Hopkins graduates gathered on campus from Friday to Sunday to celebrate alumni weekend. After Saturday’s victorious lacrosse game, dinners and commemoration events were held throughout the rest of the weekend. Alumni from all different backgrounds came to meet with former friends and classmates, reminisce and witness the changes that have taken place on campus.
Many alumni remarked that the University has never looked better. Although the academic rigor remains as intense as ever, alumni say that the University has paid more attention to the quality of student life. Hopkins lacked a recreation center until 2002, for example, and alumni noted many other impressive additions to the campus including Bloomberg Hall, the Decker Quad, the Brody Learning Commons and the new baseball field.
Some alumni participated in the various talks and tours held throughout the weekend. Dick King, Class of 1961, learned about issues that present-day students are tackling, such as diversity at Hopkins and peace in the Middle East. He was amazed by technological changes on campus. For example, students in his class did square roots by hand, before the world’s first all-electronic desktop calculator was invented in 1961.
“Part of the tour was about robots,” King said. “They talked about having a doctor here and having a robot in Asia. They could talk to the robot and have it do surgery. There is a huge merger in engineering and medicine today.”
When web pages began in the 1990s, they were very basic. Students could not research online or look up back tests as they do today. Students used to print things in Shaffer Hall, a popular place for engineers to hang out, according to Jason McNamara, Class of 1991. McNamara was a former Chief of Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and graduated with a B.A. in public policy, as there was no economics degree at Hopkins at that time.
“There really was no Internet,” he said. “There were no web addresses. We had to send to IP addresses. If you didn’t click send before someone tried to message you, you would lose it.”
Monique Slater, Class of 1991, didn’t get a laptop until her junior year. Other amenities like cafés, convenience stores and social spaces were scarce. In addition, students had to live off-campus after freshman year and choose their own housing, which often meant living in a rowhouse. Hollander House of AMR II used to be all-boys and was the designated living space for the lacrosse team, according to Jay Croughwell, Class of 1991.
Michael Lisak, Class of 1991 and an attorney, met Slater at Hopkins. Now, they’re married with three kids.
“There is much more space for the students to hang out,” he said. “The Rec Center was nothing, no café or restaurants and the library was depressing beyond belief.”
William Zigrang, Class of 1966, said that the campus was even less developed in the 1960s.
“Brody made a lot of improvements to the way the campus looked,” he said. “It is beautiful now. The buildings were always nice, but the landscaping was nondescript and nonexistent.”
Melanie Higgins, Class of 1996, is the Consul General of the U.S. Consulate General in Auckland, New Zealand. After graduating Hopkins with a degree in International Studies, she joined the Foreign Service in 1998. She also complimented the University for the increased attention it has paid toward student life.
“Hopkins has expanded out of academics to become more well-rounded. I think it’s part of an effort to get students more active and have a more enjoyable time,” Higgins said.
Jeffrey Doshna, Class of 1996, came to alumni week to set up a scholarship in memory of his late wife Sarah Doshna, Class of 1996. He met with scholarship recipients and then went to the lacrosse game. Doshna was a double major in economics and geography and now works as a professor at Temple University in the Department of Planning and Community Development.
While the social and physical environment at Hopkins has changed, other things haven’t over the years, like friendships and fraternity life.
This is true even for the classes of the 1960s, some of whom returned to Hopkins for the first time since graduation for Alumni Weekend.
The camaraderie among fraternity members was tighter for the 50-year alumni, when Hopkins was an all-male university with class sizes of about 400. Frank Weiss, Class of 1961, started as a chemistry student until he found his first chemistry course to be a mystery and switched to business. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.
“The best part was the family,” he said. “In two years my mother and father died in my first year and second year. So my friends on the lacrosse team and the fraternity became friends and family. It was very important to have those friendships. I went off the deep end with playing, drinking, and I got on probation.”
The alumni said that Hopkins was challenging, but it was socially rewarding and a degree from Hopkins was invaluable.
John Migliore, Class of 1961, agreed that without any female students, there were no distractions to stop him from concentrating on his studies. Graduating with a degree in business and industrial management, Migliore has had an extensive career. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army at Fort Bragg, Md. In 1964, he did “cloak and dagger stuff” with the National Security Agency (NSA) and then moved to the FDA’s Management Systems Division until 1980, where he went to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also has a master’s degree from George Washington University.
King, an athletic director, baseball and football coach, said that in addition to the fraternities, sports were also a great way for students to unwind.
“Back then it was called study and continue to study. We spent a lot of time in Gilman Hall, the library because this was a difficult school,” he said. “At that time it was not co-ed, so there was a lot of fraternity life. We played sports here at school, but it wasn’t anything like it was today. ”
Weiss said that after 55 years, his friendships have not faded.
“Our fraternity had a requirement for the freshmen to find a Christmas tree and put it up in the fraternity house. In this year, Christmas of 1960, they went to a nearby church and the surrounding grounds had all kinds of trees. They cut it with a saw, and they put it up in the ground level of the fraternity house on Calvert Street. The church, Saints Philip and James, and the police got word. They followed a trail of pine leaves that went to our front door. They compared the size of the stumps, and found this was the right tree.”
The incident about the “mean fraternity at Hopkins” went on national news and the fraternity members who were in the house that day, including Weiss, had to pay for the tree and write apology letters. Members of the Class of 1966 also had fun bringing farm animals into the dorms and exploring the steam tunnels.
Zigrang, a pre-med major, which was a biology major with some liberal arts classes, was able to sneak his way into a graduate students’ bar by dating a biology graduate student.
“We were an all-guys school,” he recalled. “But I met this beautiful girl. One day, we were talking and she just lit into me. I was thinking,
‘What have I done?’ A while later, I buy her some flowers, and I have barely spent any money at school. I wander over to her apartment, she opened the door, said oh it’s you, slammed it in my face, and here I am again. I got her to go.”
Venturing into the steam tunnels was also a pastime.
“I took her down there, and we had a productive time,” he said.
He elaborated on the joys and hardships of living in all-male dormitories.
“The only woman you could have in your dorm was your mother, not your sister. If it was not parent’s day, you could not have your mother in either. By senior year, there were men, women and farm animals visiting,” Zigrang said.
This year was Mark Wentworth’s, Class of 1966, first reunion.
“Lots of old faces I recognize,” he said, “if you just take away the wrinkles and add back hair.”
