UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
N A V I G A T I O N D I G I T A L L I B R A R Y
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Nevins) [PAGE 320]

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300

STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE

peculiar hold at Illinois, is played far more in the spring than in the autumn. The one step that would do a great deal to increase student exercise is evident: if a really adequate gymnasium, with a large indoor field like Northwestern's, were provided, the number of students who would carry their roommates off to a "work-out" in it would be doubled or trebled. The use of both the old and the new Armories for athletics, however, is helping solve the problem. But it must not be forgotten that other factors than formal athletics contribute to the physical welfare of Illinois students. The undergraduates do not flock from neighboring apartment houses, but from dwelling and fraternity houses that cover several square miles. The procession that fills Green or John Streets as the students turn out for eight or ten o'clock classes, overflowing the sidewalks into the roadway, reaches threequarters of a mile from the campus. The campus itself is roomy, and the student who has successive classes in the engineering shops, Farm Mechanics Building, and Natural History Building has covered more than a mile. For the lower classes military drill, week in and week out, with its route-step march to the south campus, its exhibition drills, its elaborate maneuverings and mockbattles, provides a fair measure of exercise. The civil engineering students have surveying tasks that carry them over campus and field; and picnics to Homer Park on the Vermilion twenty miles away, or to Crystal Lake on the outskirts of Urbana, are frequent during the week-ends of fall and spring. It is a rare student who on business or pleasure does not tramp to one of the city centers, a mile from the campus, two or three times weekly. In the warm Mays and in summer there are campus " sings" and concerts that draw students out-