<p>Until cooz replies, I can tell you what it was like when I was there in the early 80’s.</p>
<p>Galesburg is a small town with few employers. Although it’s the county seat and has a certain small town charm, it’s not a vibrant place and doesn’t have a lot to offer college-age students. Knox knows that, and tries to make up for what the town lacks, offering all kinds of social activities and arts and entertainment options, for example, that the town does not. I recently did a 1999-2009 crime analysis of Galesburg based on numbers from city-data.com. Although the national crime rate decreased over that period, Galesburg’s crime rate increased. The good news is that all the numbers for 1999-2009 still fall in the Average range, but the upward trend is disappointing. To be fair, every rural college town I looked at had a higher than average crime rate, probably in part because of the per capita basis used for calculating crime rates – if you have one theft in a town of 30,000 and one theft in a town of 60,000, the smaller town has double the crime rate as the larger. Galesburg has lost about 10% of its population in the past decade.</p>
<p>I wasn’t in a fraternity, but I had friends in every frat and I attended a lot of frat parties. They were generally open to the entire campus. I don’t drink, but every campus party that serves alcohol must also serve non-alcoholic drinks (real ones, like Coke and 7-Up, not just water). Each of the fraternities had houses where many of the members lived, but the sororities were scattered in the dorms with everyone else. The sororities were practically invisible to me. The fraternities didn’t dominate the social scene at all. They each had their own personalities, and attracted students accordingly.</p>
<p>When I was at Knox, the Oak Room was only open for lunch and for special occasions. The main dining room served a different lunch entree every day, while the Oak Room always had hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, fries and onion rings, chili, deli sandwiches, and salad. The Oak Room’s hours went slightly longer, offering a late lunch option. Both dining rooms share a common kitchen between them, which is probably the main reason for having them so close together, but the way the campus is laid out there’s really nowhere else you could put another major dining room anyway. These days the main dining room has a food court type of lunch offering like that of most colleges instead of the one entree each day that we were offered. The Oak Room is also open for breakfast now, but I don’t know how that differs from the main dining room. The main difference between them was the people who ate there – we all tended to fall into a lunchtime routine, and if I wanted to talk to someone at lunch I always knew whether to look in the Oak Room or in the main dining room. I liked most of the the food while I was there.</p>
(Just wanted to put my little two cents in) Knox caught my eye with it’s creative writing program. I would think that it’s one of their most popular majors. Anyways, I was able to talk to a current senior there via e-mail, and she told me of her experience in her Intro to Fiction class (didn’t ask her when this was… I’ll make sure to ask soon), and it really seemed like her professor helped her out tremendously. The professor even invited his editor out to Galesburg to work with her, and she was able to get some valuable feedback on her work. </p>
I kind of wish Knox would help out with that. Even if the city is small, I’ve gotten the hint that it has it’s own charms behind it. Most of the small towns I visit seem to have it. I don’t think it matters to me if it’s isolated. Plus, Knox seems to offer alot of activities and clubs and organizations around to make up for it, and based on what I’ve read on the on-line and print sources, I’ve found plenty of groups that I’m really interested in. (Zine Club!, Pagan Student Alliance, The Catch, Spanish Club, Photography Club, Lo Nuestro, and a few more.)</p>