While students have always been active in East Lansing nightlife, activities on Grand River have fluctuated throughout the decades. Bars and restaurants have closed and students have found new favorite places to go on weekends.

Greg Dardas earned his bachelors degree in biology in 1985, and spent weekends at places that have long been closed in East Lansing.

“There’s one that used to be called America’s Cup and we used to go there because they had a nice happy hour that was really cheap, and for the same reason we used to go to Chi-Chi’s, which is now closed,” Dardas said. “Of course we used to go to Rick’s and The Riv, the usual stuff.”

On the other hand, Andrew Krivan, a 2022 alumni with a bachelor's degree in finance, spent nights at well known favorites among students today. 

“Well this is pretty stereotypical, but my favorite was Harper’s,” Krivan said. “I have a lot of memories, have a lot of lost nights there, it’s just always a great time. I think the layout of the bar is pretty great, you can kind of see everyone, whole lot of space. I mean, you know, it’s a pretty good bar when it’s that big and there's still somehow a line past the 7-Eleven half the time.”

The 2000s offered other hotspots of student life according to Angela Gouda, a 2004 alumni.

She said that Rick’s was still quite popular and Harper’s had deals that she enjoyed, but Landshark Bar & Grill took the cake for student favorite. Gouda said that P.T. O’Malleys was another popular one, which today is on a decline in popularity.

While not everyone enjoys drinks on the weekends, almost all college students enjoy cheap food from local restaurants. El Azteco and Crunchy’s are some of today's favored eateries among students, but Dardas said The PanTree was a favorite of his. The PanTree sat at what currently is Dublin Square.

Even with the changes of bars and restaurants, one thing has always remained the same – the love college students have for a cheap slice of pizza. Gouda said her favorite was Georgio’s Pizza, an East Lansing staple. Meanwhile, Krivan was more fond of the chain pizzerias. 

“It was pretty common for me to go out to a bar and then get an entire medium Domino's pizza,” Krivan said.

Something that has remained consistent throughout the years is the love-hate relationship students have with living in the dorms. However, fan-favorite dorms among students have changed dramatically since the 1980s.

Both Dardas and Gouda were on the same page about the dislike for Brody. Due to it’s distance from class buildings and other dorms, it was viewed as undesirable. 

“The worst (dorm) at the time ... friends who got (placed in) the Brody Complex or all the way over in Hubbard ... (they) were not happy with that," Gouda said. "That was before Brody did the huge re-vamp on the food court. Those were kind of like ‘Ugh I got Brody.’”

Krivan agreed with Hubbard being one of the worst, but had better things to say about Brody.

“Best (dorm) is probably Brody. Another easy answer – but between the cafeteria, the volume of people (and) the volume of things that are going on, [it's the best]” Krivan said. 

Another consistency is students' favorite spots on campus. From the 80s to now, students have found comfort in sports facilities like Spartan Stadium and Munn Ice Arena, and enjoyed the older parts of campus like Beaumont Tower.

It could be argued that one of the best perceived changes at MSU was class registration. All students have had their troubles with signing up for classes, but students today have never gone to the pit. 

Near the IM West Building, Dardas and other students would have to "go to the pit," where schedules were manually assembled in case of section or time changes to a class schedule.

“All the students who were trying to fix their schedule would go there so everybody was already kind of in a bad mood to begin with, and not sure if they were able to get the classes they wanted and when they wanted them," Dardas said. "It’s kind of a tense situation for everybody.”

Students stood in the pit waiting for class size updates to be manually posted. They waited around to see if anyone dropped their desired class, hoping they could jump in and secure a seat before someone else did.

Luckily, Gouda’s 2004 class was one of the first classes that had a completely electric registration system. But even being online, Gouda said the system was not entirely user-friendly, not having the ability to access your full graduation plan. 

This made seeing advisors common, but she had some “pretty bad advisors,” until she finally found Sarah Handspike, who still works at MSU as the director of advising and undergraduate services for the Department of Psychology.

Gouda, who currently works as a high school and college counselor, said Handspike is the reason she got into counseling. 

Another constant MSU has always had is friendships. Students have always been spending time with other students, but in different ways.

Krivan spent many nights with friends drinking wine, playing the Wii and ending their night with ice cream from Tasty Twist. 

Wii’s weren’t around for Gouda and Dardas, so they found other forms of entertainment with friends. 

“Back in those days, we had a sister and a brother floor on the sixth floor of Hubbard," Dardas said. "We used to do a lot of stuff with our floormates back in those days – we used to play a lot of games, sports games, out in the parks and stuff ... hacky sack (and) that kind of thing. We used to have a lot of people partying in the dorms." 

Dardas said his DJ-ing for the parties looked a little different, displaying his huge record collection and spinning tracks before CD's even became mainstream. 

Similarly, Gouda said she spent her time attending sporting events with friends and going to each other’s houses. 

Despite the changes to Grand River, the basis of student life has stayed relatively the same. Students enjoy friends and food, but where they go and what they do there has changed in the past decades.