MN Flashback V: Back to School (MSU-style)

With K heading back to Mizzou on Sunday to start her sophmore year there, I thought it would be an opportune time to flashback to my own college dorm life at Moorhead State University.

My first three years were all in room 272 of Nelson Hall, on the second of 11 floors. It was fun living in “The Beer Can”, whose cylindrical hallway was perfect for driving golf balls, throwing a frisbee, or maybe a bowling ball. Room 272 had a clear shot across the building and the elevators in the middle, right at the top of the stairs, so we always had a view of everyone’s comings-and-goings.

^{Nelson Hall room 272, Fall 1980}

My sophmore and junior years we had a deck in our room, with the mattresses on the floor and chairs, shelves, and stereo on top. You always had to have a track queued up when someone else let their stereo get a bit too loud; “Carry on Wayward Son” always worked well against “Another One Bites the Dust” for instance.

^{the desk of a freshman CompSci major — note my roommate’s quadrophonic box on the left side of the desk}

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MN flashback II – Jack Knoft for MSU Student Senate

Finding out that K was elected treasurer of her dorm floor (way to go, K!) reminded me of this story, and I managed to find the clippings in a box in the basement…

In 1981, during the spring quarter of my freshman year at Moorhead State University, a couple guys on my dorm floor got the wild idea of entering a fictitious person in the Student Senate election. With several openings for the next year, we hoped that our candidate would slip through the cracks and get elected. Paperwork was filled out and submitted, and the wait began…

When this blurb came out in the weekly Advocate (or “Badvocate” as it was known), we were pumped — five positions, and five candidates! We also noticed that someone’s handwriting was poor enough that the second F was read as a T in Jack’s last name, but since it would be many years until Homer Simpson’s favorite bartender Moe began answering prank calls on his telephone, it was probably for the better.

As the article mentions, there was an open forum later that week. Since Jack could not attend (obviously), “he” prepared and submitted a written statement of “his” positions instead. All that remained was the general election…

The election was held, and it was a slam dunk. From what we learned later, at that time an attempt was made to telephone Jack to tell him that he had been elected. He had left no telephone # on his application, so the registrar’s office was contacted. It was only then that it was learned that there was no Jack Knoft registered for classes at MSU.

While write-in candidates around campus scrambled to drum up enough votes to try snag the opening in the final election, the guys on 2^nd floor Nelson Hall enjoyed a good laugh over it all.