Every two weeks, Sweeps will take a look back at NIU decade by decade. This is in no way a rip-off of that VH1 series we’ve never seen and certainly never bought the DVDs of.

Television in the 1990s was all about “Beverly Hills: 90120,” while college life at NIU was all about DeKalb, 60115.

On June 30, 1991, Timothy Leary, famous for telling America to “turn on, tune in and drop out” after he became an advocate for LSD in the 1960s, spoke to NIU students. Leary, who had a PhD in psychology and taught at Harvard, had former President Richard Nixon once proclaim that he was the “biggest threat” to the American people. Leary died in 1996 from prostate cancer, and in 1997 a portion of his cremated remains were sent into space.

“Timothy Leary’s message – ‘tune in, turn on and drop out’ – scared the hell out of corporate capitalists who think that everyone in the American culture is really a consumer whose pockets are filled to overflowing and just waiting to be picked,” English professor John Knapp said. “Just think if almost everyone in say, California, followed O’Leary’s advice, then Enron would not have been able to scheme so successfully to drive up energy prices illegally to record highs since Californians would have been too stoned to care.”

NIU Historian Glen Gildemeister said few people listened to Leary in the 1990s once his message started to fade.

“Leary’s doctoral degree and Harvard connection gave him a cache in the drug-laden late 60s; by the 90s, he had become a parody of himself and few people listened,” Gildemeister said.

Cold weather has always been common on the NIU campus, but Jan. 19, 1994, it became unbearable. NIU had to completely shut down because of a near-record low temperature of 24 below zero; the actual all-time record was 27 below zero set in 1985.

Knapp thinks it’s better for NIU to close once in a while in order to ensure the safety of commuting students.

“Better miss one day every decade or two than be partly responsible for someone freezing to death in the wreckage of a car in a ditch,” Knapp said. “Folks living in the dorms can use that time as a free study day, or they could get some personal anti-freeze at Molly’s.”

NIU Alum Melissa Baggett said with the amount of time it took to get a bus ride in 1994, there was no question the school should shut down for the cold weather.

“With the bus system back in 1994, it kind of took a while before a bus would come around depending on the route,” Baggett said.

Jane Albright-Dieterle left the NIU women’s basketball team after a highly successful 10- year stint serving as head basketball coach from 1984 until 1994. In that decade, she was able to win 188 games, gain national rankings for her teams and win three conference titles. In the last six years of her career, her team was invited to the NCAA National Tournament five times. She gained a huge fan base for the team and helped get 14 official corporate sponsors of the program.

“Believe it or not, winning is not the only thing in intercollegiate sports,” Knapp said. “Albright-Dieterle coached with integrity and maintained a ‘clean program,’ and I for one want to see that remain at NIU. The current football coach has done a magnificent job and maintained a ‘clean program’ as well and that combination is to me far more important than mere win-loss records.”

Baggett feels NIU basketball can reach the promised land of the NCAA national tournament once again someday.

“I think anything is possible – if it happened once, it can happen again,” Baggett said.