Written by Anna Trammell
For over four decades, students have spent the day before classes begin on the quad. Today, Quad Day serves as an information fair where student groups, academic departments, and community organizations promote their services and introduce themselves to students at the beginning of the year. There are over 1,400 registered student organizations on campus and a wide variety of these groups will be recruiting new members this Sunday on the quad. [1]
But Quad Day didn’t originate to promote student groups. The first Quad Day occurred in the fall of 1971 as a way of encouraging a sense of community when protests and unrest permeated college campuses. “The war kept getting worse. Tensions escalated…So the lack of people getting together as a community to have a sense of community was a problem. I mean it was just a bunch of people who were angry either at the situation or at each other,” Class of 1972 alumnus Willard Broom said in an oral history from 2010, “But this is a learning community and we should all be learning together.”[2]
Broom, who worked in Student Programs and Services during his years as an undergraduate, was asked to help coordinate the first Quad Day by Dean of Student Programs and Services and Professor of Music Education Dan Perrino. Perrino described his motivation for organizing such an event by saying, “They [students] were just in general angry with the adult population—they didn’t trust them. So, we wanted to do something where by students and faculty would talk to each other. That was the original idea, at least from my point-of-view.”[3]
The 1971 Quad Day featured a volleyball game, hot dog stand, and a student and faculty talent show.[4] “Well, Quad Day was an example I think of Dan pulling people together and letting them see each other in a different light,” said Broom, “That evening, the first Quad Day, Dan’s idea was to have a student/faculty talent show…And one of the administrators that students didn’t like was in the discipline office. But he was also a former opera singer. So, he did an operatic piece…The students got to see him as a person versus as a faceless administrator.”[5]
Many of the larger student groups on campus set up booths and members of the Board of Trustees were on hand to meet new students.[6] With over 7,000 in attendance[7], Broom deemed the event “a surprising success” saying, “Everybody loved it. Everybody had a good time. It was relaxed. It was outside. Everybody’s excited. You know how exciting new student week [is].”[8]
But this Illini tradition still enjoyed by students today wasn’t the only good thing to come out of Broom’s involvement in the first Quad Day. “In the spring of 1971 I was, right before I was asked to do Quad Day with Dan Perrino overlooking who is this legendary figure on campus, well I was dating a young woman and we broke up. But she was a very well known folk singer on campus. So after a couple months of cooling off I wrote to her and said I wanted to have lunch with her in Chicago where she lived and Dan Perrino had something he wanted to talk to her about. ‘Well, if Dan Perrino wants to talk to me, yes come on up.’ So we had lunch and I asked her to sing at Quad Day as part of the student, faculty, and staff talent show. And she said yes because Dan Perrino asked. I mean I was asking on behalf of Dan. I said after the concert let’s get together and I want to get your comments because you’ve been at Quad Day all day. So a couple of days later we got together and we got married. That is the legacy.”[9]
[1] Illini Union, “Office of Registered Student Organizations.”
[2] Broom, W. (2010 February 17). Interview by D. Raymond. Quad Day Oral History Project, University of Illinois Student Life and Culture Archives.
[3] Broom, W. and Perrino, D. College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Storyography.
[4] Huang, J. (2013 August 23). “History of Quad Day: 40 Years of Campus Tradition.” The Daily Illini.
[5] Broom, W. and Perrino, D. College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Storyography.
[6] Broom, W. (2010 February 17). Interview by D. Raymond. Quad Day Oral History Project, University of Illinois Student Life and Culture Archives.
[7] Broom, W. and Perrino, D. College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Storyography.
[8] Broom, W. (2010 February 17). Interview by D. Raymond. Quad Day Oral History Project, University of Illinois Student Life and Culture Archives.
[9] Ibid.
