Pipe Dream is celebrating its 63rd 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 are 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.

Tuesday, Dec. 4, 1984

An outbreak of an undefined stomach illness in Newing College led to the temporary hospitalization of 68 then-Binghamton University students.

Harpur’s Ferry and Town of Vestal ambulance squads worked all night to transport the sick students, who became ill after eating at Newing Dining Hall a week earlier.

Tests at C.S. Wilson and Binghamton General hospitals were conducted to search for bacteria that would cause food poisoning, but results were inconclusive.

According to Dave Anderson, then-acting assistant vice president for student affairs and spokesman for the Campus Infirmary, officials believed the sickness came from a virus.

State investigators also made a questionnaire to look for patterns in the foods eaten by students before they got sick and what symptoms they experienced.

“[The questionnaires] indicated that there [was] no common denominator in terms of what the students had eaten,” Anderson said.

Two days after the students got sick, Newing Dining Hall temporarily closed before re-opening on Monday the following week.

All 68 students were released from the hospitals.

Anderson said the University took the requests for information from the parents of the students cautiously, and the majority of parents were happy with the way the situation was handled.

Outside of Newing College, four cases of similar illnesses were reported in College-in-the-Woods. Oneonta State College also saw 31 cases of a similar illness.