on UIUC Homecoming, 2021
some thoughts on my first time back in Champaign, IL since graduating.
This past weekend, with both roommates of the mailing list out of town, I decided to shake things up a bit. It just so happened to be Homecoming weekend in Champaign, which was a good enough excuse to pack my bags, dust off my iCard, and head south on I-57 for my “not-quite home away from my not-quite home” – U of I.
Much has changed since I last iced out at Old Kam’s two short years ago:
The Auntie Anne's in the Union is gone, and Lovie Smith is no longer our head football coach. There’s a Taco Bell on 4th and Green, and a massive Target has replaced where Cly’s and Firehouse once resided on 6th Street. The vices are increasingly candy-coated, and there’s a lot more of these than I remembered:
All of the easy-A Kinesiology classes like “Basketball 100” and “Figure Skating 101” simply became “Walking” during the pandemic, and was this sign always there?
Or this one?
But I digress. Aside from the masks, and the signage, and the Safer passport app, and the uncharacteristically nice weather, things were generally how I remembered them:
We still suck at football, that burly guy Cole is still carding at Lion, and the brass at Campus Property Management still have no idea that their widely disseminated logo was quite clearly designed by a troll who made it look like, well… you be the judge:
Up first on my agenda was a Beach Bunny concert run by Star Course, a student organization I used to be in that puts on live concerts for up-and-coming artists.
The concert was held in the centrally located, historic Foellinger Auditorium:
While Foellinger – which is astonishingly pronounced with a hard G, according to the campus’ official pronunciation manual – typically functions as the largest lecture hall on campus, it serves the occasional night shift as the main indoor venue for Star Course’s student-produced concerts.
Recent acts to grace the same stage as my ECON 102 Prof. Vasquez include Doja Cat, Peach Pit, Smino, Waka Flocka Flame, STRFKR, and Jesse McCartney.
Tonight’s show was especially anticipated, because this was the first time students had been able to attend an official concert on campus since EarthGang in March 2020.
The opener was a so-so band called llo llo, quirkily pronounced “yo-yo”. This would have been a funnier name had they not made a point of mentioning it 4-5 times during the set. I would suggest they add their band name to the aforementioned pronunciation guide, but we already know how that worked out for poor Foellinger.
One girl in the audience had a sign declaring it was her friend’s birthday, and the lead singer even addressed it at one point, but never sang to her. (Note to self: if I’m ever in a band, we are 100% keeping a cover of “Happy Birthday” in our back pocket, just in case.)
The masked students stood in front of their assigned seats throughout llollo’s set, but when Beach Bunny (whose song Cloud 9 you might have heard before) finished tuning, and played the opening notes of their set, it triggered a familiar avalanche for anyone who has ever attended/worked a show at Foellinjer before – one of everyone rushing to the area in between the stage and the seats to create a makeshift dance floor. Back in my day, this was when the Star Course staff needed all hands on deck to man the perimeter of the aisles, and make sure nothing nefarious happened.
But there was hardly any action of note, beyond the girl with the birthday sign getting yet another shoutout. Everyone stayed in their duos or trios and bopped, respectfully.
While Beach Bunny is no Flocka – at whose concert 2 years ago yr. corresps. witnessed quite a bit of vomiting and one student pissing on her seat – they’re not Mitski, either.
Beach Bunny played a strong, solid set, and the lead vocalist in particular sounded great live. But the crowd seemed a bit timid, and I was somewhat surprised to see every attendee (aside from the bands) in the 1300-seat venue obediently wearing masks.
I experienced this same brand of logic at the Neo-Futurists show the other weekend. Not only did we have to show proof of vaccination upon entry, but we were required to wear a mask during the performance. Meanwhile, all 8 performers in the sold-out, indoor, intimate environment did not wear masks, except for the parts of the show when they went into the audience, as shows of the devised theatre ilk are wont to do.
The Neo-Futurists explained up top that it was okay for them to not wear masks on stage because they are tested daily, and none of them have recently tested positive.
I imagine this was a similar protocol for Beach Bunny and llo llo, who I think it’s fair to assume are both fully vaccinated, given their travel-based occupation. So why, then, does an audience consisting exclusively of fully-vaccinated and/or COVID-negative, young, healthy people have to mask up the whole time, when down the street are a dozen bars – each packed to the brim inside each night – with no masks in sight?
I feel like I should clarify – I can tell you think I made a bit of a leap there.
In addition to the measles, mumps, and diphtheria, COVID-19 was added to the required list of contagious diseases for which all students and faculty in the state of Illinois were required to be vaccinated from, per an August mandate by Governor Pritzker. From what I was told by current students, if you decline, or are otherwise unable to get vaccinated (about 5-10% of the student pop.), you have to test negative for COVID-19 every other day, per the school’s testing policy.
Your vaccination status ties in directly with the mandatory brand new app, Safer. Built by the University, Safer acts as a sort of social currency passport that enables entrance into all official academic buildings. Here’s how it works, per the university’s site:
The Safer Illinois app is the the easiest and most reliable method of verifying building access. Your personalized “Granted-Access” or “Denied-Access” status for entry to university classrooms and facilities is based on these factors:
Your on-campus testing status (up-to-date or not) OR your university-verified COVID-19 vaccination record
Your exposure notification status (“Not Exposed” or “Exposed”)
Your COVID-19 status (“Negative” or “Positive”)
Your quarantine status (“Not In Quarantine” or “In Quarantine”)
Your self-reported symptoms
And here’s a sample screenshot of what the app looks like:
I actually think the simple “Granted/Denied” vs. something like “Positive/Negative” or “Vaccinated/Unvaccinated” is a nice touch, for the people concerned about privacy.
The only reason I knew about any of this was because earlier that day, upon entering the English building, I was stopped by a student volunteer asking to “see my app”. I explained I was just here to visit an old professor, and he nonchalantly waved me through, after telling me a little bit about Safer. In all the classrooms I walked by, every single student and teacher was wearing a mask (the same was true of The Union, The Ike, Gregory Hall, and Lincoln Hall, by the way).
I can understand this overabundance of caution being taken last Fall, or even during the Spring 2021 semester, when vaccines hadn’t been made widely available yet. But literally every student and staff member is either fully vaccinated, or takes multiple rapid tests per week in order to be admitted entrance into these academic facilities.
Here’s the campus’ publicly available COVID-19 data from the past week:
99.78% of the students have not tested positive in the last month.
And so if every academic building can only be entered by those who either have the vaccine, or do not have COVID-19, and virtually nobody on the entire campus has tested positive for COVID-19 the past month – even with bars being completely open with no restrictions all semester – why do the students still have to wear masks inside?
In addition, over 82% of general Champaign County residents over 65 are vaccinated, well above the national average, per the New York Times’ Data Visualization:
My point in bringing all of this up is not to criticize UIUC, or Champaign County. They’ve obviously done a great job containing the virus. The point is this:
If a 90%+ campus vaccine rate and 99.8% negative test rate aren’t good enough metrics for masks to no longer be required in Champaign classrooms, I have no earthly idea what kind of stats it will take for things to go back to ‘before’ in the rest of the country.
After the show, I hit up a new restaurant on Green St. called Shawarma Joint, which is sort of like a middle eastern Chipotle.
Next up: Lion.
You could tell you were in Champaign, because despite it being a Thursday night, there were 200+ people waiting in a line that went around the block. You could also tell that none of the alumni were there yet, because these people were actually waiting in line. Veteran attendees know you can pretty easily skip the wait in one of four ways:
Bribery (not worth it)
Inch along the wall on the perimeter of the line (the “tortoise vs. the hare”)
Ask someone towards the front of the line, “llo, can I pretend I know you?” as you give them a big hug.
Call out the name “Caitlin!” and confidently walk forward while waving.
We opted for #2.
To Champaign bar mogul Cochrane’s credit, the bars required proof of vaccine before being permitted to enter. Once you show the bouncer your vaccine card or screenshot, you don’t have to wear a mask inside.
While neither the concert nor classrooms quite felt familiar, I can confidently report that Lion hasn’t changed one bit.
The drinks are still dirt cheap (although it was funny watching current students bemoan the Homecoming surge pricing of $10 Cover and $4 wells), the floor is still a swamp of melting ice, taking a lap is still the primary method of expanding your social circle, and basketball jerseys are still en vogue (amongst the sea of Kofi and Ayo jerseys, I spotted one dude rocking a nondescript t-shirt that simply read, “Utah Jazz”).
Oh, to be young again.
Sadly, when we finally got inside, there were no “I’m Coming Home” tribute videos playing on the dozen 240p TV screens surmounting the main bar. There were no slow-motion clips of me making the “I’ll close out” hand motion to the bartender as Skyler Gray’s vocals played somberly in the background, nor was there footage of me waiting for the lone toilet seat stall in the men’s bathroom, anxiously avoiding the unbridled testosterone emanating from the infamous and adjacent “cocktagon” (IYKYK).
The next day was filled with work and pickup basketball, and the night consisted of Happy Hour at Lion, Friday Night Joe’s, and Last Call at New Kam’s:
During the days, I felt like an omniscient viewer of a different generation’s college experience. I overheard things like, “If you like the show, you should join the Survivor Club, we've been watching them together over Zoom”, and observed two ‘classmates’ clunkily meet IRL for the first time, despite it being eight weeks into the semester.
All of this is to say: I think we’ve officially found the cut-off point between millennials and Gen Z. The age groups should be distinguished by whether or not you experienced any schooling in a remote environment. Unlike the current Juniors, who have been dealing with the pandemic for parts of three (!) different academic years, COVID-19 did not play a role in my college experience. The classes I took and clubs I joined required your physical presence. And Foellinger was pronounced with a soft G!
There were instances of familiarity, sure: an overwhelmed girl crying into her notebook in the corner of the Union; a girl in a Theta hat and Theta tank-top walking out of the Theta house; but both of those girls were wearing masks (I’ll let you take a wild guess as to what symbols might have been inscribed on the latter’s).
The Class of 2020 Illini reading this might not think they’re in Gen Z, but allow me to remind you that at Homecoming 2019 – your Senior year – we actually beat Wisconsin 24-23 on a game-winning field goal. Didn’t that feel a little… incorrect to you? Maybe we should have taken that as a sign that things were about to get a bit wonky.
Regardless, it was mostly while taking a lap at Lion, or pretending to have fun at Joe’s, or meandering through the thousands of Illini at the outdoor, Saturday afternoon tailgate, where it truly felt like before. Where you felt a genuine kinship, and took solace in the fact that everyone around you equally hated Cameron Krutwig and his stupid mustache for ruining the only thing we all had going for us last year.
Where it felt like nothing had changed at all.
Where it felt like home.
I left before the game, but we ended up getting our salad tossed by Wisconsin, 24-0.
That’s more like it.
I-L-L (and i cannot stress this enough) I-N-I