Chapter 32:

 

PERKINS STUDENT CENTER

Academy Street entrance to Perkins, August 2013Before 1996, if someone at UD uttered the words “Student Center,” there was no confusion of which one you were talking about. Opened in the late '50s, Perkins was UD’s only Student Center for almost 40 years.

 

Well, since we already talked about the Bookstore and the Scrounge in previous chapters -- and those were usually the two main reasons you ventured into Perkins -- we’re just left with some odds and ends:

 

The Ride Board. This was the classic, “Need a Ride Home for Thanksgiving. Will Pay Gas and Tolls,” bulletin board. In this modern era of craigslist style online classifieds, the Perkins’ Ride Board is now obsolete, but for decades it was the way many UD kids found a way home for the holidays!

 

Desk where they handed out stuff. What I mean is this little desk towards the back. My friend Leanne had a gig there once, handing out Campus Directories at the beginning of the school year. That was pretty much the job for the first week of the semester. Now, why was that even a job? Couldn’t they just have a stack of them sitting there? Maybe they simply wanted to police it. Anyway, this desk faced that...

 

Glassed in room where they rotate in all kinds of shit. You know what I'm talking about? Often they'd have vendors in there selling posters, or CDs, and whatever else a red-blooded college kid loves. Well, except for beer. And between this room and the Beach, was that study lounge area with some couches and stuff.

 

Big Multipurpose Room. The entrance to this is in that hallway behind the Scrounge; the one that leads out to the parking garage that opened in 2001. I remember having some kind of sit-down meal in that multipurpose room, for prospective students. Possibly the only time I was ever in there…that would've been circa 1990! Oh, and across the hall…

 

The Arcade, R.I.P. Yes, there was an arcade in the Perkins Student Center. It was a small to medium sized room, but did the job. I was at UD during the Street Fighter / Mortal Kombat era, more about that later!

 

Student Media. Well there’s WVUD -- the call letters were WXDR up until Fall of '92. Then of course The Review, which in the early '90s won the national “Pacemaker” award…meant that nationally, it was one of the top five non-daily college newspapers. The Review launched its online version in 1997, and then in 2005 moved away from its twice-a-week newspaper schedule, shifting to once-a-week tabloid format, with online weekly supplements.

 

All the stuff downstairs. Man, have I ever been downstairs in the Perkins Student Center? Uhhhhhhh. Bacchus Theatre, etc. 1991 was the opening of The Blue Hen Sports Lounge. It became the Hen Zone three years later. At least, that’s what I think the Hen Zone used to be. Do your own research! I’m tired.

Rumor: There is an underground secret society at Delaware named, “Petal and Thorn,” that has been in existence since the 1920s. Comprised year-to-year by ten seniors, Petal and Thorn’s mission is to influence student politics.

 

Dude, this is: Baffling. There’s student politics at Delaware?

 

 

Perkins Potpourri

 

“I lounged, I mean, studied a few times in the study area facing the Beach, particularly during my freshman year. In the area in front of the bookstore entrance, you could often see vendors selling sterling rings and hippie-looking stuff like hemp bracelets. I remember going once or twice to the poster sales that were held in the glassed-in room...they also took senior portraits there.”

 

- Brenda, UD '02

 

MugNight.com, Glory Days at Delaware, and DelGrads are © 2006 – 2015 the guy who made this site. Website designed by Digger Designs.