Lamar of days past...

A week ago, I was looking through old Lamar catalogs, trying to get a sense of what the advanced English courses looked like in the 70s and 80s. My original goal was to chart the development of the program, but then I got sidetracked by the utter awesomeness that is the Lamar General Catalog: 1985-1986. Everything you loved or hated about the 80s is here, and no, I have not cleverly retouched any photos to make them even more 80s-ish—you truly can’t make this stuff up. Please, join me as we take a visual tour, cover to cover, through what I now believe to be Lamar’s heyday as an institution of higher learning.



This cover tells us a lot--are these two students hiding from something? The fashion police, maybe? Fortunately, they both have the appropriate mid 80s coifs--she has some sort of graduated mullet, and he looks like he's rocking the man-perm. But honestly, wouldn't a college catalog be more appealing to prospective students if it was made to look as though there were more than two students on campus?

In essence, I would say the tone of this book goes something like this: Hey, students! It’s 1985! Reagan is President! Woo hoo! Forget Southeast Texas’s horrendously dismal economy—come to Lamar, where you can major in courses with ridiculous and politically incorrect titles such as, Education 432: Educating the Culturally Different, (WTF?!) Education 3311: Identification and Habilitation of the Mentally Retarded, and Music 333: Music of the Afro-American—a course described in the catalog as “A general study of the present day American Negro music and a study of the Afro-American music historical background”. Hell, yeah! We be down with the “Negros” at Lamar—just look at how many African American students we have pictured in this catalog!








As we well know, the 80s ushered in a whole new age of technology--the Commodore 64, etc. Lamar was on top of this trend, offering students access to a happenin' "Computer Center," in which "all jobs are automatically scheduled by the computer which considers computing time and storage requirements as well as other factors." Wow--that just sounds so neato and futuristic! Bite it, MIT! We got a main frame, and we're goin' FORTRAN on y'all's asses!



Hey, look, it's Bill Gates! Oh, wait--Nope--it's just a student channeling his inner nerd in the "Computer Center" and doing some sort of ancient CAD.



80s Lamar made every effort to make us believe that all over campus, you could find pulchritudinous (look it up) coeds strategically posed and chatting it up about their academic interests--basically, these following captions have the stink of a Sears Roebuck catalog ripoff all over them.



My, Becky and Ted are up awful early to be so chipper about whatever it is they're doing (none of the catalog photos had captions) in the Computer Center. Perhaps Ted is simply trying to get up the gumption to ask Becky to go see Back to the Future with him. By the way, Becky, nice feathered hair! And I looooove the thin silk long-sleeve belted dress--a must have for the 80s working girl.

In the following photo, we're catching up with Rocky and Janelle, who have just come from their Psychology 434 course: "An Introduction to Group Psychotherapy" (also a real class from the catalog)--they're discussing deep stuff about feelings, and Janelle, who seems to have just walked off the set of a commercial for feminine products, is trying to restrain herself from asking Rocky what is up with his barely-there polka dotted wife beater tank top and too-small Converse sneakers. I also have a really uncomfortable feeling that this photo should have had a caption reading, "Pay no attention to the three African American students in the background." Or at least a speech bubble for Rocky that says, "How you doin'?"















And here we have Peter and Sandy (oh, the sad, sad early days of experimenting with highlighting one's hair at home) cheerfully completing a very 80s pre-PETA science lab dissection project (yes, they really are dissecting what you think they are dissecting--and they're smiling while they're doing it).



I imagine their conversation went something like this:

Sandy: Hey, Peter, it seems like since Dr. Smith has taken over as head of Biology, we're not having that pesky feral cat problem on campus any more. I wonder why?

Peter: Yeah, totally. Hey, let's go see Police Academy 2 tonight!

Sandy: I'd love to, but I have to take my daughter and stand in line to get her a Cabbage Patch Kid at Toys 'R' Us.


Oh, did I forget to mention that animals were harmed during the making of this catalog?

So, there you have it--Part 1 of Lamar in all its BASIC, COBOL, cat dissecting, goofy nerd, 80s glory. Part II explores even more visual evidence of Lamar's 80s shenanigans.