More than 60 students gathered at the Rock for a candlelight vigil to commemorate SESP freshman Matthew Sunshine last June. But for the hundreds of students who had never met Sunshine, questions about how, why and could this happen to me or my friend ran rampant.

A year later, one question continues to linger: How could we have prevented it?

Drinking was the biggest factor in Sunshine’s death, but did Northwestern’s drinking policy play a role? Would it have happened if, like Yale, Northwestern had a medical amnesty policy?

Under medical amnesty, the school wouldn’t take disciplinary action against an underage student that required medical attention or anyone assisting them after drinking, instead giving the student counseling. The program is designed to encourage students to seek help after they’ve been drinking rather than hide and risk the dangers of alcohol poisoning for fear of getting punished. A University of Virginia study found that 42 percent of private schools and 33 percent of public schools with a medical amnesty program thought it had helped reduce alcohol poisoning and that a majority thought it increased the percentage of students who would recognize an alcohol emergency and the likelihood that they would get help.

Senior Drew Henry says Yale’s medical amnesty program has helped make the campus safer. Henry works as a freshman counselor, a position similar to a Northwestern CA.

“We’re not police, we’re just here if people get sick,” Henry explains. “It’s part of Yale’s policy of safety first. If someone’s sick and has to go to health services, there’s no punishment.”

The program has been met with success at dozens of other schools, but has yet to be instituted at Northwestern. During this spring’s ASG elections, both Mike McGee and Bill Pulte ran pro-amnesty. And during an April administration forum with President Henry Bienen, Vice President of Student Affairs William Banis and Senior Vice President of Business and Finance Eugene Sunshine, Banis said that while the school is looking into medical amnesty, legal considerations made the decision a difficult one.

Medical amnesty is only one proposed solution to the problem of underage drinking on college campuses.

ASG Vice President Tommy Smithburg started the ASG Alcohol Safety Task Force, designed to reduce the risks involved with the leisure activity of choice at most colleges, in March.

“We’re not in favor of any one policy, we’re in favor of the safest policy,” Smithburg, a Weinberg junior, says. “Our goals are that anyone in trouble gets help and that nobody gets in a situation where they’re in trouble.”

As it stands, Northwestern’s policy on alcohol is unclear. The Northwestern student handbook explicitly prohibits underage drinking on campus and Evanston police are equally vocal about the illegality of underage drinking outside of campus, but the official policies hardly tell the whole story.

“There is a quasi-amnesty program, but you don’t know that until you’re called into Mary Desler’s office,” Smithburg says.

“We take it on a case-by-case basis,” Director of Judicial Affairs and Dean of Students Jim Neumeister told North by Northwestern in January. “It’s really going to depend on the details. Our paramount concern is the student’s safety.” Neumeister said that Northwestern has been examining medical amnesty as a possible new policy for Northwestern, but is still looking for the safest option.

Still, Smithburg says, it could all be moot. Without proper education and an explicit policy, students won’t know about it and most importantly, don’t take advantage of the safe solutions when necessary. He would like to clear up the confusion over policy by setting up a Web site — or a “central portal,” as he calls it — that outlines Northwestern’s alcohol policy and answers the important questions, like whether a student will get in trouble after calling an ambulance for a sick friend. “I’m envisioning a CliffsNotes to Northwestern’s policy because right now it’s just murky,” he says.

Still, a change in policy won’t change students’ drinking habits in a big way, Smithburg says.

“The policies themselves don’t do much because I think it’s more cultural,” he says. “A lot of people see drinking as an escape from the academic environment. Sure some policies can curtail drinking, like your study abroad applications being held, but it’s not going to stop it.”

But there is also proof that a university’s actions can seriously affect the way students drink. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, students look forward every year to the first Friday in March, where they celebrate an unofficial St. Patrick’s Day ingeniously called “Unofficial.” Think of it as Dillo Day in the middle of the year. But while the university is generally lax on enforcing drinking, they’ve been increasingly strict on Unofficial.

“This year and last year, they’ve been harshly enforcing punishments for people who get caught drinking,” University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign senior Andy Herren says. “There are police everywhere, even outside the big lecture halls. That pushed a lot of the drinking underground.” But underground doesn’t necessarily mean less drinking is occurring; school officials are just less likely to know about it.

Maxwell Tang, a junior at University of Chicago, also says he suspects the university is even discreetly pushing drinking. “I heard that ten years ago, the school was really trying to encourage kids to go out,” Tang says. “They kind of encourage it for us to have some fun. Most kids feel comfortable drinking and aren’t too afraid of getting caught.”

Henry says that Yale is pretty lax about policing alcohol, which combined with the amnesty policy keeps it from being too unsafe.

More schools are tending towards the lax side of enforcing alcohol policies, a trend that worries Michael Lanahan. Lanahan is the president of The Gordie Foundation, an organization designed to encourage safe and smart drinking on college campuses to prevent alcohol poisoning. The Foundation created a chapter of its Circle of Trust program at Northwestern this year, after Sunshine’s death.

Lanahan’s group is trying to work with students and administrators to encourage more openness and education about the dangers of drinking. He says that after education, the first step to preventing more deaths is to have officials and authority figures show students safe ways to act.

“Very few college presidents want to deal with it because they don’t have the solution,” Lanahan says. “Colleges are in denial about it and they don’t want to deal with it because it’ll just publicize that they are strict on drinking.”

Still, Lanahan says he’s more concerned with making sure kids are safe rather than disciplined. He would support medical amnesty, but only as a way to teach about the dangers of drinking and keep it out in the open.

How much does a university’s policies change the nature of drinking on college campuses? Even though Cornell University said that after instituting medical amnesty in 2002, the number of emergency room visits and those treated for alcohol poisoning increased, Smithburg points out that that number is two-faced. While it means more students are seeking help, it also means they are still drinking heavily. A loose policy doesn’t stop drinking any more effectively than a strict one that pushes alcohol behind the curtain.

An amnesty program may or may not have helped Sunshine get medical help, but it wouldn’t have stopped him from drinking that night. And while ASG may strive to change the nature of drinking and make it safer, there’s no stopping it.

“If the administration was being strict and saying, ‘Don’t drink,’ or being loose and just telling us to be careful, people would drink,” Herren says. “We’re in college.”

Even on a day known for its boisterous behavior, the statistics from Dillo Day in 2003 are staggering. Instead of heading to the Lakefill to see bands like Robert Randolph and the Family Band or The Crystal Method, students were getting in trouble and drinking heavily. So heavily that dozens were sent to the hospital. Hospital employees at the time told The Daily Northwestern that there were so many drunk students, the waiting room smelled like a bar.

“The scariest thing to me was that the Evanston emergency room had to divert emergencies to St. Francis because there were too many Northwestern students there,” says Mary Desler, Northwestern’s associate vice president and dean of student affairs.

The utter chaos that year almost ended Dillo Day for good. But thanks to Desler (yes, that Mary Desler) and the creation of the Dillo Day Task Force, the tradition carries on. That Task Force has taken steps to make Dillo Day safer and has seen citations, arrests and hospitalizations drop drastically since 2003 with only one arrest made last year.

Desler, who will retire from her current position in July, recalls feeling scared and shocked by the numbers in 2003. Dillo Day had always been marked by drinking and partying, but that was a wake-up call as to how dangerous the day could be. Talk immediately turned to what to do about the annual spring celebration.

“I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, can we keep this safe?’” Desler says. “There was much discussion in 2003 about whether we should cancel Dillo Day. There was serious talk about why we even do this day.”

Administrators and Evanston residents were considering shutting Dillo Day down for good. Ultimately, Desler says her office decided that the community spirit and general fun of Dillo Day were worth preserving, but only with some radical changes. So they set out to organize the Dillo Day Task Force, bringing together representatives from every sector of the university and Evanston community to discuss ways to make Dillo Day safer on a one-year trial basis.

They developed a list of seven goals ranging from enticing students to the Lakefill to engaging the community to creating an educational campaign. They brought in representatives for students (Panhellenic Association, Mayfest, Associated Student Government, Residential College Board, Residence Hall Association), the administration (Student Affairs, Center for Student Involvement, Health Services) and the community (Evanston police and some Evanston residents) to have an open discussion about ways to keep students out of trouble and out of the hospital without coming off as disapproving or preaching about the dangers of alcohol.

To that end, the task force has taken out ads in The Daily Northwestern and distributed flyers laying out the real consequences of breaking the rules — hurting study abroad applications and increasing the risk of sexual assault, for example. They arranged for more alcohol-free events, like the Panhellenic Association’s pancake breakfast at Deering Field. They distributed information to Evanston residents about Dillo Day and warned them that the day was ahead, which ASG external relations director Jilian Lopez believes has been helpful on both ends.

“There’s a really active community member on the task force,” the Weinberg junior says. “She said that before the task force, it was horrible and loud and neighbors were concerned and confused. But now things are relatively quiet and calm. It’s important that we make an effort to be respectful.”

But members of the task force say the easiest way to keep students safe is also the most fun. Will Hamlin, the director of university relations for Mayfest, says it’s all about the music.

“When students are on the Lakefill, they’re not drinking, so the safest place for students to be on Dillo Day is the Lakefill,” the Weinberg senior says. “If Mayfest can provide quality entertainment, that draws students and gives them a place to go. We want to make sure that the first act is high quality.”

That means having Ben Folds play at noon in 2006 and spreading out the headliners to keep students coming back to the concerts. The task force has also arranged for water bottles on the Lakefill (this year, various students groups even chipped in after Pepsi declined to give Mayfest the water for free) and keeping Lisa’s Café opened all day. But Desler says one of the biggest ways they’ve changed security is simply visibility.

“[In 2003] our staff weren’t expected to be there. We just didn’t do the work going into Dillo Day that we do now,” Desler says. “Now you’ll see University Police, student affairs staff, student leaders, IFC, Panhel, RHA, RCB, Mayfest. Everybody’s out there with a common goal — make this day spectacular and make it safe.”

Desler says the task force has been wildly successful and the numbers support her. The number of citations dropped immediately in 2004 to 42 and have steadily declined to only 14 in 2008. Arrest numbers have dropped as well — last year’s only arrest was made on Friday and not related to Dillo Day. And the hospitals have been relatively clear of drunk students — last year only four alcohol-related ambulance calls were made.

“Mary Desler showed us some numbers from previous years at our first meeting about students taken to the hospital and the numbers have gone down dramatically,” Lopez says. “The numbers show that it’s really worked out, which is satisfying.”

The task force’s immediate success not only kept Dillo Day going, but also encouraged more funding to attract better bands. In its five years, the task force has changed little but hasn’t lost a step. Hamlin says that now the panel works like clockwork.

“We only had three meetings this year because we’re able to follow precedent,” he says. “We know what works now. There’s nothing too surprising coming up this year.”

The task force may have attracted better bands, increased police presence and, most importantly, saved Dillo Day. But Desler says that even with its success, there’s still work to do.

“All of our efforts pay off and they will continue to do so. But there’s always that question,” she says. “Every year we say ‘It’s safer than it was, but how can we keep it safer?’”

“We’re going to have to make this quick. I have a phone call I have to take.”

Those were the first words I heard Northwestern University President Henry Bienen speak since the President’s Convocation more than three years ago. He rushed into his conference room, a surprisingly tall and imposing figure in his tailored suit. He looked tired, worn from another day of his 13 year tenure as university president, but beneath the wrinkles and thinning grey hair there’s an energy that likely hasn’t diminished since he started at Northwestern on Jan. 1, 1995. This was the first time I had even seen the president since that day he taught my freshman class the fight song in 2005. Throughout my college career, Bienen has been out of sight and, mostly, out of mind.

But with Bienen announcing his retirement last March, effective at the start of the 2009-2010 school year, it’s time to give the man his due. Even if many undergrads can’t recognize the 69-year-old’s face, they should be able to recognize his achievements: our school’s consistent placement in the top 15 of national college rankings, a competitive football team, a steadily growing endowment and even an expansion into Qatar.

Coming into his last year, you might expect Bienen to make like George W. and ease off to reflect on the ways he helped the university. But he’s too modest—not to mention busy—for that. You get the sense that he’ll keep on working until his last day in office. And he’s certainly not ready to talk about his legacy.

“Other people are more suited for that,” he said. “The idea was to make the university better and stronger, and that’s always a work in progress.”

Bienen’s most defining step towards strengthening the university was Campaign Northwestern, a five-year fundraiser that garnered the school $1.55 billion. To Bienen, the motive behind the campaign was simple: The whole school could improve if the whole school raised money. He tried to establish personal relationships with alumni and donors, making them feel like partners in a university expansion project — not just names on checks.

“I’m not the first person to ever try to raise a lot of money, but we hadn’t been doing these big comprehensive campaigns,” he says. “We set a goal of $1.11 billion and we ended up raising $1.55 [billion], so it was successful. No doubt about that.”

Successful is a modest word to use for the campaign which helped in the construction or expansion of 18 buildings including Crowe Hall and Pancoe, and the creation of more than a hundred new scholarships. It also helped bolster the university’s admittedly weak fundraising institutions, allowing the school to solicit donations more efficiently than ever before. Still, Bienen tempered the enthusiasm.

“I know people think [Campaign Northwestern] is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but there’s still more to be done,” he says. “I’d give myself reasonably high marks in fundraising, but not off the wall.”

Bienen has a simple philosophy: excellence should be expected at a great university like Northwestern, and any work that helps achieve excellence is fine. That philosophy was what got him hired. Campaign Northwestern was about doing what was necessary to make the school great across the board, whether in biomedical research or in journalism.

It helps that Bienen is in love with Northwestern.

Anybody that’s seen him cheering at a football game or sporting a purple tie to a meeting can see that. Sarah Pearson, the Vice President of Alumni Relations and Development, says that Bienen’s enthusiasm for the school helped motivate him and encourage donors to buy into his plans.

“He is very passionate about NU, which comes through in everything he does,” Pearson says. “He’s at athletic events, he’s at business forums. People think of him as the face of NU, carrying the heart of the institution around with him.”

But achieving widespread success at a major university requires a special skill set, not just a drive to get things done. Timothy Krauskopf, who first joined Northwestern’s board of trustees in 1996, says that Bienen was able to succeed because he understood all aspects of running a school.

“He understands that it’s a billion-dollar corporation, and it’s an academic treasure,” Krauskopf says. “It has to run like a business and you have to hire people capable of making sure the heating bill is paid, that energy comes at the best rate and that your investments are handled in the best responsible way. But he’s a PhD, a respected author and teacher and he has an understanding of what being a professor is all about.”

That combination meant that the school grew not just financially, but academically too, especially in research. Bienen broke down barriers between schools and encouraged cross-discipline research. And despite being a politics wonk, he saw the value in scientific research, a topic that Krauskopf says Bienen was fond of talking about. Northwestern’s sponsored research has increased to $439 million from $169 million in 1994.

The academic growth was also matched by a rise in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, including the school’s first (and only) Top 10 appearance, a No. 9 ranking in 1997. Still, Bienen said he didn’t put much stock in those numbers.

“My aim is not to have us go up in these summary rankings, but to have us grow stronger,” he says. “What do other university presidents think of Northwestern? If you poll the presidents in the AAU [Association of American Universities], they would tell you it’s gone up as much as any other university in the country. Those are the people who count for me. Or the people who are deciding to come to Northwestern.”

Bienen’s philosophy of excellence extends beyond the classroom. The unabashed sports fan took a limp Wildcats sports program and tried to strengthen it, improving facilities and expanding sports scholarships.

“You shouldn’t consign yourself to failure or less than excellence, whether it’s a particular program or athletics,” Bienen said. “[Athletics] was something I cared about improving on and spending time and effort doing it.”

When talking about sports, Bienen grins for the first time and seems to really be enjoying the interview, still basking in the previous night’s basketball win against Florida State. But he has good reason to smile – Bienen has seen the ‘Cats go from Big Ten doormat to winning three conference titles in football and a Rose Bowl berth. Not to mention the success in diverse sports like women’s lacrosse, swimming, soccer and wrestling.

“The one relative disappointment I had was basketball, but it looks like we might finally have a good team,” he said. “I hope that in my last year.”

By now, it seems like that hope may not come true: the basketball team’s season turned disappointing with the arrival of 2009. But that’s the way things are, and Bienen’s aware that his tenure hasn’t been all Rose Bowls and fundraising blowouts. Yet, just as quickly as he refuses to praise his own triumphs, he can brush off the controversies.

There was the ugly dispute over the creation of an Asian-American studies department in 1995, where students held a 21-day hunger strike at the Rock. Bienen just dismissed the matter as a problem for Weinberg administrators, not for himself. There’s the well-documented drop-off in African-American students and, worse, the accusations that Bienen doesn’t care about it. In a Daily Northwestern column last March, Jordan Weissman recalled a “tense” conversation with Bienen being during an interview about the dip in black enrollment.

“That’s been a huge disappointment,” Bienen says genuinely, with barely a hint of the “knee-jerk defensiveness” that Weissman wrote about. He says the problem hasn’t been on applications, but on yield—the percentage of accepted students who decide to matriculate. One reason for the low numbers may be Northwestern’s unwillingness to award merit scholarships based on race. Bienen said he hopes the new policy of giving grants instead of loans to needy students will help the minority enrollment.

“Is [the no-loan policy] something I wish we had done earlier? Not necessarily,” he said. “I wish we had had better numbers earlier, but I’m not sure we had the financial wherewithal to do what we did last year. I’m going to try very hard to sustain it.”

And, of course there’s been the constant criticism that Bienen is absent from campus. A 2006 Daily column accused him of not talking to students and warned him about locking himself “in an ivory tower within an ivory tower.”

Hearing those accusations, Bienen bristled.

“I make a distinction between being visible on campus and being available,” he said. “It was rare that I didn’t answer an email. If I was invited someplace, I tried to go. I don’t think it’s accurate to say I wasn’t accessible.”

Still, Bienen couldn’t deny that he wasn’t always around. It’s clear that this was a personal regret. He lamented the fact that his office in the Rebecca Crown Center was so far away from the center of campus, because he wasn’t able to walk around as much as he liked. And even though he said he used “brute force” on his schedule, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day for him to be everywhere.

“It’s true to some extent that I didn’t appear at every single event,” he says. “You’re traveling a lot, you have a million different meetings about the budget, you’re doing twenty different things at once and every once in a great while you want some time with your wife and family, which you don’t get much.”

It’s that last point that reveals Bienen’s biggest regrets. He already works overtime for the school – he says he only gets five or six hours of sleep a night – and I get the impression he’d work longer if the hours were there. But that, plus his place on boards for the Steppenwolf Theatre or the Council on Foreign Relations, doesn’t leave him much free time to reflect.

“I think I just said yes to too much in hindsight,” he said. “Every president gives the incoming president advice that nobody pays attention to. When I left Princeton, Harold Shapiro, who was the president, said you have to budget time and don’t make appointments on Sunday, and then I didn’t pay any attention to him. But he was right.”

But the president still found time to teach, leading small classes in topics like foreign policy and managing the monetary fund. On the one hand, it was a way to reach out to students, to show that he was all about academics and that he actually, occasionally, left the office. But more than that, Bienen enjoyed the opportunity to carry on his successful academic work. And, of course, he finds time for the occasional squash match, often with members of the school’s varsity club.

In the end, although Bienen won’t admit it, he will be remembered as one of the school’s most successful presidents. He took what was already considered a good university and catapulted it onto the national stage, quintupling the endowment while he was at it.

His name has already been cemented on campus at the Leigh and Henry Bienen School of Music. Krauskopf said the board didn’t take long to decide to name the school after Bienen.

Bienen let out a little smile when I mentioned the honor.

“It’s great. I’m driving somewhere and I hear ‘Bienen School of Music’ on the radio and I’m particularly pleased because I think it’s a good music school and I’ll be associated with it long after I’m gone,” he says. “Sure, you’ll be forgotten, but that’s life. I have no illusions about that.”

But the real heritage he’d like to leave behind is the strength of the school, which, finally, the modest president would admit to enjoying.

“I think the sense that the university has done well gives me great gratification,” he said. “I feel good when our students win Rhodes and Marshall [scholarships] and I feel good when the basketball team blasts Florida State.”

But, being Bienen, he can’t just let it be at that praise. He has to temper it.

“There have been many more pluses than minuses in my term,” he says, before rushing off to take his phone call. He doesn’t want to bask in his achievements. And even if he did, he wouldn’t have the time.

Every week, we go to a different spot and ask people on laptops what the last sentence they wrote was. This week, we ventured into the grad student world in Kellogg.

A sign on the stairs leading up to Stephen Wylie’s third floor room in his Garnett house reads “Warning: This area contains high levels of The Price is Right. If you are allergic to Bob Barker, Showcase Showdowns, Plinko, or The Big Wheel, stay away from this area.”

In his room, Wylie has laid out his “collection,” a number of vintage The Price is Right board games he acquired from eBay. On one wall is a cabinet containing his impressive collection of hundreds of episodes of the game show, recorded onto tapes and DVDs. Wylie himself stands in the center of the room, holding a replica skinny mic he fashioned out of an eBay-acquired microphone and an old radio antenna. He grins and with his parted brown hair, he almost looks like he was born to hold that mic.

Plenty of people have a fondness for The Price is Right, the go-to daytime show for children home sick from school. But Wylie, a McCormick senior, is a downright aficionado with an encyclopedic knowledge of the history and inner workings of the show. Wylie’s obsession started in his preschool years.

“My mom was a big CBS fan, so I watched it a lot,” he said. “I think it was the flashing colors and a fascination with how television works as a kid that drew me in.”

When he started kindergarten, Wylie was dismayed to find out that he had to be at school while The Price is Right aired.

“The worst is that I had recess from 11-12 [when the show aired], but the teachers wouldn’t let me watch, they made me go outside and play,” Wylie said bitterly.

His mom taped the episodes for him to watch later, which led him into the habit of saving episodes. Wylie taped any show he missed and after awhile, he started seeking out particularly interesting moments to add to his collection.

“I tend to like to find episodes where something rare happens, like all three people get a dollar on the big wheel or Bob gets chased around by a big fat lady,” Wylie said.

In January, 2005, Wylie was first approached online by a fellow collector looking to trade tapes. By now, he has traded almost 700 hours of the show through his website. Wylie’s website also hosts a Big Wheel he designed in Flash, trivia about the show and dozens of his favorite clips.

“Sometimes things happen that are so unbelievable that not even a screenwriter could have come up with them,” Wylie said.

As Wylie shows me some of his favorite moments, he narrates them perfectly, pausing the clips at moments to excitedly set up what’s going to happen next. As we watch his favorite clip, “Pauline Chases Bob”, he tells me how the game is played, how Pauline did on the show and then chuckles loudly as Pauline begins chasing Barker around the stage. Wylie keeps giggling, despite having seen the clip dozens of times before, and then marvels at the way Barker laughs the whole thing off.

Wylie’s obsession with The Price is Right hasn’t tapered since coming to college. Weinberg senior Evan Gray, who lived in Shepard Residential College with Wylie during his freshman and sophomore year, said he could tell first hand how fascinated Wylie was with the show.

“He lived next to me and even through the wall, I’d hear him watching the show and listening to music,” Gray said. “It was like Price is Right every day.”

Wylie has used his knowledge to help Special Olympics plan The Price is Right games for two years. He also designed games to use as training exercises for Academic Technologies, going beyond his staple and creating games based on The Joker’s Wild and another personal favorite, the 1970’s Alex Trebek-hosted Double Dare.

But Wylie’s true passion is The Price is Right, evidenced in his pedantic knowledge of the show. He can tell you when pricing games started and were retired, who the various announcers have been and came name any number of unseen crew members on the show.

That knowledge came in handy in 2007 when he joined a group of Northwestern students and lived a dream by attending a taping of the show. When Barker announced his retirement on Halloween of 2006, Wylie knew he had to go. Bethany Marzewski, a then-sophomore in Medill, was organizing a trip and invited Wylie after hearing about him (“You can’t get through too many people on campus talking about The Price is Right without hearing my name,” Wylie said).

The shirts Wylie and his friends designed for their trip to L.A. Photo by John Meguerian / North by Northwestern.

Once tickets were booked, Wylie started hosting training sessions for the 20 students that were going, including Gray. Gray said that only after seeing Wylie host the training sessions did he understand just how deep his obsession was.

“He just would pick several games and would talk strategy,” Gray said. “If you’re guessing the price of a car, he knew what numbers to pick first. He had some statistics on some of the games, too. He knew a lot of the ins and outs of how the games worked.”

Finally, over spring break in March, Wylie and the other students made it to L.A. They lined up for more than 21 hours before the taping started, guaranteeing that they would get the first spots in line.

“We made sure that when they came out to give us our priority tickets, he was at the very front so that he could get the one that said ‘1,’” Gray said. “The whole thing was like a pilgrimage for him. It was special to be first in line for the show.”

Wylie said the experience was overwhelming and fast-paced, just about what you’d expect from a show that bills itself as “the most exciting hour on television.” After waiting in line all night (Wylie, of course, didn’t sleep) and getting through an interview with revered Price is Right musical director Stan Blits, Wylie and his friends found themselves being led into the studio, finally looking at the neon curtains and Big Door in person.

“I know everybody says this, but the set looked a lot smaller in person,” he said without a hint of disappointment. “And it looked a lot tackier in real life.”

Wylie barely had time to soak it in before a drum roll echoed through the studio and the trademark flashing light border appeared on the screen. It all happened so fast, Wylie didn’t even see Barker make his entrance through the Big Door.

The show itself was memorable, thanks to two historic moments that occurred while Wylie was in the audience (watch them here and here). However, the real thrill came before the fourth pricing game, when Wylie got a chance to shake Barker’s hand. During a commercial break, Barker noted the group, who were all wearing purple shirts they had made for the occasion with the slogan “Northwestern goes Wild for Bob” on the front. They sang a modified fight song and afterward, Wylie went up to give Barker one of the shirts. The moment was so overwhelming, Wylie even lost sight of his knowledge of the show.

“I know that they keep a list of all the pricing games they’re going to play and I knew what corner of the set it was in, so when I went up I knew exactly where to look,” Wylie said. “By the time I got back to my seat, I had already forgotten what the next three games they were going to play were. The rush of shaking his hand and just the excitement of being in the studio overwhelmed all of my rational thought.”

In the end, Wylie never got called up, but he wasn’t doing very well as he played in his head (Wylie says he is better at the games on the shows from the ’70s and ’80s anyways). After the show, while others in his group went to sleep or explored the city, Wylie got ready to board a plane back home. What else could he do that would top that experience?

“Other people stayed in L.A., but I went home after the show,” Wylie said. “My strict purpose was to see The Price is Right.”

We went through Norris and simply asked people on laptops what the last sentence they wrote was. Here’s what we found.

Through message songs like “Why am I Treated So Bad?” and “March up Freedom Highway,” Mavis Staples, as part of the family group The Staples Singers, became the voice of the Civil Rights movement. Staples, who will be the keynote performer for Northwestern’s Martin Luther King Day celebration, often marched and performed with Dr. King. Throughout her 40-year music career, Staples has continued her message of equality and respect in her music.

In a phone interview the week before her performance, Staples discussed her relationship with Dr. King, her music and her excitement about the Obama presidency.

How did you first meet Dr. King?

We first met Dr. King in Mongomery, Alabama in 1961. Pops [father Roebuck Staples] had been hearing Dr. King on the radio and he liked what he was hearing. So he called us to his room and told us that Dr. King was in Montgomery and invited us to the church. Afterward, Dr. King was standing at the door to shake the worshippers’ hands. Our sisters and I walked past Dr. King but Pops stood and talked. We get back to the hotel and Pops said,“Listen, I like this man’s message and I think that if he can preach it, we can sing it.” So we began writing freedom songs and message songs.

My fondest memory is his laughter. I can hear it right now, the tone of his laughter. Dr. King laughed so seldom. Most of the time I’d see him, he was looking serious or sad. To hear him laugh, my heart was happy because Dr. King was happy.

Does your music mean anything different today than it did 40 years ago?

Back in the ‘60s, it was needed more. But it’s still the same meaning. I still see what needs to be done. I saw Katrina and I saw people in this black water, standing on the roof with help signs and stuffed into a stadium with no water or air conditioning. Nobody has come to help them. The 9th Ward is still in rubble.

Pops used to say, “If you want to write for the Staples, read the headlines.” We sang about what’s happening in the world today. I still read the headlines and watch the news.

How do you feel about the fact that we will have a black man as president?

All we can do is pray and hope for the best and give Obama all of the support we can. As far as young black men and women, it’s already turning them around. I just know that Dr. King is pleased that this has happened. I’m sure Dr. King and my Pops just had a big celebration up in heaven. Pops is playing guitar for Dr. King and my mom is making sweet potato pie.

Mavis Staples will perform at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall at noon on Monday.

The Missouri Tigers beat the Wildcats 30-23 in overtime to win the 17th annual Alamo Bowl Monday night. The ‘Cats had several opportunities to win the game, but the team couldn’t seal the win.

Northwestern (9-4), given very little chance of winning the game by most pundits, more than held their own against Missouri (10-4). The ‘Cats forced one-time Heisman favorite QB Chase Daniel to throw three interceptions, and shut down RB Derrick Washington, holding him to 44 yards. The NU defense even held NFL prospect WR Jeremy Maclin to 39 receiving yards.

Trailing 20-16 to Missouri late in the third quarter, the ‘Cats looked to take control of the game after safety Brad Phillips picked off Daniel. On the ensuing possession, Bacher threw a 23-yard touchdown pass to Ross Lane to put Northwestern in front by three.

But the ‘Cats couldn’t close the game out, and gave Missouri the chance to win the game with a final drive. Missouri kicker Jeff Wolfert made a rare miss on a 44-yard kick, however, and the game went into overtime.

In OT, Daniel hit Maclin with a seven-yard touchdown pass to give the Tigers the lead. The ‘Cats had a chance to answer, but a Bacher fumble on third down put Northwestern on the Missouri 31. On fourth down, a Bacher pass to Andrew Brewer fell incomplete in the endzone, giving the Tigers the win.

Correction: The article originally stated that Bacher’s final pass was intended for Andrew Miller, not Brewer. Thanks to Aaron for pointing out the error.

It is one of those issues that everybody except politicians loves to talk about. Some say the gas tax is a surefire way to decrease our nation’s oil dependency, but nobody wants to be seen advocating an increase in taxes. But as Barack Obama preaches change in government while also pushing for a new green agenda, the gas tax might emerge as a radical new possibility in government.

Photo by Gunnar Valdimar on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

The gas tax dates back to a one-cent-per-gallon rate in 1932. Thanks to inflation and various increases, the federal government currently has an 18.4 cent tax on a gallon of gas, in addition to each state’s own tax on gas. The average state tax is 28.6 cents to the gallon. That money is often used for transportation projects, like road reconstruction or alternative energy initiatives. But the real benefit of raising the tax would be in simply driving up the price.

For such a politically toxic issue, it is also simple common sense –- raising the tax would drive up the price of gas, discouraging people from using it. Economists have even come up with different rebate schemes to help dampen the blow of the increased tax. Under most proposals, part of the revenue from the tax would go back to drivers (especially low-income drivers), and the rest would go to researching alternative energy and transportation reforms. That way, the net cost wouldn’t be so dramatic and the political fallout might not be fatal. Others are proposing that the tax revenue go to the auto industry to design fuel-efficient cars, so that eventually the hike in gas prices wouldn’t be noticed because it would take less gas to drive.

But the real idea is eliminating dependence on oil. With prices going up, consumption will drop. People would be opposed to driving, looking to other forms of transportation. A similar idea has been suggested for reducing youth smoking, by raising the price of cigarettes.

Of course, as the elder George Bush can attest, raising taxes is an easy way to guarantee an early retirement in politics. So no sane person will advocate raising the gas tax, especially now that gas prices are lower (but don’t get too used to that) and drivers are actually happy. But as the green movement grows and oil increasingly becomes a dirty word, we might be looking for radical measures to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.

If Obama is serious about changing the face of politics, it would be appropriate to consider a gas tax hike with a rebate. By putting the idea in the political sphere, he could at least raise the debate and get people talking about it. The energy crisis isn’t going to go away and fuel prices won’t stay low forever, so a gas tax hike might be in our future. But at least this time we’ll know exactly who to blame.