The other day I had a gentleman come into my office inquiring about a story idea he had in mind. The man, in his 60’s, attended NMSU during the early 1970’s.

“I can’t believe how much this place has changed” he told me. I used that as a transition point into asking him just how different the school once was.

Suddenly, for the next 20 minutes in the middle of an early March Wednesday in 2017, I felt as if I had been taken back in time to an NMSU none of us would recognize. Whether it was the man telling of how he once lived in an all-boys dorm in what is now currently Breland Hall, or of the times that Milton Hall was seen as the center of campus and housed not only places to eat, but a book store as well.

In addition, the man, who graduated with a journalism degree, also mentioned student media, of how he was the first Sports Anchor on what is now known as News 22 with KRWG, working for $50 a month. He also recalled the time his sophomore year he, along with most of the students on campus, began to protest a Board of Regents decision that there could not be any boys in girls’ dorms or vice versa at any time of the day, a decision later reversed in 1976.

This kind of history  that we now occupy (both physical locations and job titles) have an enormous legacy in and of themselves that come with them. Odds are, problems both good and bad are not the first (or the last) of its kind that will be seen at this University. However, it can be beneficial to sometimes remind yourself to look up and realize that not only is history around us in every sense of the word, but also living through us as well.