(pensive music) - "Eye on Education."

I'm Fred Martino.

Coming up, a podcasting class is giving new opportunities to students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and that is just the beginning.

We're gonna talk about the Digital Humanities Lab.

But first, Anna Twomey of the SIU Alumni Association with an important part of our region's history.

- It was overwhelming.

They wanted a Saluki.

- It isn't a common breed, so a lot of people think that they're just like any other breed, and they're really not.

- [Wes] They have full sets of real-looking canine teeth.

- Graceful, strong, and fast.

Many would say the Saluki is the perfect mascot for Southern Illinois University.

But SIU wasn't always so sure about its identity.

In the beginning, the university had multiple names for itself.

That all changed thanks to one man's discovery.

Our story starts with his daughter, who lives right across the street from campus.

- I'm Dede Lingle-Ittner.

For 61 years, I have been an alum of Southern Illinois University.

- [Anna] Dede is more than just an alum.

Her family made SIU history, thanks to curiosity and critical thinking.

Her father was Leland Lingle, known as Doc Lingle.

There's a building on campus named after him.

Doc was an SIU student and beloved coach who founded the track and field program in 1927.

He's also the man behind SIU's identity.

- Dad wasn't just a coach.

He was a brilliant person.

And I was told that, so I'm not saying it's because he was my dad.

- [Anna] The journey to becoming a Saluki starts about 70 years ago.

Dede knows it by heart.

- Back in the 1950s, Southern had a problem.

The school athletic teams were known as the Maroons.

There was no school mascot.

- [Doc] So it became necessary that we identify ourselves by some name or some type of mascot or something.

- [Anna] People from SIU were also called the Southerners and the Normal.

For a brief period in the 1920s, SIU chose a goat as the mascot.

It didn't work out.

The Maroons seemed to stick the most after SIU's first athletic director, William McAndrew, had maroon stripes stitched on the football team's jerseys.

- He was colorblind.

So when he looked at runners in the distance or football players in the distance, he couldn't spot his team.

- [Anna] So the Maroons it was, until Doc Lingle read something disturbing.

It was Christmas, 1949.

Dede had given him his usual holiday gift, a copy of "Information Please Almanac."

- I had a dollar in my purse to pay for it.

- [Anna] Inside that Almanac, an explanation of what the term Maroons really meant.

- What dad had found was the name Maroons.

And it was given to the African slave workers on the Caribbean Islands.

- [Anna] Historians say the Maroons were slaves who escaped plantations into the mountains of Jamaica.

Doc Lingle, the first coach at SIU to integrate his team, wouldn't stand for it.

- The Maroons were certainly not what he wanted his athletes and the athletes at Southern Illinois University called.

They must never be considered as slaves of anyone.

- [Anna] By this time, there was already a desire on campus to have a real mascot.

Doc Lingle wanted to stick with the Egyptian theme.

Southern Illinois is known as Little Egypt for its history of fertile soil.

- The name is a reference to a terrible famine years ago, and a Bible story about starving people going down to Egypt.

- [Anna] Egyptian themes were part of campus life and rituals in small ways, including a paper mache sphinx brought to football games, until Doc Lingle read about the Salukis in a magazine called "American Kennel Club."

- [Doc] And I started reading and studying, and I discovered that the Saluki was the dog of the ancient kings of Egypt.

They had bred them for years.

The breed supposedly was one of the oldest known to man.

- [Anna] Many records of the Saluki date back to 3,600 BC.

The dog's frequently appeared in ancient Egyptian artwork on tombs.

- It was a real animal, and dad thought, "I'm going to find a real Saluki."

- [Anna] The Lingles came across one in Farmer City, Illinois.

The owner brought it to a campus vote for a new mascot in 1951.

Salukis weren't the only option.

- They made the suggestions of the Knights, Crusaders, Rebels and Trojans.

- [Anna] But Dede says the Saluki won the vote quite handily.

- It was overwhelming, and they just voted almost unanimously for the Saluki.

They wanted a Saluki.

- [Anna] According to a "Daily Egyptian" article from 1961, someone tried to steal the ballot box, a mystery that hasn't been solved to this day.

No matter, the Salukis was set in stone.

And the very first live Saluki at SIU would be a red-colored puppy called King Tut.

Dede remembers the day her parents brought him home to Carbondale.

- And my mother was looking very bedraggled, and there was a very bedraggled Saluki because, I don't know if you know or not, but Salukis get very motion sick.

- [Anna] King Tut would be in motion for some time after, bouncing from home to home, person to person.

- Finding a place for him to live permanently was a real problem.

- [Doc] Here's the score on the dog.

They are aristocratic.

They're very refined.

In this sense, they want only one owner.

- [Anna] King Tut found some stability with a fraternity called Alpha Phi Omega.

They were based in Anthony Hall, and kept Tut in a fenced area.

Anthony Hall is still standing here on campus.

Now, back in the '50s, the football stadium, known as McAndrews Stadium, was right across the street in that parking lot just behind me.

McAndrews Stadium is where King Tut would finally find some freedom.

- He was introduced at the opening game of the 1951 football season.

And I remember that.

That's so funny 'cause I had just gone into high school.

- [Anna] Campus was captivated, and Saluki pride was soaring.

- Dad reported that Tut could really run.

One day, the Saluki ran along beside a car that he was driving, and he drove 40 to 50 miles an hour and the dog ran right beside him.

- [Anna] Tut was restless.

His will to run would ultimately lead to his death just a few years after becoming the official mascot.

Dede drives us to the spot where Tut escaped and was hit by a car, right outside his pen at Anthony Hall.

- The dog would've run somewhere right across here.

- [Anna] The car crushed his back legs.

There was no hope of saving him.

- He was buried in the place where he was most happy, where he could run, McAndrews Stadium.

- [Anna] A pyramid memorial was built over his resting place at McAndrews Stadium, but it would be moved decades later to the spot on campus most of us are familiar with.

- I will ponder this for a moment.

- [Anna] The pyramid was moved in front of Saluki Stadium in 2010.

It's a Saluki legend that King Tut's bones were excavated and reburied under the pyramid in this new location, but Dede knows the real story.

- Let's go under the bricks, and let me tell you that there are no bones because his tenure up on the hill would've meant that they would've all gone to soil and just powdery remains.

So they took some soil and some powdery remains from the top of the hill, the old McAndrews Stadium, and brought it down to the new Saluki Stadium at the south entrance.

- [Anna] Live Salukis have been a staple on campus ever since.

There have been dozens over the years.

Some owned and cared for by the university, others that private families took care of.

- A lot of people assume that the university owns the dogs.

- [Anna] Today, SIU's living Salukis come from the Blair family.

- My name is Vicky Blair.

I have the Saluki mascots.

I've been doing this for almost 15 years now.

- [Anna] Vicky and her husband are parents to eight Salukis.

- This is Seti.

He is here a lot.

He's been here since he was a baby.

- [Anna] Vicky says she has loved Salukis since she was a child.

Her family is from Upper Michigan, but she and her husband eventually found their way to Carbondale.

- I honestly had no idea that the Saluki was the mascot of the school.

Because I brought my daughter here to Carbondale shopping one day, and I saw the Saluki stuff and I thought, "What is going on?"

It was like, "Oh, my gosh, this is meant to be."

- [Anna] Soon after, Vicky would have her very first Saluki, and become the centerpiece of campus pride at football games, student events, and much more.

Vicky shares what it's like to care for this special breed at home.

- They're all crate trained, so they all have their own crates.

What used to be our family room is their room.

Our garage, which used to house cars, now we actually have built like a huge doghouse in there.

- [Anna] Vicky says her Salukis have had extensive training, and they're are very particular kind of breed.

- Very independent, very intelligent.

They are a pack animal, so actually they do better in multiples more than one.

- [Anna] Salukis are sight hounds, with incredible endurance.

They've been bred that way for centuries.

They're known to be able to chase their prey to exhaustion.

Vicky says that's why they're thin and lean.

Her Salukis get a walk and a bath before any event on campus.

- [Vicky] As soon as I get the collars out, they know they're going someplace.

- [Anna] Vicky says this is her chance to educate people about the breed.

- The most common question I get from people is, "What kind of dog is that?"

I love having the dogs.

Even if I never brought them here, I would still have these dogs.

- [Anna] The Saluki also comes alive through a costume.

Grey Dawg and Brown Dawg have encouraged the crowds at games and campus events ever since SIU adopted the Saluki mascot.

They're both part of the Spirit Team, which also includes the cheerleaders and dancers.

We wanted to know what it was like to be Grey Dawg and what it takes to be Grey Dawg, so we caught up with the mascot at an event here on campus.

Is it tradition to keep the mascot's identity anonymous?

We spoke with the current student mascot, who tells us Grey Dawg's identity is a sacred secret.

In fact, some of the student mascots may never reveal their identity.

They're careful to keep the magic alive by not removing their mask in public and not speaking in public.

Current Grey Dawg says he has a pre-game ritual that helps him get pumped up for events and ready to get the crowd excited.

He says the biggest challenge is staying in shape to perform at games, especially when the weather is hot.

The costumes have gone through quite a bit of change, and didn't always look so cute and cuddly.

The university museum digs deep into its archives to find these two out-of-service costumes.

- My name is WM Weston Stoerger, and I'm the Curator of Exhibits for the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Museum.

Standing behind me and slightly to my left are the two Saluki mascots that were in use for various activities across campus from about 2000 to about 2009.

- [Anna] This Grey Dawg and Brown Dawg are part of the university museum's permanent collection.

They're stored on armatures in a climate-controlled facility.

- As you might notice, there's a pretty big difference between the look of these mascots and the current ones.

The new mascots have a more animated cartoony look to them, whereas these mascots are slightly more realistic, which is one of the reasons why they were retired.

And you can see here where they have the realistic canine teeth, and the actual regular teeth that are in real dogs' mouths.

- [Anna] Wes says the heads, hands and feet come off of these vintage costumes, and the human mascot would step into the body through an opening in the torso.

- These costumes might look like they're gonna be super heavy and warm, and just the worst ever to wear, but the material is actually pretty lightweight.

So it needed to be like that so the mascots could run around at football games and basketball games.

- [Anna] Created by a former student, loved by all students and ready to capture the hearts of future students, the Saluki changed SIU for the better.

- I had been part of it.

I didn't realize that in later years, this would still be such a predominant and such a meaningful mascot.

- [Anna] For Dede, it's about sharing.

Whenever she visits King Tut's pyramid, she leaves a paw stone, a clear stone with a Saluki paw painted on it.

- Anytime you see a Saluki or meet a friend that was a Saluki, you give them two stones, one for them, and one to be passed on to someone.

- Thanks to Anna Twomey from the SIU Alumni Association for that great report, preserving Saluki history.

Well, students at SIU Carbondale can preserve stories as well, thanks to the Digital Humanities Lab.

We are thrilled to welcome the lab's Founder and Director, Pinckney Benedict.

Pinckney, thank you so much for being with us today.

- It's absolutely my pleasure.

- It is great to have you here.

Tell me about, to start with, the Digital Humanities Lab at SIU Carbondale, what it is and how you started this effort.

- Well, I literally started it about five years ago.

I discovered virtual reality, and I bought myself a virtual reality headset and I brought it into my office.

And the next thing I knew, my office hours were chock-a-block, right?

Generally speaking, office hours, pretty slow time, but I had students I didn't even know coming in and saying, "Are you the VR guy?"

And I'd put them in VR, and they could fly or use Google Earth VR to visit their old neighborhood.

And it was clear that this was really a success, that this was a medium that really made contact with young people, with our students, and that it told them stories that they were interested in.

And so I thought, well, this has to become part of our curriculum.

And so I began the search for the new ways that we could update our creative writing curriculum.

- So connecting writing to things like virtual reality, video, et.

cetera.

- Exactly.

Because it's fairly low tech and low expense, we started with podcasting.

I got an innovation grant from the SIU Foundation, which has been extremely generous with us and really supportive.

I got an innovation grant from them to start a podcasting lab.

We built the podcasting lab.

We started a thing called Blanket Fort Radio Theater, which was... in a way it was our response to the pandemic, that we started out recording.

Well, what Blanket Ford Radio Theater does is we are making dramatized music, voices, theatrical audio books out of the back list at SIU Press.

It's a really good partnership that we have with Amy Etcheson, who's the director of the Press.

And so we started doing that, and then the pandemic hit and we didn't have access to our equipment anymore.

And so the students responded magnificently.

They got under their tables in their kitchens in their apartments and put blankets over the- - Oh, amazing.

- Yeah, it was great.

It was such a... You know, in that time, which was really difficult in academia, I mean, everywhere of course, but not seeing your students and not being able to get together.

But they rallied, and we put out a really complicated first audio book called "A Night of Another Sort," which is about Charlie Birger.

He was a bootlegger and gangster in Southern Illinois back in the '30s, I guess, and the last man hanged in Illinois, Charlie Birger.

And that was a real success.

It went up on the NPR One podcasting platform, you all hosted it at WSIU on the radio station, so that really set us off.

We had such a success early on.

That project's still going.

- And what other things are students learning and interested in terms of podcasting?

'Cause podcasting is all the rage, not just dramatic presentations like Blanket Fort that you just explained, but everything from interviews to actually really creative and unusual, kind of a mix of different genres really.

- Well, and we have spawned.

Of students who have worked here, there's a podcast called "The Monster Professor" with Josh Woods, who is one of our graduates.

He's an expert on monsters and he has other experts on monsters.

He's had the top Tolkien scholars in the world on his show, Tom Shippey, Michael Drout, Corey Olsen.

So getting really good, impressive guests, as well as Kevin Sorbo, who was Hercules.

- Oh, yes.

A lot of people know him.

- There's another podcast called "Saints and Witches."

And it's hosted by graduates of our program, one of whom is a devout Catholic, the other of whom is a Wiccan.

And every week they trade stories.

One of them tells about a saint that she's interested in, and the other tells about a witch or some related subject that she's interested in, and they're both trying to recruit each other.

They're trying to convert each other.

So as you say, a lot of really unusual, funny material.

- And topics that you often don't hear deep dives into in the traditional media.

- True.

Well, one of the things that podcasting has revealed, I think, is that people are hungry for long form interviews and discussions, and deep discussions of things that.

Yeah, I mean, most people probably think monsters are silly, some of us take them pretty seriously, and particularly in literature.

But people are apparently willing to listen to an hour or more of folks just talking about monsters.

Yeah, they're hungry for it.

- What synergies have you discovered through your work with students in the lab?

- Well, their interests dovetail very neatly with what we do in the lab.

They tend to come in as fans of podcasts, right?

They might not have read classic short stories from the 1950s, the sort of thing I was trained on, but they sure as heck have listened to a show like "Rabbits," which is a fiction show.

It's supernatural.

It's funny, it's interesting, it's scary.

And they know what I'm talking about.

And so they come in prepared to do that work.

They come in as gamers.

And so when we introduce them to narrative gaming, right, and the way games work as stories and stories can be thought of as games, they're ready, they're prepared for that sort of work.

- Do you think this may spur more interest and students working on the craft of writing because it combined with these new tech- - That's my hope, right, is that we are... What we do well, I think, is we connect classical literature.

I mean, I make reference all the time to the poetics or to Greek myth, to Shakespeare.

So we connect the long history of literature and creative writing to the games people are playing in their living room right now.

- Yeah.

Well, you are a published author in short fiction and a novel as well, so I wanna get the advice that you have for folks who are watching this and they're interested in writing, or they're interested not only in writing, but some of the other ways to adapt writing that you've talked about.

- Right.

Well, I mean, my advice is come to SIU.

This is such a fruitful time, right?

The world has changed so radically in terms of the opportunities that are available for writers.

You no longer have to publish with one of the big five publishers.

You no longer have to get an agent.

You can make your work through podcasting, through digital publishing, through TikTok.

We do TikTok, right?

'Cause it's a great short narrative form.

It used to be one minute.

So get your work out into the world.

Start having the experience of creating, putting your work out for an audience, hearing from the audience and then reiterating.

- I'm so glad you framed it in that way.

Because it's one of the things I often think about that's an advantage for students today that we did not have, is that being able to put your work out there, literally to the entire world, thanks to the internet, you really get feedback from such a diverse mix of folks.

- Exactly.

- It really helps you.

- Oh, no, I mean, it's a wonderful feedback mechanism.

I mean, it can also be dicey.

To automatically or very quickly connect with an audience, and even if it's quite a small audience, that's fine.

But no matter what your interest is, and my students are often like, "Well, I'm just too weird.

Who would connect with my work and my interests?"

And I promise you, there are a million people who are interested in whatever you're interested.

Whatever stories you want to tell, there's an audience for it, and you can now find it without help from any officialdom.

- I am looking forward to having you back for a longer segment, and having some of your students here and seeing some of the videos.

Quickly, I wanna ask you about where we started with virtual reality, because I think I'm in the camp, like a lot of people, who are just starting to learn about this.

But we have seen that very smart people, like the founder of Facebook, is investing heavily in this, believes deeply that this has an enormous future.

Is this your take too, based on the student interest?

- It is the future.

Yeah, some version, virtual reality, augmented reality, it's the way we're going to experience media.

It's the way we're going to.

It's the way we're gonna teach.

That's the way the university is moving, and needs to move.

All universities, not just ours.

So yeah, it's so fruitful.

Yeah, it's definitely the future.

- And amazing that students can really delve into this in a way where they will also be building their writing skills and their bigger skills about learning about the world in new ways.

It's just amazing.

- That's the hope.

I jump out of bed in the morning.

I really do.

I've been teaching a long time, but this is such a thrilling moment in history, I think.

- Neat to have new things.

Pinckney, thank you so much for being with us.

- Absolutely.

My pleasure, sir.

Thank you.

- My guest was Pinckney Benedict.

He's Founder and Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at SIU Carbondale.

That's "Eye on Education."

For everyone at WSIU, I'm Fred Martino.

Have a great week.

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