Our Version of Facebook in 1988 at the University of Maryland

November 11, 2026 by Shawn Collins

It wasn’t called Facebook, but we had a New Student Record when I was a freshman at the University of Maryland. The Interfraternity Council (IFC) published the book, which included information about the Greek system, along with photos and interests from freshmen who submitted their information.

I already knew I was going to rush a fraternity before I set foot on campus for my freshman year, but the New Student Record was a useful tool for background on Greek-letter organizations.

The book’s opening pages gave an overview of fall rush and what to expect from the bidding process. It also included a Q&A page on costs, what fraternities and sororities do on campus, etc., as well as the Greek alphabet and terminology related to the Greek system.

Up until then, my only interest in joining a fraternity was the parties. The New Student Record also did a good job of introducing freshmen to brotherhood and sisterhood, leadership, philanthropy, and intramurals. Still, the parties were the main attraction for me then.

That information was useful, but as I looked through the pages, the real draw for me was seeing my fellow incoming freshmen and wondering which ones I’d meet.

The picture I submitted was a grainy shot of my high school graduation, and my interests were music and soccer – some things never change.

As I started college, my plan was to be a journalism major, as I listed in the New Student Record, but I never made it out of Pre-Journalism, because I got a 1.0 GPA in my first semester. From there, I meandered into Radio, TV, and Film as a major for a time, but ultimately graduated in Communications.

It was pretty remarkable to me that the bulk of students in the book were from New Jersey and New York. Even though I grew up ten miles from campus, there weren’t many people from my high school at the University of Maryland. I think I ran into maybe a dozen of my high school classmates over my five years at Maryland. That’s probably not a big surprise, since Laurel, MD was a working class town.

Paging through the New Student Record now, the people I recognize are mostly my brothers in Pi Kappa Alpha, and others who were in the Greek system.

Every once in a while, it is fun to look back and see all of the big hair on the girls and the mullets on the guys – what a magical time. But I do also wonder how things turned out for all of these faces. Did they stick with their major? Did they move across the country or world? Which of them are no longer with us?

Those pictures of the 1988 freshman will always be the age in the pictures to me.

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