Generations of Southeast alumni compare experience

Beep. Beep. Beep.

It's the alarm going off for the third time.

He drags himself out of bed, throws on a Redhawks T-shirt and hurries out the door of Vandiver Hall to start the walk across campus to his lecture class in Dempster Hall.

He's met by his 70-plus classmates and finds the last empty seat in the back of the classroom. He knows just a handful of people in the room.

After class, he meets his friends at the University Center for lunch. Chick-fil-A never seems to disappoint.

Charles "Chuck" Cox, left, and Robert Cox Sr. pose at Houck Fieldhouse. (Submitted photo)

The rest of the day will consist of studying, club meetings and working off that Chick-fil-A at the Recreation Center-North and maintaining a glimpse of a social life.

For some, this is a typical example of life as a Southeast Missouri State University student today.

Keyword: today.

It's hard for students to imagine the campus before Dempster Hall, Vandiver Hall, the University Center, the Redhawks mascot and the other signature aspects of campus associated with Southeast. But for the long line of alumni in Southeast junior Jason Cox's family, the early times of Southeast without all of these modern aspects are ones his family cherishes.

Cox is in his first semester of studying biology after transferring from the University of Missouri. It wasn't hard to decide where he would end up after leaving Mizzou because of the large class sizes and distance from home. Southeast met all of Cox's requirements.

But if he did happen to have any concerns, he could always ask his parents, uncles, grandparents and other relatives about their experience at Southeast. All of them are alumni of the university.

Although much of the college experience at Southeast stays the same, there is no denying its growth and how the look of the university has changed from the time Cox's grandpa taught at Southeast during the 1960s.

Cox's grandmother, Betty Cox, looks back at when her husband Robert L. Cox Sr. taught there. He was hired in 1964.

"When he was first hired by SEMO, he was hired to develop a print shop or to plan and buy and whatever you do to set up a print shop for the university and develop a printing program for the students," Betty Cox said of her late husband. "He used to teach journalism majors."

The print shop was in Academic Hall and printed materials the university needed such as pamphlets, brochures, commencement booklets, photographs and more. With such a heavy workload, Betty Cox often found herself late in the print shop with her husband to make sure a job was finished by deadline.

"We were there a lot," Betty Cox said. "For example, early on in his career, he used to print the commencement programs with all the graduates in it, and they wouldn't get us the names of the graduates until like the night before or the morning of, so he'd probably be there most of the night printing the commencement program, and I'd be there helping him."

Though Betty Cox didn't work at or attend Southeast, she knew all of the faculty members and their spouses by being a member of what she called "faculty dames."

"Back in the day, there were mainly male faculty, so the wives got together once a month for fellowship and to be acquainted and so forth," Betty Cox said.

The days of knowing all of the faculty have long passed for her and the faculty dames.

"Probably the greatest change has been the growth," Betty Cox said. "Because for years, we knew every faculty member by their name and the spouse, then it has grown so large that now we don't."

This fall, Southeast had enrolled 11,917 students and last year employed 1,274 faculty and staff members.

While the campus has grown, some traditions haven't changed for Betty Cox. She and her husband bought season tickets for Southeast's football and basketball games and, although her husband retired in 1991 and died in 2007, she continues to buy them today. She also occasionally attends performances at the River Campus.

But she's not always going to these events alone.

Her son and Jason Cox's father, Robert L. Cox Jr., attend some of the games with his mother.

Robert Cox Jr. graduated from Southeast in 1983 with a degree in accounting. It wasn't hard for him to decide what university to attend. Not only was Southeast close to home and affordable, it was where he spent much time helping his father in the print shop and where he went to elementary school and high school.

He said Scully's second floor once was an elementary school and the first floor was a high school, so that's where he went.

"It was a huge part of my life," Robert Cox Jr. said. "I spent the first 21 years of my life on the campus. SEMO was always there every day."

Jason Cox's mother, Janie Cox, graduated from Southeast with a degree in elementary education and taught second grade for 30 years. Janie Cox's father and two of her brothers graduated from Southeast, and her mother and another brother attended the university.

Jason and Betty Cox agreed having so much of the family attend Southeast gives them a unique bond.

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