I had my first beer, a Rolling Rock, at a small college bar on High Street when I was 17 years old with the Velvet Underground playing in the background.
Sorry, Mom and Dad.
When I came for my campus visit to Ohio State, I stayed with my brother, an OSU senior at the time. He took me to the bars on High Street near south campus to show me the night life at OSU, and I fell in love with the university.
There I sat, on some dirty steps right above Skully’s Bar and Grill, watching the college students milling about. The only difference between one venue and the next was the music spinning in the juke box. The sidewalks were packed. The bars were full.
Freshman year, my roommates and I would get all “hoochified” up and go to Sloopy’s, and on the way home we would stop to chow down on some gyros. I think many students here have similar memories. A lot has changed in those five years, though.
Sloopy’s emptied its last keg long ago, and the days of gyro gulping are quickly coming to a close. South campus has slowly faded away, and, by Jan. 31, it will be gone forever.
Today’s freshmen at OSU wouldn’t understand the old war stories of a senior, who recounts the steel cables which used to run down High Street to keep the drunkards from falling in the path of oncoming traffic. Nor do they have memories of paddy wagons sitting on the corner of 11th Avenue and High Street. Sure, these are not the most pleasant memories, and they are probably two of a plethora of reasons OSU wanted to build the University Gateway Center.
However, even today’s sophomore at OSU remembers the riots from last spring. Where we used to have bars with bouncers, we now have boarded-up buildings. Where we used to have a relatively quiet university neighborhood, we now have riots.
If we learned anything from last year, it was underage drinking will always be present on a college campus. At least the police officers knew where to find the troublemakers five years ago.
I don’t intend to vilify Campus Partners. They didn’t anticipate for the students to get so terribly out of control. They might even be right: Students might enjoy and even benefit from the university’s redevelopment of High Street and south campus. There is no doubt in my mind there will be entertainment venues in Gateway, when it is finally finished. It’s the next few years which scare me.
In the duration between demolition and completion, students will continue to mill about the University District, wandering in and out of (some ridiculously high number) kegger parties. Fortunately, there were no skirmishes this fall, and I hope the University District remains peaceful this spring. Yet I remain skeptical.
There have been seven riots since I came to OSU in 1998. Wouldn’t you be skeptical?
I graduate in June. As an alumna, I’ll reminisce about football Saturdays, spring quarter on the Oval and late night pizza-therapy sessions with my roommates in our room in Park Hall. I will recall the time a professor made my entire class cake for my 19th birthday, and I will probably laugh at the columns I wrote in The Lantern my senior year.
And, of course, I’ll never forget my first glimpse of OSU, with a cold Rolling Rock in my hand. Cheers to you, south campus. I’ll miss you.
Monica Torline is a senior in journalism and a campus editor at The Lantern. This week, enjoy your last High Street hurrah – be it a gyro from Greek Village, a record from Singing Dog or a beer at Skully’s. She can be reached for comment at [email protected].
