Smoking in the food court. Dancing at a club until 4 a.m. Crashing walls in the bookstore. Welcome to Schine Student Center in the 1980s.

Twenty-five years ago from Monday, on Oct. 18, 1985, Schine officially opened its doors as the large student center students first called for in 1911.

The center transformed over time as social conventions and laws changed, prompting previously allowed behaviors, such as drinking and smoking, to be banned or restricted. Today, some university officials also question if the center really meets students’ needs as developers work toward moving the bookstore out of Schine.

The first communal space

Before Schine opened, Syracuse University’s student centers were squeezed into school basements or people’s homes.

‘Without the student center, there was just small pockets of space where you could go,’ said Peter Baigent, SU’s assistant vice president of student programs from 1981 to 1993.

Though Schine didn’t officially open until October 1985, students could start using the bookstore and dining area in August as construction continued on the upper and lower floors. A summer strike by a group of Schine construction workers over a pay raise delayed the overall center’s completion, postponing the transfer of some student organizations’ offices that had already moved out of their old locations and had planned to move into Schine at the beginning of the school year.

‘There was still some rough edges and transitions,’ Baigent said. ‘All in all, it moved relatively rapidly.’

The bookstore already existed as a separate building before Schine, meaning walls had to be knocked down to connect the bookstore with the center. That left bookstore officials scrambling to move books into already cramped spaces, said William Connor, director of the bookstore at the time, in a 1985 article from the university archives.

‘We often didn’t know until five minutes before it was about to happen that walls were going to be torn down,’ Connor said.

The main floor of the SU bookstore that displays clothing and sweatshirts today was originally an art gallery, which is why the lower floor holds all the books.

‘We can’t put heavy books on there because the weight of it would not support the books,’ said Kathleen Bradley, the book division manager at the bookstore.

Bradley was a part-time student at SU in the late 1970s and used to park in a parking lot off of Waverly Avenue, where Schine now sits. Bradley started working at the bookstore the same month it and the dining center in Schine opened in 1985.

‘I was quite amazed when I came back to apply for the job here,’ she said. ‘I saw how different the building was.’

Once a party place

When Schine opened, students were originally allowed to smoke in areas that had enough circulation to dispense the smoke, such as the east area of the dining hall and parts of the Schine Underground music venue. But SU banned smoking in the entire student center in 1990, determining the areas were too small to accommodate smokers and because the smoke was affecting non-smokers, according to an article published in The Daily Orange on Sept. 4, 1990.

The opening of the student center in 1985 also coincided with the state drinking age, which increased from 19 to 21 in December that year. Schine had to modify its original plans and include dry activities because of the law, said Toby Peters, the director of Schine from 1985 to 1992.

‘A good student center is going to be ready to change and knows how to change with demand,’ Peters said.

A club called the Milky Way in the lower level of Schine was supposed to replace the Jabberwocky, a club known for its alcohol-filled happy hours and musical performances. The Jabberwocky, which was located in what is now the computer lab beneath Kimmel Food Court, hosted the likes of James Taylor, who sang ‘Fire and Rain,’ and Cyndi Lauper, remembered for her hit ‘Time After Time.’

‘It was legendary in that there were people who performed there early in their careers and went on to great success,’ Peters said.

But the 270-capacity student-run club constantly faced financial difficulties, and the manager chose to move it into a larger, 400-seat venue at Schine, where he renamed it the Milky Way. Unlike the old club, this one would not serve alcohol, and it was difficult to anticipate how many students would want to come to the club without the option of drinking, Peters said.

The original designs for the Milky Way called for disco balls, built-in fish tanks and flashing lights, but the club ended up running $30,000 over its $100,000 budget, according to an article published in The Daily Orange on Jan. 25, 1989. The club still opened in February 1986, staying open until 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2 a.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

But trying to replace the Jabberwocky with the Milky Way didn’t work out well, said Mary O’Brien, reference archivist at E.S. Bird Library. On the Milky Way’s opening night, there were 25 people on the dance floor at most, including Peters, according to an article published in The Daily Orange on Feb. 10, 1986.

‘The Jabberwocky was the Jabberwocky,’ O’Brien said. ‘It can’t really be recreated.’

In summer 1988, the Milky Way was renovated and renamed to what it is known as today: the Underground. A rewired sound system and revamped lighting were added to the room, which alternated between a snack bar during the day and concert hall at night. Though Schine includes a space called the Jabberwocky, that part is used as a study space and for small musical performances by students.

Schine’s future

Although Schine was an important step forward in the 1980s, officials are still trying to make the center easy to navigate for students, said Bridget Yule, director of Student Centers and Programming Services. When students walk in the front of Schine, they see a brick wall and a spiral staircase, not the bookstore, dining area or offices in the back, she said.

‘We work with a very poor design,’ Yule said. ‘The minute you walk in, there’s a door facing you to walk out.

‘There is no place really for students to gather, other than every day around the atrium tables that they do, so you have that to work with.’

Some students said they agree a central hangout spot in Schine is missing.

‘There really isn’t one,’ said Claire Pacey, a senior history and art history major who studies in Schine’s Panasci Lounge between classes. ‘There are places to hang out, but there’s not really a hangout spot, like a central one.’

Maddy Jones said students seem to hang out in the lobby, which is usually crowded.

‘I feel like we’re running out of space, like space for studying, for socializing, for whatever reason to do,’ said Jones, a sophomore photojournalism and international relations major. ‘Everything’s always crowded.’

The key to opening more space in Schine may fall with the University Bookstore, university officials said. The move could allow officials to bring student organizations’ offices up to the main floor, Yule said.

SU submitted a proposal in 2009 to move the bookstore into a new building with retail stores and a fitness center on the side of the University Avenue Parking Garage, a few blocks down from the current bookstore.

The building’s developer, the Cameron Group, is targeting to start construction in spring 2011, with 16 months of work, said Eric Beattie, director for the Office of Campus Planning, Design and Construction. The new bookstore would be 14,000 square feet larger than the current one, but the developer still has to finalize approvals with the city before the proposed construction can begin.

‘We’ve sensed, for a while, that student organizations and student services could use some more space in the building to do their activities,’ Beattie said.

His office performed a feasibility study more than a year ago to reorganize Schine, but put the study on hold in spring 2009 after the possibility of moving the bookstore came up.

Said Beattie: ‘That’s really going to become the lynchpin to free up space.’

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Published on October 18, 2010 at 12:00 pm