In keeping with the festive holiday season, I’ve accumulated the following gift list for NIU students, faculty, staff, organizations, etc.

For NIU students:

New batteries for their walkmans so that students can continue walking around campus caught up in their own “worlds.”

A new garment bag. Despite what Gretchyn Lenger may write, NIU is not a suitcase school; a garment bag will normally suffice.

A complete set of foreign-language dictionaries so that students can finally understand what their instructors are saying.

For NIU athletic teams:

A home game where there are more NIU fans than the opposing team’s fans.

For NIU athletes:

A good lawyer—and a schedule which doesn’t include any road games to Iowa.

For Gerald O’Dell, NIU’s new Athletic Director:

A year’s supply of aspirin. The mere thought of NIU’s athletic teams can give people a headache.

For the Northern Star:

A complete set of new pictures. Pictures of President LaTourette, Jim Fischer and others with their mouths wide open hardly make for impressive reading.

For Officer 52—who keeps ticketing my car for lack of registration:

A new set of glasses so that he (or she) can see that the green object in my car window is a registration sticker.

For the NIU community:

A new positive attitude to replace the current lethargic, petty and apathetic attitude. I’m tired of hearing, “What do you expect? This is Northern,” whenever something goes wrong.

Additional parking so that students, faculty and staff don’t need to take a bus to get to their cars.

For the NIU cafeterias:

A spice rack so the food can finally have some flavor.

And finally, for myself:

A quick, painless transfer to the University of Wisconsin-Madison or the University of Minnesota.

Ed Hartig

graduate student

statistics