Over 47 years, the Norris University Center had never seen anything like this. Before the doors to the aging student center on Lake Michigan had even opened, there were students lined up waiting. They would soon be joined by thousands of their compatriots on a pilgrimage to Indianapolis, filling a caravan of buses down I-65 and into the maw of the Midwest.
The Norris Center has hosted thousands of meetings and social events since it was constructed in 1971. It wasn’t supposed to make it this far. A plan to refurbish Norris into a glass palace starting in 2017 still sits in the ground floor.