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together a group of faculty and staff interested in a genuine and vibrant student theater program in the College. Steve Schroer, who had been working in the College Dean of Students Office, and Herman Sinaiko were able to help broker a merger of existing groups — Blackfriars, Concrete Gothic, and others — and reestablished a student-dominated University Theater Committee to manage the affairs of student theater on campus.163 In 1983, Frank Kinahan, a faculty member in English and in General Studies in the Humanities, became the faculty director of University Theater and Steve Schroer was appointed as managing director. It was owing to the strong leadership of Sinaiko, Kinahan, and Schroer between 1982 and 1992 that the group gained immediate and visible successes, eventually leading to the vibrant student theater culture that is evident on campus today. The “reborn” University Theater immediately gained traction, and by December 1984 student theater claimed to be the second largest student activity on campus, next to intramural sports.164 Between 1983 and 1990, the number of students participating in some aspect of the theater increased from 120 in 1983 to over 500 in 1990 and the number of main stage student productions sponsored by UT increased from 5 to 20 per year. Equally important, the University now returned to the customary practices of the pre-1945 period, valorizing and empowering the cultural project of student theater to be an institution that should be substantially controlled and organized by the students themselves, with students controlling the standing committee that essentially ran UT, selecting both the plays to be performed and the personnel who would perform them. Kinahan would proudly observe in 163. “Final Proposal for Theater Unification,” May 28, 1983, College Archive. The idea of a student-controlled board for UT was first initiated in 1962 by Robert Benedetti. 164. Steven Schroer to Duel Richardson, December 12, 1984, College Archive.