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Submitted by stevenl on Sun, 10/16/2005 - 9:45pm.
Yes, the rumors are true, the college was designed to be riot proof. The first new building constructed on the campus was the steam plant, which included "riot-proof" windows (Daily Olympian, 9/9/70, p. 3). The steam plant is also the building where vehicles have access to the maze of tunnels under campus. We used to take off our shoes and sneak past the guy in the little glass office and roam around in those vast steam tunnels. When we were down there, every now and then we'd come to a ladder which went up to those brick boxes you see here and there on campus. Then we could observe people walking around on Red Square through the grates. The original Red Square, a wide area surrounded by berms and narrow exits, had an incredibly slippery surface in the 1970s. We always felt it was that way on purpose for crowd control. The bricks were replaced in the 1980s. During the time the campus was designed, student unrest around the country was widespread. An article in the Daily Olympian for Oct. 18, 1968 (p. 6) entitled, "Evergreen Officials Probe Reasons for Student Unrest - 'It Won't Happen Here," discusses the fear of "anarchists" causing trouble and some hint about the plans to contain that threat.
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Please keep the stories comin
Submitted by Sarah on Mon, 10/17/2005 - 12:01am.Now I do, thank you!
Steve, I recognize your name now, I was at SPSCC at the time.
If memory serves, you told us about the SPSCC ghost, was that you? (Storyteller, not ghost.)
Yes, Sarah, I remember you. I
Submitted by stevenl on Mon, 10/17/2005 - 5:51am.In fact, it is my understandi
Submitted by jgbell on Wed, 10/19/2005 - 1:45pm.In fact, it is my understanding that the ubiquity of a "red square" at every state campus was specifically due to utility for crowd control. Any demonstrations in these squares could be controlled with water from a firehose which would make the brick slippery and allow the force from a nozzle to topple people to the ground. I believe I heard this for the first time on a campus visit to WWU many years ago.
At the University of Washington, the Suzzallo Quadrangle, which was, I believe an open field, was replaced with red brick in 1969, at the time the undeground garage was built. There turns out to be a wikipedia article about UW's Red Square, but it claims the brick was used because there was fear that rain would leak through grass and soil into the garage beneath. I suspect that may have been the politic reason.
As an aside, and here's my most precious bit of trivia about Red Square at the UW, the chimney stacks are the height of the pyramids on the Giza plateau in Egypt.
Interesting. One thing that m
Submitted by stevenl on Wed, 10/19/2005 - 6:26pm.Those chimneys are close enou
Submitted by jgbell on Sat, 10/22/2005 - 11:43am.Maybe the UW could name those
Submitted by stevenl on Mon, 10/24/2005 - 5:51am.Indeed, but at least people w
Submitted by jgbell on Sat, 10/29/2005 - 1:07pm.Beautiful! Actually, my own g
Submitted by stevenl on Sat, 10/29/2005 - 6:05pm.1st post
Submitted by Sarah on Wed, 03/19/2008 - 2:55pm.