As the last issue of Marquee for the 2009-2010 school year, we decided to look back on the eventful and entertaining year that was. It was a big year for our little 93-acre campus. A favorite watering hole shut its doors, the Haggerty Museum of Art celebrated its 25th anniversary, and Marquette sealed its reputation as a hard-working party school by literally raging in the library. Here’s to you, Marquette, and for making our entertainment section all the easier to fill.
Lynne Shumow, Curator at the Haggerty Museum of Art by Sarah Elms / [email protected]
This year brought with it several anniversaries. There was the 100th year of women at Marquette, the 25th year since the building of the Haggerty Museum of Art and the 10th anniversary of Haggerty curator Lynne Shumow’s arrival at the museum.
Through her position at the Haggerty, Shumow is responsible for coordinating programming in conjunction with exhibitions, working with tour guides, developing outreach programs and teaching classes. She is also the advisor for the Art Club and organizes Student Fridays at the museum.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Shumow in her Haggerty office, hidden like a secret lair behind the coat check at the museum, and chat about her highlights of the year.
“For me, there are always a lot of things that I’m excited about throughout the year because I get to do a lot of things,” Shumow said.
I learned early that Shumow is all about the students. She said one of her favorite things about this year was teaching a freshman honors seminar with Deirdre Dempsey, associate professor of theology, based on the Marc Chagall: The Bible Series exhibit, part of the Haggerty’s permanent collection. At the end of the seminar, Shumow and Dempsey took the students to Red Line, a local art studio, to do their own printmaking.
“The class kind of culminated with students being able to make their own print,” Shumow said. “Marquette students don’t usually get to do that.”
Another highlight of Shumow’s year was when photographer Stella Johnson paid a visit to campus to do photography workshops with students during her exhibition. Shumow, Johnson and a group of students visited the Milwaukee’s Urban Ecology Center and Growing Power, a nonprofit food cultivation group, and took photos that were used in promotional material for Green Week.
Shumow is supportive of anything that allows students to create their own work, which is why Student Fridays at the Haggerty have been one of her favorite projects this year.
“Students could be out partying or relaxing, but they choose to come here,” Shumow said. “It is very gratifying for me to see that students want to make the Haggerty a destination.”
Shumow said she is already excited about what next year has to offer for her and the Haggerty.
“We are always interested in connecting with the university, and it is somewhat challenging,” she said. “That’s something I always hold out as a goal, and we keep achieving that, so we keep upping the bar.”
Jim Hegarty’s Irish Pub (1933-2010) by Molly Gamble / [email protected]
The unexpected news spread like wildfire. As students received text messages and read Facebook posts, some remained slightly suspicious, wary of the Irish and their tendency to exaggerate. Others diligently closed their books and dropped their studies at 7 p.m. for a more important task: to pay respects to good old Heg’s.
In less than 24 hours, it would be gone.
Jim Hegarty’s Irish Pub passed away suddenly on Thursday, April 29, at 12 p.m. as a result of bankruptcy. It was 77 years old. The bar — dark, smoky and always playing classic rock — had been an unassuming dive for Marquette students for generations.
At the time of its death, it was the only bar of its era to withstand the test of time. Its old companions, classic bars such as The Gym and The Avalanche, had been demolished or bought up long before.
Marquette alum Frank Kaitis (’76) has fond memories of days (and nights) spent at Hegarty’s. On St. Patrick’s Day of his sophomore year, Kaitis went into the pub, staked out a table and didn’t leave until they turned out the lights.
“I spent 14 hours of my life there sophomore year!” said Kaitis. “I got a table at noon and didn’t leave until 2 a.m. I developed an aversion to [the Bing Crosby song] ‘McNamara’s Band’ after that though, but it was all part of the ambience. It was a great St. Pat’s. Life couldn’t get any better.”
Hegarty’s was home to the well-known Double Your Dough deal, where a flimsy five bucks got you ten dollars’ worth in drinks, ten got twenty, and so on. In its last year, Hegarty’s began to bask in its final months of life, granting recessionista students the privilege of quarter beers on Friday evenings. Students appreciated the bar’s cheap prices and retro vibe.
Nick Sprosty, a senior in the College of Business Administration, was in the library completing an online quiz on Wednesday evening when he received a text that Heg’s was closing.
“I quickly submitted the quiz, without checking my answers, called up my buddies and headed over to get a head start on the crowd,” Sprosty said. “The last night of Heg’s was really fun but crazy because of how packed it was, which is ironic because that is not what that place was ever like.”
On the night before its passing, Heg’s was surrounded by friends and family. Hundreds of students packed into the cozy confines of its brick walls, nearly filling the establishment to capacity. For $1, you could buy cans of Blatz and Schlitz from a nearly empty refrigerator. People bought and wore Hegarty’s shamrock t-shirts and inked names with markers on the walls. The orange neon sign buzzed “Open” in the window for one last time.
Hegarty’s is survived by Marquette students, alumni and Milwaukee locals who, through stories and legends, will surely keep some part of the Irish pub alive.
Raynor Rave by Matthew Reddin / [email protected]
A lot can change in a year.
This time last year, most people would have told you Marquette was a quiet, average Catholic university where students could be a little rowdy on occasion, but not go much farther than that. Now, we’re America’s number one Catholic party school, we’ve partied with Girl Talk and we don’t show any sign of letting up anytime soon.
And it all started with a little thing called the Raynor Rave.
“Yeah, [the rave] definitely could have contributed,” said Ryan Glazier, referring to the role the rave played in Playboy’s ranking of Marquette in early April. Glazier, along with friends Bryan Miguel and Chris Mason, sophomores in the Colleges of Business Administration, Communication, and Arts & Sciences, respectively, were the self-described “masterminds” of last semester’s flash rave.
Glazier said the idea for the rave came to him while he was bored online at about 3 a.m. a week and a half before finals. Looking through videos online, he came across a library flash rave at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and came to a stunning realization.
“I thought to myself, ‘We could do this here,’” Glazier said.
Interest in the rave started early. The three created a clandestine Facebook group for the rave, and membership swelled rapidly, getting more than 1,000 members.
“That was the only comforting thing about it,” Glazier said.
There was certainly a lot to be uncomfortable about. If no one showed up, Glazier, Miguel and Mason would look pretty silly or even face disciplinary action for blasting party music in the library.
But when the trio got there on the night of the rave, they knew that this was going to work.
“You could tell there were too many people in the library, even for finals,” Mason said.
And then, at 6:50 p.m. on Dec. 16, it happened: the Raynor Rave. For 10 minutes, the library turned into a dance party, complete with Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA,” costumed dancers (including a Burger King king, ninjas and a penguin on roller skates), and even some crowd surfers.
Within hours, the rave had gone viral. Several low-quality videos hit YouTube that same night, and higher-quality versions began to go up in the days that followed. Shortly after, the rave went national, making it onto news outlets like CNN and MSNBC.
Glazier, Miguel and Mason said they have no plans to host a rave this semester, but will be turning their attention to a bigger and better rave in the winter. Now, with the university and the library on their side, they plan to kill the lights during the rave and have four concert-sized speakers ready to go.
They hope they’ll leave behind a new Marquette tradition after they graduate. But even if they don’t, they’ll certainly be remembered for the little flash rave that could.
