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SIU TELLS PLAYBOY THE PARTY`S OVER

Southern Illinois University wishes Playboy would get a clue.

Just when it appeared that Southern had begun to shed its image as one of the Midwest`s premiere ”party schools,” along comes Playboy magazine like some drunken former frat brother, slapping it on the back and dredging up the tawdry past.

”Congratulations Southern Illinois University . . . PARTY ON!” read an advertisement in the school`s Daily Egyptian newspaper a few weeks ago.

Playboy`s ad announced that SIU has been selected for inclusion on an updated version of the magazine`s 1987 list of ”the country`s top good-time schools.” Southern was rated 17th back then.

The school`s new ranking is to be announced in Playboy next April along with (SURPRISE!) ”a special spring pictorial, Women of the Party Colleges,” the ad ballyhooed.

Obviously, Playboy does not realize that this is the `90s. Even in Carbondale.

”Thanks, but no thanks,” responded an editorial a few days later in the student newspaper. ”Playboy is trying to resurrect SIU`s `party school` tag from the cold, dead ashes of the past. But the magazine fails to mention that . . . it is no longer a fact.”

SIU is certainly in no danger of being mistaken for say, Oral Roberts U. But things have mellowed considerably on the once seriously-festive Carbondale campus, according to Daily Egyptian student editor Tony Mancuso.

Mancuso noted that students and administrators alike supported a 1988 decision to put an end to SIU`s primary party school image-enhancer-an annual Halloween orgy in which as many as 20,000 trick-or-treaters would swarm upon the town`s famed downtown Strip and engage in unaccredited courses such as nude flag-pole perching and upside-down beer chugging.

These days, instead of seizing the city streets on Halloween most SIU students go home for a party-pooping fall break that was initiated because of fears that the annual event had gotten dangerously out of hand.

While SIU still has its fair share of Garth and Wayne gonzos, it also has an increasing number of students sobered by the fact that soon they will be entering a tightly-zipped job market, Mancuso said.

SIU`s students realize they can`t afford to have ”PARTY SCHOOL!”

blaring from their job resumes like some Axl Rose riff, the editor noted.

”With the way the job market is, people are saying that they can`t handle the party image anymore,” said Mancuso.

SIU`s chief spin-doctor, Jack Dyer, director of university relations, noted that he was not bothered by Playboy`s campus call. Southern has grown up while the dirty old magazine is locked in perpetual adolescence, he suggested. ”I consider Playboy`s announcement about Southern being a party school to have the same sort of credibility as the National Enquirer saying Elvis is alive and living with JFK and Hitler in a bunker in Argentina,” Dyer said.

Still, old images die hard, and Playboy has at least 200 witnesses to call on behalf of its contention that the forested SIU campus remains home to a good many free spirits. That is the alleged number of SIU women students who responded to the magazine`s solicitation for pictorial posers.

”Although some are saying they don`t want to be known as a party school anymore, the girls are still coming forward, even through protests, because they want to do it,” countered Playboy`s spin doctor, Elizabeth Norris.

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And now, the rest of the story on the Peoria sports reporter who dared to walk out on the grizzliest Bear in what turned out to be the Last of the Monday Bears` Press Conferences.

Phil Theobald, who covers the Bears for the Journal Star of Peoria, reported in a recent column that it wasn`t just Iron Mike`s foul mouth that caused him to stand and leave the press conference in a huff.

There was also a bran muffin to blame.

It seems that Theobald`s morning started badly on the day of the press conference. He had spent the previous night in a Chicago hotel and instead of the usual Danish with his wake-up breakfast, he was served a bran muffin.

No true-blue-collar Peoria man does bran, especially Theobald, who is known for taking neither coach guff nor whole grain.

Unhappy, but hungry, the sportswriter ate what room service brought him, then drove to the ill-fated press conference ”with a bran muffin lump” stuck in his craw, he wrote.

And so, when Ditka fired off the S.O.B. sobriquet, insult was added to heartburn. Had the Peoria sportswriter been served a doughnut, it might have been a whole different story, but when the coach let fly, ”the bran muffin factor took over” and Theobald took a hike.

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In another example of a Downstate newsman making the news, there is the tale of Rescue Reporter DeWayne Bartels of the Tazewell News in Morton.

Bartels, 34, went to a local retirement home a few weeks ago to check out a fresh report of a missing resident and, after interviewing administrators, decided to take a look around outside the home.

Within a few minutes, he found the 88-year-old woman lying in a shallow creek, moaning and weeping. He called police who were searching nearby, then jumped in the creek and pulled her out. The woman, who apparently had suffered a stroke, is recuperating.

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During construction this summer on Interstate Highway 55 near Divernon, a State Police trooper was summoned by work crews concerned that highway motorists were not observing the temporary 45-mile-an-hour speed limit.

According to The Montgomery County News in Hillsboro, the trooper set up a speed trap and his first catch was none other than a road crew worker in a truck carrying signs that said: ”Slow down. Road construction ahead.”

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Along with twitting road workers, the Hillsboro newspaper is mugging the ACLU in Chicago. The weekly is offering its readers coffee mugs bearing a drawing of the town`s famed county courthouse. A long-standing sign on the courthouse that has drawn threats of legal action from the ACLU Chicago office is not visible when the cup is empty.

But when hot liquid is poured in, the sign`s message-”The World Needs God”-miraculously and defiantly glows forth. The paper has already sold nearly 100 of the $13.50 miracle mugs, indicating that the buyers need either heavenly help or some hot java.