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Can you do the backbend like Marching Illini drum majors? Probably not, which is only one reason why their performances are so remarkable. Over its 157-year history, the band has had more than 130 drum majors, including the Big Ten’s first female drum...

A: It was when the building opened in 1963, and it was a point of pride for architect Max Abramovitz, ’29 FAA. To build its famous concrete roof, crews erected 800,000 square feet of scaffolding, wrapped more than 600 miles of steel wire around its perimeter...

In the fall of 1966, Illinois undergrads Alan Gratzer, ’70, and Neal Doughty, ’68, lived across the hall from each other on the second floor of Townsend Hall (in the Illinois Street Residence Halls) and quickly became best friends, spending their free...

More than 40 years later, Abigail Obenchain (in 1982, reclining on the wall) recalls her basketball game against inmates at the Dwight Correctional Center as one of the defining experiences of her life. (Image courtesy of Abigail Obenchain)
What would you say if I told you that on April 3, 1982, a group of mostly U. of I. freshmen traveled to the Dwight Correctional Center—a maximum-security women’s prison—to play a game of basketball?...