By Andrea Fernandes
Associate Editor
He’s the oldest professor teaching at Bonaventure who also spent his undergraduate years here; he’s the guy who sits in the truck outside the Reilly Center during basketball games, guiding students who want to go into the broadcasting field. He’s the guy who never fails to relay his knowledge and experience to his students to ensure they’re the best broadcasters and announcers they can be.
He’s none other than Paul Wieland.
Anyone who has taken Wieland’s classes is familiar with his witty remarks that keep his classes lively. Wieland, a professor of journalism and mass communication, has been teaching at Bona’s for 14 years. His decision to attend Bona’s came when he attended Press Day, now known as Comm Day.
“I was accepted to Cornell and a couple other schools,” Wieland said. “Cornell was too preppy for me; I loved Bona’s from the time I visited.”
Wieland attended Bona’s at a time when tuition and room and board each year was $1,400. He was the first one to go to college in his family and had plans of being a journalist.
“I was convinced that this was the place to learn how to be a good newspaper man,” Wieland said.
Wieland spoke of how much he valued every class he took that was taught by Dr. Russell Jandoli.
“Any course I took with Dr. Jandoli was my favorite,” Wieland said. “He was a motivator. He made you feel good as a human being.”
Wieland graduated from Bona’s in 1959. This was during the Cold War era, and Wieland said the time period had a large impact on his education at Bonaventure. Students now attend classes in various buildings on campus such as Plassmann Hall and The John J. Murphy Professional Building. Wieland said it wasn’t unusual for a class to be held in one of the barracks on campus. Also, cows covering the parts of campus that now include the baseball and rugby fields was not unusual.
Being a Bonaventure student, Wieland took his academics seriously, but he also had his share of fun. He admitted students often went out for drinks since the legal drinking age was 18. Going out to parties had some restrictions though. The freshmen had to deal with physical hazing, typically done by sophomores, for the first six weeks of school. As long as they were able to get through the tough freshmen year restrictions and hazing, students here had a good time enjoying parties and time spent at the bars, according to Wieland. But these parties were not like parties today. Bonaventure had an undergrad class of 900 students, only 50 of which were girls.
Pre-gaming before going out wasn’t something that only happened in the dorms; it started in the Hickey during dinnertime.
“Sometimes they served us wine at dinnertime – you had guys getting drunk at the dinner table in the Hickey,” Wieland said.
According to Wieland, there were three meals served each day. For each meal, there was one option; students either ate that one option, or they starved for the time being.
When Wieland and his friends weren’t in class or out partying, they were in their rooms studying.
“We had study period every week-day, and a priest lived on every floor,” Wieland said. “We’d leave our doors opened, and the priest would walk around to make sure we were in our room doing work.”
Students didn’t have an issue leaving their doors open out of fear that someone would see their messy rooms, because their rooms were never messy, said Wieland. The school provided maids who cleaned the boys’ rooms and made their beds every day except weekends.
Bonaventure basketball is just as important to Wieland now as it was when he was an undergraduate student, he said.
“The basketball games were down in the Olean Armory,” Wieland said. “Games were a zoo, and everyone cheered.”
Although Bonaventure then and now has many differences, Wieland said the biggest difference to him is the increase in the female population. Bonaventure has transformed from being a school where girls weren’t allowed to live on campus or even eat at the Hickey to a school that is more diverse and inclusive.
This is the seventh installment in the “Professors from Bonaventure” series. Check out future issues for more!
fernanal13@bonaventure.edu
