By Hank Walter, Executive Director of the IMU
My twin son and daughter head off to college this fall, and at least one of them will be attending IU. I’m sure you remember those days of deciding where to go to college, figuring out roommates, class schedules, orientation, and move-in. Some of you have the benefit of having gone through that as a student and as the parent of a new student. When I started college at another Big Ten university, no one had yet made fun of me for being a “boomer,” I had to use a paper map to learn my way around campus, and I registered for classes by talking to someone who typed my requested schedule into the computer because college students couldn’t be trusted to get it right on their own. Today’s students live in a different world, and even if you graduated five years ago, the IMU, Union Board, and IU are different now.
Take enrollment, for instance, in the context of the IMU. When John Whittenberger first pulled together some students to create the Indiana Union and Union Board, enrollment was a little over 1,000. When the IMU building opened in 1932, more than 3,000 students attended class. At the time of the last expansion of the building in 1960, enrollment had surged past 13,000. By 1992, when the last major renovation of the Union was completed, 33,000 students called themselves Hoosiers. This fall, enrollment broke 48,000.
For a building designed for a campus with 3,000 or 13,000 students, depending how you look at it the IMU has held up pretty well. During the school year, our public seating is full 15 to 20 hours a week. Events and meetings in the building are back to or beyond what they were before the pandemic. In the last ten years, we’ve renovated the dining areas, added a pub and a store, tripled the amount of outdoor seating and dramatically increased the open seating inside the building, renovated the Frangipani Room and the Bookstore, updated the East and South Lounges (while maintaining the character), renovated the hotel, but still worked hard to maintain the character and heart of the IMU. The result is that the building is much busier than it was a decade ago (I don’t have records that go back further).
Student activities have changed dramatically too. Many students’ involvement on campus is “a mile wide and an inch deep,” as in they’d rather be a member of six student organizations than focus their time and attention on impacting one they really care about. My cynical peers would say that’s a result of a culture that focuses on “building a resume.” Alumni from the 1960s talk about there being five large student organizations that led student life (Union Board, Student Government, IFC, Panhellenic, and the Student Foundation). Today, we have more than 850 student organizations on campus. I suspect that’s partly a reflection of an increased emphasis on entrepreneurship in society as well as the growth of the IU Funding Board, which provides funds to any student organization to help support programs.
Through it all, Union Board remains. Some committees change from year-to-year: this year, Culinary is out and the Gaming and Electronic Entertainment Committee (a.k.a. GEEC) is in.
I’m most proud, though, of the way the last three Boards have really engaged with issues around the leadership and direction of the IMU itself. Union Board had an active voice in the task force to look at the direction of the Union, including continuing their role with dining. They worked with dining to develop a student organization catering menu. Four students from the Board worked with staff to rewrite the meeting and event space reservation policy last year and the Board reviewed and updated the Union’s policy manual.
They’ve served on search committees, purchased new art for the IMU (and successfully written grant proposals to fund more purchases), restructured positions to give more focus to their responsibility to the Union without impacting programming, and on and on. Laurie Frederickson, the 115th Board President (2024) spoke of a Union that was “by the students, of the students, and for the students,” and that only happens if the students engage with the Union. That student-staff partnership is happening more and more, and when it does, the IMU and Union Board are better. I am really happy to share that it’s made an impact the last few years.
I hope you’ll get a chance to come back and see your Union and how it’s evolved for Biennial this October 10–12. Since this is student life and college students, it will have changed a little more by then too.
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