Check out the Class Photo Album.
Do you remember what was happening on campus, in Chicago, around the world, and in arts and culture during your years in the College?
- The class of 1997 was the first to be welcomed by eleventh University President Hugo Sonnenschein and then-new Dean of the College John Boyer.
- The class of 1997’s average ACT score was 29. 43% of the incoming class was women.
- The topic of safer sex was emphasized by peer health educators. Condoms were made available in most of the dormitories.
- Students demonstrated in reaction to a series of hate crimes and incidents of harassment on campus; and the University extended spousal benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian students, faculty, and staff.
- Ongoing debates over multiculturalism and “political correctness.”
- In March 1994, the University’s Downtown Center opened. It was named after Trustee Eric Gleacher in 1996.
- The University finished its five-year Campaign for the Next Century on June 30, 1996, with a historic grand total of $676 million, exceeding the original goal by $176 million. Of the amount raised, $237 million, or 57% of all individual gifts, came from alumni.
- Starbucks and Barnes and Noble unveiled a glitzier campus bookstore facility in 1995. The Bookstore offered used textbooks for the first time.
- Administrators expressed concern about the increase in size of the College student body.
- The International MBA program launched in 1995.
- McCormick Place South opened in December 1996, adding 840,000 square feet to the McCormick Place complexes.
- In 1997, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat declared the Sears Tower once again the tallest building in the world by new revised codes, edging out the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.
- Chicago Symphony conductor for 22 years Sir Georg Solti died in 1997, before he was to conduct his thousandth concert with the orchestra.
- In 1994, former NFL star O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murders of his former wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman. His acquittal in 1996 triggered debates nation-wide about race, wealth, and the criminal justice system.
- Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa in 1994.
- The Hebron Accord, designed to promote peace between Israel and Palestine, was undermined by both sides in 1997 as terrorism broke out and the building of new settlements defied non-expansionist agreements.
- In 1997, leaders of the tobacco industry offered to pay $368 billion if numerous states agreed to drop lawsuits filed against them.
- After experiencing a plunge related to the crisis of Asian markets, Wall Street rebounded and continued to climb in 1997. For the third consecutive year, the Dow Jones rose 20 percent.
- The triumph of Tony Blair and the Labour Party ended 18 years of Conservative rule in Britain. Blair’s controversial meeting with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams supported peace in Northern Ireland.
- In defiance of the agreement reached at the end of the Persian Gulf War, Iraq expelled members of the United Nations Inspection Team.
- Dolly the sheep became a celebrity in 1997 when Scottish researchers announced that she was a clone of another living mammal.
- After years of British sovereignty Hong Kong was returned to the Chinese in 1997 but maintained its status as a free market port.
- Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and was subsequently sentenced to death for the crime.
- In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.
- In 1997, Britain’s Princess Diana died in a car crash.
- Books and Literature: The Chamber by John Grisham, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner, The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gary, Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton.
- Music: “You Oughta Know” (Alanis Morissette), “Un-Break My Heart” (Toni Braxton), “One Headlight” (The Wallflowers), “Change the World” (Eric Clapton), “Run-Around” (Blues Traveler), “Come To My Window” (Melissa Etheridge), “All I Wanna Do” (Sheryl Crow).
- Television: Seinfeld, ER, Friends, NYPD Blue, Roseanne.
- Movies: Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Titanic, The English Patient, Braveheart, Men in Black, Leaving Las Vegas, Fargo, Shine.
- Sports: In 1996, Tiger Woods won the U.S. Amateur Golf Tournament for the third year in a row and turned to a professional career. In 1994, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was physically assaulted in an attempt to eliminate her from competing in the 1994 Winter Olympics. Tonya Harding, Kerrigan’s rival, and her ex-husband are among those later prosecuted for the attack. Major League Baseball players went on strike over wages and forced the cancellation of the 1994 season. Michael Jordan returned to the NBA in 1994 after his first “retirement.” The Chicago Bulls began their second “threepeat” as 1996-1998 NBA champions. On the 126th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, the Chicago Fire became the new Major League Soccer team assigned to Chicago in 1997.
Researched by the University of Chicago, Development and Alumni Relations, 2006. The Chicago Maroon was the primary source for the “On Campus” section.