Cardboard Boat Regatta is an event held every spring semester at Campus Lake. Participants include university students and community members. The goal is to complete three trips around a 200-yard course on the lake using makeshift cardboard boats. There are three different categories for entries: canoes or kayaks, experimental boats, and instant boats (boats created on-site the day of the event).
"Commodore" Richard Archer, a professor of Art and Design, created the regatta as a final examination for students in his freshman design class in 1974. Archer was inspired by Buckminster Fuller, then a distinguished professor at SIU, who had espoused the principle of "doing the most with the least." Participation peaked in the late 1980s and 90s, drawing crowds upwards of 20,000 people and receiving coverage on CNN's Good Morning America.
=== Saluki startup and weeks of welcome ===
The Saluki Startup & Weeks of Welcome are held during the first five weeks of the fall semester and include a range of activities designed …
