hear their voices in some of the classic tales. "e;College in the 80s: One Syracuse Story"e; is a collection of gnarly, tubular, and bodacious stories from one of New York's finest-and sublimest-institutions.

Textauszug

SOPH SEPT 84-MAY 85

“EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD”

Performed by Tears for Fears

Written by Roland Orzabal, Ian Stanley and Chris Hughes

LAWRINSON 709-CORNER ROOM CONSTRUCTION

The summer came to an end, and it was time to start heading north for sophomore year at Syracuse. We did the typical drive-up Route 17, stopped at the Roscoe Diner for lunch and then continued up route 81 North until we wound our way through the final hills. Then Syracuse University appeared after the last hilltop. I was excited to have an incredible year in Lawrinson and determined to focus fully on getting a job and getting back to A’s and B’s for my grades. Lawrinson was mostly upper classmen, so the move in experience was not quite as daunting as freshman year.

Steve and I both showed up to our new room and after goodbyes to our parents, we were off and running for our second year.

The corner rooms were amazing. They were true corner suites that had enormous glass windows on both sides of the corner suite. Walls created an internal square within a square for one person to live, with an opening to enter. The remainder of the room surrounded that square for the second person’s living space. This remaining section was bigger and had two sides (visual to follow). Steve was kind enough to give me the center corner, so I started up my plans for construction. The key was that you could lay your small single bed on top of the desk and dresser to create a gorgeous loft that was directly adjacent to the window height.

(This was my interior portion of the corner room suite, my bed laid on top of the left-hand corner of my desk and stretched along the left windows, when the loft was complete)

The view was spectacular. You would literally be laying down and as you turned to your side at night you were looking directly at the city lights. It only took me about 25 minutes to build, and then Kevin & Bobby came down to see how we were doing. We went upstairs two flights to their floor, and they had built the same loft for that corner with Kevin taking the loft corner in room 904.

After hanging out for a bit, I went back downstairs to hang up some more posters and finish up the room setup. I slid my big corner room window open to the right on my loft bed to let the end of the summer breeze come into the room. The horizontal sliding windows were enormous, and the breeze was perfect – might as well enjoy this gorgeous weather and this view before the Syracuse winter comes. It was late afternoon, and I laid down on my bed and turned on the stereo as “Sister Christian” from Night Ranger was just beginning.

“DAVE WHAT OTHER CLASSES DO YOU HAVE THIS FALL?”

Kevin came down to my floor as I was going over my class schedules for the week before heading off to breakfast. He, Bobby and I were in an Economics class together which was pretty cool, and I was looking over the print-out of my full schedule for the Fall Semester with Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes and the 90-minute Tuesday/Thursday classes.

“Dave what other classes are you taking this semester outside of Econ?”

“Well buddy, it’s pretty crazy. For Aerospace I have Calculus II, Intro to Aerospace Technology 267, Physics 212, and others.” It was going to be a crazy one with studying, let alone figuring out the work situation to pay for college.

Kevin laughed, “That gives me a headache even thinking about those classes, that’s insane!”

I knew it was going to be crazy. I smiled, and we grabbed the rest of the gang and went down to breakfast at Sadler Hall.

FALL GREEK WEEK BEGINS

Greek Rush Week began for our Fall Sophomore year, and we decided to check out some new fraternities this time. I was not sure if I was going to pledge this semester because I wanted to really focus on grades with Aerospace while trying to figure out how I was going to make enough money to pay for college. Going out for a fun night during a study break was always appealing, so off we went. This time Kevin, Bobby and I ventured out on our own. We made our way through Sigma Chi, Zeta Psi, DU and others until we were all the way to the other side of campus and found ourselves in AEPi. Kevin and Bobby were from the Island (Long Island, NY), and I was from Rockland County so between the three of us, we had something in common to talk about with most of the guys. I met Jim Weiss, Kevin Friedman, Steve Kleinberg and Justin Tunick early and was having a good time with the rest of the guys. The three of us were Catholic which was interesting in a fraternity that was predominantly Jewish, but of course neither side cared about that, and we had a good time for the evening. The brothers invited us to come back the following night and continue to get to know everyone, and we all agreed. We hit a few more fraternities on the way back to Lawrinson. On the way home Kevin, Bobby and I all agreed we liked the guys from AEPi. I promised myself that this year I was going to be tenacious with my efforts with Aerospace and getting good grades. I went the following night to AEPi along with a couple of other fun houses but had to hold off on pledging any fraternity this semester and keep my promise to myself. In the weeks that soon followed, both Kevin and Bobby were offered pins and decided to join AEPi. Both were adamant that I would have to pledge the following semester and keep our group together assuming the brothers agreed, but one of my two close friends would not live to see that day.

PINK FLOYD/THE WALL ON THE QUAD

The annual movie night on the quad was announced: “Pink Floyd the Wall.” I loved Pink Floyd so we knew it would be another winner. We reached out to the old Brewster One crew that stayed in the Brewster Dorm and all agreed to meet at a good spot with a Genesee or Matt’s beer ball on the Quad for the event. We went down to pick up the beer before the show and then Kevin, Bobby, Steve and I left Lawrinson Hall and started to head up to the Quad for the movie. We joined the crowd walking up, as we passed Sadler Hall and the Carrier Dome, to enter the melee on the Quad. There were thousands of students settling in for the movie party on the Quad as everyone laid out blankets and beverages for the fun. The sun was setting, and the weather was perfect for the night. It took us a little bit of time to connect with the full Brewster Crew and finally we had the full group together and tapped the Beer Ball. It was good to have our whole gang together again. The big difference between this year’s Quad Movie kickoff was that all the students could sing along to Pink Floyd instead of last year’s Caligula soft porn show.

The Wall came out in theatres in 1982, so I had already seen it at the movies but that did not make it any less entertaining. Bob Geldof played the main character Pink, and it was said that the whole movie was modeled after the old band member Syd Barrett.

The movie launched into “In the Flesh” and the beer was flowing. Shortly into the movie we had a group of girls slowly join into our circle of friends and everyone was enjoying the show. By the time “Hey You” hit, everyone was on their 3rd beer or more and having a wonderful time. Even with the enormous crowd, you could lay back on the blankets and still enjoy a perfect view of the show. You have to love a dual movie-and-concert combined into one for SU’s Quad movie event tonight. By the end of the show, we had made some new female friends and started our way back to the dorms with a smile on our face and a happy crowd joining us.

“OH MY GOD, THEY ARE HUGE!

The #1 NCAA Football team in the country, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, were coming to the Carrier Dome to play Syracuse University on September 29th, and Keith and I decided we would go over to see them. We were 24-point underdogs and expected to get trampled. Mostly, I wanted to see how huge these guys were from Nebraska. I met up with Keith and a few others, and we started to walk up the hill to the Dome. SU was a basketball powerhouse in the Big East, but it would be great to start rooting for a winning football program. Of course, I was very confident that this day would not be the beginning of that dream. I was mistaken.

We walked through the revolving Dome doors with the other 47,200 plus fans and turned to Keith. “Let’s go check out these guys on the field before we grab any food for the game.” We walked over to one of the open sections on the walkway near the endzones in the Dome. We could see the field between the main floor sections and the upper decks and half expected to see what looked like an NFL team facing a high school team on the field. Nebraska could recruit the top talent in the nation, and they did not disappoint my expectations. Not only did they look like a team of Goliath’s facing our smaller sized team, but they also looked like they had more players than us too. I am sure it was an optical illusion sparked by their massive size versus our traditional team. I started to laugh, “Oh my God, they are HUGE! We are going to get killed today!”

Keith smiled and nodded, “Yes we are big fella.”

We grabbed some food and some beverages and took our seats for the kickoff. We watched our coach, Dick MacPherson, as he was passionately getting our guys ready for the big game.

The game started, and we were surprisingly hanging in there pretty well with our...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.3.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-3389-8 / 1667833898
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-3389-7 / 9781667833897