Golf carts and friendly faces greet NIU's new students and families when they come to campus for the annual Move-In Day.

Students return to campus Thursday

The NIU campus this week begins its annual end-of-the-summer return to a hustling, bustling home to thousands of students.

Admission Director Bob Burk’s “best guesstimate” about the fall population who will live in the DeKalb-Sycamore area is nearly 16,000 – an estimated 13,725 undergraduate students, 2,000 graduate students and 200 students in the NIU College of Law.

NIU’s residence halls accommodate 6,000 of those undergraduates.

Accordingly, volunteers always are welcome for Move-In Day, which greets new students and their families with a friendly army of smiling faces and an enormous fleet of golf carts to help transport boxes and books to the residence halls. Call 753-9611 for more information.

Move-In Day is followed by the Huskie Bash early that evening and the start of New Student Welcome Days.

Campus police do offer a few simple words of advice this Move-in Day: Go west, young man … and young woman.

Actually, their words will be more in the form of an order, as Move-In Day planners (also known as the Gridlock Committee) have devised an entirely new traffic pattern they hope will avoid the major congestion that occurred along Annie Glidden Road last year.

That traffic disrupted life for much of the west side of DeKalb, creating headaches particularly for residents trying to get to and from their homes from early morning into late afternoon.

In an effort to alleviate those problems, the new path of travel intercepts all Move-In Day traffic as it exits I-88 at Annie Glidden Road. Those vehicles will be sent 2 miles west on Fairview Road, then 2 miles north on Nelson Road, and finally just over a mile east on Route 38. Police officers and more than 100 signs will guide them along the way.

That route uses lightly traveled roads with few intersections, said Lt. Matt Kiederlen of the Department of Public Safety. “The whole point is to keep people moving and get them where they want to go more quickly,” he said.

The traffic will enter campus at the Convocation Center, using color-coded entrances that quickly divide traffic into two distinct streams heading toward different locations.

Once students reach the vicinity of their residence halls, they will be greeted by the annual army of volunteers driving a fleet of golf carts to assist them with the move to their new quarters.

All roads on the West Campus will be one-way streets that day. Burk strongly suggests that university employees, DeKalb residents and others avoid driving in the area unless absolutely necessary.

“It is our hope,” Burk said, “that this new route will help everything move more smoothly than ever this year.”

8-18-03