10 years ago…
Facebook, a five-year-old social media site with 1.5 million users (now 1.7 billion), abandoned a new policy to allow permanent use of anyone’s pictures or posts even after accounts were deleted. ● One in 38 Wyomingites was incarcerated or on probation, according to new Pew Center research. ● A BI entertainment writer lamented that free internet streaming services for television, like Hulu, would soon become subscription-based. NetFlix, he predicted, would “soon displace the ‘boob-tube.’” ● Elton John planned to perform at UW, which ticket proceeds to benefit the Matthew Shepard Foundation.
30 years ago…
Two letter writers expressed support for American economic sanctions against South Africa and its political regime of apartheid. ● UW considered setting up an independent “ombudsman” to handle student grievances against the University, since the student attorney was not authorized to handle legal complaints against UW. ● A professor lamented in a letter to the editor that Americans had stopped caring about the world and needed to stop putting themselves and their business interests before the wellbeing of the rest of the world. ● UW’s director of the Korean Studies Center warned North and South Korea would never be reunited if present conditions persisted.
50 years ago…
UW hosted its first lectures on “Negro culture,” a series of six talks on the history of race, poverty, the Harlem Renaissance and other topics, to gauge if there was enough student interest to justify a semester-long course. The anthropology and political science departments, the writer noted, already had courses touching on “the Afro-American problem.”● Celebrations marked 30 years since the construction of the Wyoming Union, which opened its doors to students in 1939. During WWII, its soda fountain menu had asked for students patience with sugar and coffee rationing. ● Student senators introduced a bill to require UW’s cheerleader team have equal numbers of women and men. ● At a campus drug symposium, former Playboy editor and founder of the Youth International Party Paul Krassner spoke in favor of illegal drug use.
