Pass: More than 4K visit NIU in historic Open House

Few issues on campus are more troubling than NIU’s persistent enrollment woes.

So, seeing more than 4,000 prospective students walk around campus in a record-breaking campus tour is a good sign. Granted, an open house doesn’t guarantee anything, but I’m sure at least some of those students will more seriously consider NIU after visiting campus.

I think the reason this worked so well is the information on what NIU offers was easily accessible to the visitors. After all, it was a record-breaking event. Whatever the Department of Undergraduate Admissions did to prepare for the event evidently worked.

If the summer open house on July 25 works out anything like this one did, NIU might have a shot at seeing some tangible improvement to enrollment. Not to mention, there are also two fall open houses planned. NIU seems to be getting it’s act together.

It would be nice if NIU set a trend for having easily accessible information. The more information students consistently have, the better. If that can be more consistent, retention might improve, too.

Fail: Time spent on Tugs can be better used cleaning

At the risk of angering every single Greek student on campus, I’m comfortable with saying after just one day, I’m over Tugs.

But I’m always over Tugs, even before it starts. You could say that’s because my arms would most likely tear clean off my shoulders if I even tried to join in on the competition, but you would be wrong.

Granted, the effort put into Tugs is hilariously admirable. All these fraternity brothers have trained like military soldiers preparing for the most glorious battle of their lives. That’s noble determination, but why so much effort for a tug of war? I see so many things they could focus their attention to instead of a giant rope-pulling contest.

Maybe if the same fraternity members put half as much effort in cleaning up litter scattered all throughout Greek Row, all the time and sweat for Tugs wouldn’t seem so strange to me.

It’s a good idea to keep an eye on the mess you make if you’re constantly digging up your lawn and tossing crumpled beer cans and cigarette butts all over it. Nobody needs to see that.