The BU photo archives are stacked with fantastic images. Many are on sheets of negatives filed away in small brown envelopes with only a scant few lines hinting at the subjects within. For this photo, the envelope simply says, “CLA students doing geology experiments on Alpert Mall in May 1981.” Other than that, we know nothing about the image: the people in it, what they were doing, or why someone decided it was worth preserving on film. We’d like your help to fill in the gaps.

Is that you in the dark shirt giving the photographer a quizzical look? Perhaps you’re the cool dude in center frame who ditched his shirt, but kept his athletic socks close to the knee? Maybe you can explain the fashion among geology students for denim cutoffs. It could be that you remember taking lessons outside on the Warren Alpert Mall, that strip of green separating the University from busy Storrow Drive.

The mall’s namesake was a 1942 graduate of CAS who became a successful entrepreneur and donor to the University and other institutions (Brown’s medical school is named in his honor). To most students, the Alpert Mall is better known as the BU Beach, but there’s no sand and little geological excitement: it used to be a parking lot. So what were the geology students experimenting on—and why, aside from catching a few rays, were they doing it on the Alpert Mall?

If you’re in the photo or just want to share your memories of the BU Beach, email the editor at thurston@bu.edu. And if you’d like to know what we discovered about our last archival image—US Senator George McGovern speaking to a sparse student crowd in 1970—check out our letters page.