Wary NIU students show school spirit

DEKALB -- Two hours before kickoff Tuesday night at Northern Illinois, impossibly loud dance music blared from the Red Bull tent in the students' tailgate area beyond the east stands.

Whether it was due to the music, the warm temperatures, the Red Bull or the effect of other liquid refreshments, dozens of students flailed to the beat many of them while standing on the cab and the back of flatbed trucks.

Thousands of students, nearly all of them wearing black shirts and carrying black Thunderstix as part of the school's “Blackout” promotion, found their way into the east stands for the biggest NIU home football game in years.

The Huskies dominated their nationally televised clash with Toledo that all but determined the Mid-American Conference's West Division champion.

In short, school spirit is alive and well at NIU.

Or, at the minimum, it has regained control of students' frontal lobes four weeks after Neuqua Valley graduate Antinette “Toni” Keller's slaying at a park near the NIU campus.

Yet the circumstances of Keller's final hours remain in the back of many students' minds.

“I don't think people are over it,” said Cody Owen, a junior from Cortland majoring in Business Administration. “People are more cautious, more aware of their surroundings. We aren't going to forget about it.”

In an unrelated development, there have been more than one initiative recently to increase NIU students' identification with their school.

Football coach Jerry Kill cruised the campus Monday in a golf cart to solicit support for the Huskies' final home football game this season.

Since the east stands were at 80 percent capacity Tuesday night, Kill's ad-hoc efforts certainly didn't hurt.

Meanwhile, two Northern Illinois groups are working together to boost “Huskie Pride” by offering sweatshirts as a bribe.

Last week, quarterback Chandler Harnish was among the first wave of student-athletes who hit the campus looking for students wearing other schools' gear.

Each student was offered the chance to trade in the old stuff for new NIU sweatshirts. The student-athletes are then donating the old clothes to Safe Passage, a charity that aids battered women and children.