Ok, so maybe it wasn’t online, but it was computer based! The Westerner ran the below add for a blind date generating service in its April, 1966 edition – 

Using the IBM 7090, two Harvard students were making a killing ($3 for every student that signed up!) matching up lonely college students. Looks like Harvard students were on the cutting edge of social connection long before Facebook!

Please check out the new exhibit at D’Amour library in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Learn about how the campus memorialized his life in 1968, and the ongoing battle to recognize his birthday as a national holiday.

The exhibit will be up for the entire month of January, and can be found at the library across from the circulation desk.

On this snowy Friday morning, we’re reminded of the play on Western New England’s acronym when it was still a college, not a university, WNEC. “We Never Ever Close” is a phrase you’ll hear around campus when conditions are snowy, but the University has made the difficult decision to remain open.

Not surprisingly, students at Western New England have always been a clever bunch, and the phrase turns up in The Westerner way back in 1968. It very well could have been used before then, but this is the first evidence of it we could find in the papers. The phrase graced the masthead of the paper, but for unknown reasons. Seeing as it appeared in a December issue, we would guess it was an outcry related to weather related closings (or not closing, we should say).

Front page of The Westerner, December 20th 1968

The phrase was even used for situations not concerning the weather, as can be seen in the article below, when students were criticizing the College’s decision to remain open despite a flu outbreak.

From The Westerner, March 13, 1969

Now that our acronym has changed, this phrase, while still amusing, has lost its punch. Perhaps it’s time for a new one!