If the UI is ever in the market for a catchy new slogan, we highly recommend this line, spoken by an alum who'd go on to lead two universities:
"Everything good that ever happened to me in my life began at the University of Illinois. Everything bad that ever happened to me in my life was my own damn fault.”
That's the truth, says Michael Schwartz ('62), who served as president of Kent State and Cleveland State and still has warm and fuzzy feelings about Lincoln Hall — "long before it was renovated," he says. "I loved that place.
“I was a freshman and had my freshman rhetoric class with a grad assistant in the English department. His name was Allen Hayman. He gave me the gift of a lifetime. He taught me how to write decently.
"Later, in my junior year, I had a course in the sociology department with Professor James Edward Hulett Jr. He wrote on my term paper, ‘Nice use of semi-colon.’ I had arrived.
“I loved both of them and many other professors and grad teaching assistants. Through them, I studied ‘the shadow curriculum.’ I learned what they had to teach me. I also learned about them and how they lived the life of the mind.
“I became a professor and, later in my career, the president of two universities."
