I stayed at Marquette for one year.  I had decided to go there out of loyalty to my dad.  I reasoned that I should give Catholicism one more chance.   The rituals seemed pointless.  The sense of community seemed hollow.  The theology didn’t seem to make sense.  But I told myself, “Maybe at a university they can explain it more to my understanding and satisfaction.”

I remember an essay test that I took in Theology – which was a required course.  I wrote that I had trouble with the Book of Exodus because “why would a good God part the seas for one chosen people and then drown all of those Egyptian soldiers?”  For this I received a “D” in the course.  That bad mark caused me to get rejected when I tried to transfer to the University of Chicago later that year.

I was rooming with Ray Tobin, my best friend from high school.  He also was Waukegan Irish.  His family owned the funeral home where I had said goodbye to my uncles Dan and Steve.  Ray is still my best friend to this day.   After he started rushing Alpha Kappa Psi, I saw very little of him.   I felt a little abandoned.  It was similar to my dismay at how quickly my twin cousins had abandoned me in favor of the most popular set in high school.

I concentrated on my classes.  But I can remember some awkward social events.  Once I drank beer till I threw up on my date, a beautiful Hawaiian girl from the Honors Program.  There were about a dozen Puerto Rican students living in our dorm.  When they threw a party, we called it a “Spic Party”.  John Merz rented a car one weekend and we went cruising to see if we could pick up girls to go with us to the Spic Party.  It wasn’t that effective of a pickup line to the Latinas that we met.

There was one student protest.  We all marched to the football stadium to demand that Marquette not drop football as a sport.  My dad had been a 2^nd string quarterback on the team that ran the single wing formation.  I was the organizer behind the creation of a huge banner which we hung over seven floors of Schroeder Hall.  It was a long arm and a hand holding a wriggling devil over a basketball net.  It was a homecoming message to “Dunk the Demons” of DePaul.

There was not much Vietnam protest at Marquette in 1966.  Not many hippies.  The SDS chapter was small.  One weekend I went to a football game at Camp Randal in Madison.  It was like I was viewing a panoramic vision of a holy city of intellect and alternate culture.  I must have decided right then and there that Madison was for me.  What a fateful decision it was!