Pipe Dream is celebrating its 60th year as Binghamton University’s independent student newspaper. It started as the Colonial News in fall 1946, and has been going strong twice a week ever since. So we’re taking a look back into the paper’s archives, at the people and events that have made the news over BU’s past 60 years.

Friday, Sept. 24, 1971

Health board threatens to close snack bar: dog situation cited

The overwhelming presence of – of all things — dogs in on-campus eating establishments prompted the Broome County Board of Health to issue BU an ultimatum: keep the canine intruders out, or deal with the eateries’ closure.

The inspector was due back in less than a week, and if dogs were still seen in the building, “the Snack Bar, the Pub” — BU had an on-campus pub at the time! — “the Susquehanna Room, the Kosher Kitchen, and all catering services” would be closed until further notice.

The health citation described “animal feces and dog urine” as being noticeable in the Student Center, and maintenance workers had repeatedly complained about having to clean up the mess.

The warning was not the first — in 1969 an inspector closed the campus Snack Bar after he saw a dog eat from a table — but it did draw attention to the large number of unleashed dogs frequenting the snack bar.

“Despite the efforts of two student dogcatchers and the student manager corps, the canine population of the Student Center has continued to increase over past months,” Pipe Dreamer Howard Shaw wrote, published in the article.

Students may have been responsible for allowing and encouraging the dogs — many of which were students’ pets — to enter campus dining areas, and the dogs’ owners were quoted as saying that only the administration, and not their fellow students, were filing complaints.

Proposed solutions to the problem included getting volunteers to guard entrances to the building, and having student government conduct a study of the situation. Also suggested was banning the animals on campus altogether. Although it’s a bit unclear what that ban would have entailed, today pets are animalia non grata in BU dorms, and nowhere to be found near the Food Court.