Every week the Daily Illini will dig through our archives to find some of our best, most interesting and bizarre stories for this week in history. This week we found out about editorial voices, Homecoming controversy and bicycle violations from Oct. 12 to Oct. 18.

18 October 1951

The Illinois Student Senate discussed a resolution to curb editorial comment in The Daily Illini. The proposal was presented by John W. Biggers, senior class secretary-treasurer, as an apparent surprise to fellow senate members. The Daily Illini published an editorial comment titled “Press Freedom Gagged” in response to Biggers’ proposal, calling the resolution, “the most vicious attack ever leashed upon the editorial freedom of the 81-year-old Daily Illini.” The proposal’s provisions included making The Daily Illini print solely the action of a university organization, and not its merits, and making The Daily Illini give 3 days notice before discussing an organization or person.

15 October 1970

A flexibility plan for University housing was presented to the chancellor of the University. If approved, the plan would drastically change the living patterns for some of the residence halls. The biggest change was that many dorms would become co-ed, as opposed to having same-sex residences. The proposal said that some residence halls would separate the sexes by floor, and others would adapt a split-floor pattern where one side of the floor was females and the other side was males.

14 October 1972

The University police announced a crackdown on bicycle rule violators. By this point in the year, police had impounded 143 bicycles and given out 450 tickets. Police recorded many incidents of bike riders blocking traffic, disobeying traffic laws, evading police officers and colliding with pedestrians. There was an estimated 15,000 bicycles on campus that year, which is significantly greater than the 5,000 bicycle parking spaces that were available on campus.

16 October 1953

Ballots in the vote for Homecoming queen were declared null after it was discovered that there had been violations of the voting rules. The Illini Union rule for the Homecoming queen contest said that each student can only present one ID card and one ballot. However, there were instances where one student brought several ID cards and filled out ballots for each one, which skewed the votes in favor of certain candidates. The ballots were discounted, and a new poll opened up so the voting could be fair and consistent.