A highlight of Homecoming 2007 will be a reunion of the Physical Science Laboratory Janitors. This spirit group was formed in 1967 by a group of student workers, at a time when the Aggies had lost much of their stature as a regional athletic power. This, along with the Vietnam War and the prevailing counterculture, resulted in a university community with little interest in Aggie sports.

The PSL Janitors worked diligently to clean the laboratory every night, but as sports fans, they worried about the apathy of the student body when Lou Henson began to turn the Aggie basketball team around in 1967. So they began making large banners for the games with messages such as “PSL Janitors Say Go Aggies - Wax the Miners” and “Mop Up the Lobos,” hanging them between the light poles at Memorial Stadium and high on the Las Cruces High School gymnasium walls (and later at the Pan American Center).

When the Aggies went to the NCAA basketball regionals at Weber State, the janitors hung a banner in the rafters. The newspaper quoted Aggie player Sam Lacey as saying, “Man, do they have PSL Janitors here too?”

The Janitors also built the giant Aggie for football and basketball games, entered floats and Homecoming queen candidates and participated in the spring carnival. They were featured in the 1968 and 1969 editions of the NMSU Yearbook, the Swastika, and won an organization page award in 1969. They won the Aggie Spirit Trophy in 1967.

Not all of the PSL Janitors graduated from college – some were drafted into the military. But, according to Steve Owen ’73, the original president of the group, “The student janitor jobs, though less career-shaping than the co-op program, certainly did help a lot of our crew to stick it out and finally get that degree.”