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Last year on a trip to New Orleans, I met a couple from Atlanta and was surprised when they had not only heard of SIUC, but had fond memories of partying in Carbondale in the 1970s.
Growing up in Carbondale, I had always heard from family and friends that Carbondale was a party town and SIUC was a party school. “Did you hear that Playboy Magazine rated us in the top-10 party schools in the country?” was a phrase uttered so often it seemed like a bragging right.
Over the years, Carbondale’s reputation as a party place has seemed to fade. As fun turned to violence on the Strip, city officials took action.
With more than 100 arrests, tear-gassed students, broken windows and general melee over the Halloween weekend in 2000, the city shut the violent-prone celebration down in 2001.
But some believe the social atmosphere added to the culture of Carbondale and its return could boost falling enrollment at SIUC.
In a 2007 article for the Daily Egyptian, Harold Koplowitz, author of “Carbondale After Dark” — a book about the history of the Strip in the 1960s and ‘70s — said a party image may not be bad for a university and could help increase enrollment.
Reading the article got me thinking about another place often marred by its reputation of violence and partying: New Orleans.
Hurricane Katrina put New Orleans on the map, and since 2005 we have been inundated with stories of the Crescent City — stories of celebrations and destruction.
Despite its reputation, New Orleans was the fastest-growing city in the United States in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The return of residents displaced by the storm accounts for some of this to be sure. Still, it is the culture (and yes that includes a healthy dose of partying) of New Orleans that makes people want to call the city “home.”
To make a correlation, can Carbondale bring back its party-place reputation (without the added violence) and attract college students to SIUC? Can Carbondale take a lesson from New Orleans? To let the culture live on, even if that includes a little debauchery?
