NIU expands more every day, whether in the knowledge of the student body or in steel and brick structures. This weekend it will expand with a celebration of both.

Many who had once been built by this institution to take on the real world have now helped this institution to build and expand in its physical existence. As a way of repaying the school for what it had done for them, around 2,200 donors contributed to the building of the new Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center.

Many of us don’t quite understand the whole “giving back to the school” thing quite yet. We are more worried about complaining about student fee hikes, the cost of books and regular tuition. I mean really, can you see yourself giving the school money for nothing later in your life?

The time will likely come when you begin to reminisce about your days in college and finally catch on to how cool we have things around here.

The alumni who took immeasurable amounts of life and book knowledge from NIU likely have these moments of reminiscence quite regularly and in turn have taken that step to give back.

Within this new building, many of those donors will be celebrated for their generosity and for their success in the world NIU helped prepare them for. There will be plaques and tiles throughout the space, as described in our front-page coverage.

As our student body and campus grow both up and out, we need to take time to mark the events of growth. Whether it is the first ‘A’ an individual earns in a class, the first apartment he or she rents, or the opening of a new building, we, as the NIU population need to mark such events.

We can walk or drive past the new Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center, on the corner of Stadium Drive and Annie Glidden Road, and look at this building with the same eyes many looked upon Swen Parson Hall or Williston Hall with when they were added to the campus decades ago.

We should mark this event in our minds, maybe not to think about it again for a while, but to make sure it is there as a time you saw a major piece of your life expand. When you graduate, in a year or two, for some maybe more like five or six, this Alumni Center will be the main stopping ground for your visits to the campus.

Whether to bring your kids by or simply to stop and see how the place looks, you will one day come back to NIU and remember events like the opening of a new building on campus – possibly while standing within the Alumni Center.

NIU’s current budget woes wouldn’t have allowed for this event to happen, but the generosity of alumni and donors did.

For allowing the NIU campus to grow and for creating an event for the current NIU population to tuck back into that little broom closet marked “history” – to come out again when we feel like reminiscing – we thank the donors for their gracious gifts and contributions.

Thank you for helping to make our campus a nicer place in a time when our budget needed a pick-me-up.

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