re: For the Old Timers. What was it like living in Tiger Stadium?

Lived in North Stadium there one year (junior year) 1984-85. We called it "The Rock" (like Alcatraz).

--Game days were kind of neat, and very different. We'd go in and out of the dorm entrance all day long and hang out in the dorm until game time; we would open our dorm windows and look at all the folks milling about on N. Stadium Drive pre-game... had to make arrangements with roommate if either he or I wanted to bring a girl back to the dorm after the game for some monkey business... security was not a thing back then; I guess pretty much anyone could have gone into the dorm if they wanted to use the bathroom or something back then.

--Hall bathrooms only; thankfully RIGHT when we were moving in they added stalls to the rows of toilets and showers. Before that it was wide open for anyone in that big bathroom to see when you were taking a dump or a shower.

-- Shower heads were low-flow; someone broke one or removed it and it just had a nice strong flow of water coming out of the pipe/tube that didn't spread like a shower does. That became the preferred shower stall, and those on the floor took to calling taking a shower in that stall "running the tube".

-- NO air-conditioning, but at least ceiling fans were put in the year before. With the ceiling fan and the windows open, it wasn't that bad other than the first few weeks and the last couple of weeks of the academic year. It was, however, worse than Pentagon where I lived the following year, because Pentagon dorms had higher ceilings than North Stadium.

-- At night, with the windows open, we would often hear Mike the Tiger roaring across the street. Sometimes he would roar so loud he would wake us. One of the coolest memories of living there.

-- There were a couple of openly gay students living on our floor; the rest of the guys on the floor treated them okay and didn't give them any problems and would talk to them. My roommate and I once played a racquetball doubles games against them; before the game he and I referred to the game as "the heteros vs. the homos" and swore we wouldn't lose, so as to uphold the good name of straight men everywhere. We defeated them pretty easily.

-- We had meals in the basement cafeteria of Hatcher Hall. One of the female on-campus job student workers there we first called "Milk Lady". But she actually became part of our group and would go with us to see shows, go to parties with us, etc.

-- I NEVER got up in time for breakfast at the dining hall. but our RA (who also became a good friend) would always come down to our room, bang on our door and get my roommate to go, but only on those days when the Hatcher cafeteria was serving pancakes, with this simple phrase:(knock knock knock) "STEVE!!!! CAKES!!!"

-- We got cable in the spring semester in the dorms.