Fish fry changes face and place in 2002
By TOM CAMPBELL
Look for a new and improved version of the Ag Alumni Fish Fry when it takes the stage Feb. 2, 2002.
Just don't look for the stage itself. Replacing the zany stage antics, the show's trademark for years, will be a nationally prominent guest speaker. Details are still being finalized, so the speaker's identity cannot be released.
That's just one of the major changes that Donya Lester, secretary of the Ag Alumni Association, says is in store for the popular event held every winter for more than 50 years.
For the first time since 1958, the Fish Fry will move out of the Purdue Armory and off campus, into Cumberland Place, a convention center adjacent to University Inn, just north of the West Lafayette campus. And the event will be on a Saturday, instead of a Friday. There also will be some fine-tuning of the menu, to be worked out at a later date.
Lester and a five-member Ag Alumni Fish Fry committee began considering changes in March.
Dan Arnholt, BS '68, committee member and association vice president, says, "Each of us on the committee went out in our local communities and talked with some of our fellow ag alumni to get some input, both good and bad, about the Fish Fry and ways we could improve it."
Lester says all the changes are designed to make the Fish Fry better: "When you come to the Fish Fry, we want to make it easier to get there. We want it to be easy to park, easy to get from your car to the facility, and we want you to be comfortable when you sit down. We want your food to be hotter, fresher, better, and we want the program to be more enjoyable because you can easily hear the speakers.
"We talked to a lot of our members, and the thing that kept coming up was that Friday has become an increasingly difficult day for people to get back to campus."
The Fish Fry's traditional Friday slot also made it difficult for students
to participate, because of class conflicts.
"We want to get students involved in everything we do," Lester says.
"We've noticed over the past few years that about half of the student
volunteers were using their free passes to go to the Fish Fry, the rest
had class conflicts."
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