Leatherneck Nation

I admire NFS71 for his positive attitude when the world around seems to be tumbling down. However, many times my frustration is simply because I see people make the same mistakes over and over and I too fall in that group. It is easy to get into a "comfort zone", relying on ways and means that have worked for you in the past. Stepping outside of your comfort zone is not easy but with just a bit of "thinking outside the box", who knows what great things we can achieve.

I saw this on CNN a few minutes ago. The world has many unused shipping container boxes. What can we do with them? How about WIU becoming the first college in the nation to provide a select group of students their very own and very unique living space? Can we do this alone? Not a chance. But I would think there must be some Warren Buffet-type person or persons on this planet that would gladly throw in many of their dollars to make it a reality. Lets call this the Western Illinois University [Campaign Name here]. Who has Warren's number? I will toss out a possible campaign name but I am sure you can come up with something better:

Campaign for Thinking Inside the Box

[youtube][/youtube]

First problem to solve. Can we deal with the heating and cooling issues inherently associated with a container box? If we can, this would have to be a far better living arrangement than that for those students at Duke residing in Krzyzewskiville.

Seal...you sure have some crazy ideas

Not sure we're at the point where we need to be adding any student housing...already torn down one dorm and have shut down (and will soon tear down) a second, as well as closing (and eventually tearing down) a decent amount of married student housing. Maybe 10 years ago or so, there was a pretty big boom (for a town of Macomb's size) of inexpensive, but decent off-campus apartments. That, plus the bus system, has made it so that a huge number of students that would normally be living in dorms are now just a few blocks off campus in the apartments.

We get our enrollment back up though, and we may need some creative thinking like that to figure out where to put the students again.

Yea, I know it is a crazy idea. So was U of I's idea for a Christmas Carol hotline and they got a ton of mileage out of it. Just seems like we are not on the radar right now for anything wild and crazy. IMO, any publicity in that direction would be a good thing. Not talking anything dorm-sized here. More like 10-20 units.

They could have an athlete's only dorm. With >400 student athletes I imagine at least 1/2 live on campus. This would work for one of the smaller halls.

Actually, for all students, they they should do floors by major, which would be a take off on Mizzou's FIGs (Freshman Interest Groups). That helps build community and all the student retention research says sense of belonging is the #1 factor.

sealhall74 wrote:Yea, I know it is a crazy idea. So was U of I's idea for a Christmas Carol hotline and they got a ton of mileage out of it. Just seems like we are not on the radar right now for anything wild and crazy. IMO, any publicity in that direction would be a good thing.

Hey, I'm all for crazy ideas. Throw some against the wall and see what sticks.

Tere North wrote:They could have an athlete's only dorm. With >400 student athletes I imagine at least 1/2 live on campus. This would work for one of the smaller halls.

Actually, for all students, they they should do floors by major, which would be a take off on Mizzou's FIGs (Freshman Interest Groups). That helps build community and all the student retention research says sense of belonging is the #1 factor.

As I said above, nothing that big. Just something big enough to plant a seed in someone mind that this institution is pretty clever with their campus space.

I didn't mean build a new athletic's dorm, but to use what we have, but dedicate one of them to athletes.

Tere North wrote:I didn't mean build a new athletic's dorm, but to use what we have, but dedicate one of them to athletes.

Probably part of Thompson or Tanner would work best. Those are the closest to the athletic facilities.

ST_Lawson wrote:Probably part of Thompson or Tanner would work best. Those are the closest to the athletic facilities.

They make Thompson the frosh hall, but I think the athletes are still there too as they can only get Sodexho to extend dining hours in one hall. Frosh used to be in Bay/Henn. Move back to that and then Tanner for the athletes, that would work.

How freaking dumb of me. New day fresher mind. I forgot to mention that with Warren sinking money into the effort, our container hangouts are going to be something you really do want to hang out in. We have a Construction Management program in-house to oversee the effort and gain some real-world experience right in our own backyard. Pella does custom windows, right? The pieces are coming together.

http://www.valiant-design.com/design/la ... iner-homes

Another Campaign Name Possibility: Out Of Our Mind and Into the Box

I can envision a structure like this somewhere along the West side of Hanson. Could be the command center for managing the game day experience details,
selling tickets, will call window, etc. Need I say ours is pretty embarrassing right now. IMO, this is a one semester project.



And who in their right mind would not want to invite 10-15 of their closest friends to watch the Leathernecks from something quite a bit fancier than one of these parked somewhere on that south slope of Hanson? Alcohol permitted of course for those lucky fans. A new tradition takes hold after first Leatherneck TD of the day when the Peach Blossoms proudly trek up that hill and fill their plungers. They are all vets, old enough to drink, and earned the right to do so. This will work.