UIUC is also a campus that, even after they stopped having a school-sanctioned white guy dress up as a Native American and do a "traditional dance" at halftime for their football games, had student groups organize unofficial gatherings for everyone to come watch a white guy dress up as a Native American and do a "traditional dance", despite the protest of a number of Native American tribes, who resented having their culture represented in such a manner without their approval.
Illinois, in general, is a weird state. It's reliably blue because of the Chicago metropolitan area, but I live 10 minutes away from the Wisconsin border and see fucking Confederate flag decals on trucks. My sophomore or junior year of high school, we had a new student, who was black, and he left after about a week because the place was too racist. (Rumor had it that someone had made a joke about lynching in earshot of the kid, though I'm not entirely sure.)
Urbana-Champaign is like a microcosm of that - liberal campus with a lot of Chicago kids, but also a lot of students from areas that make Woody Allen movies look like Spike Lee joints, situated in a town that's about as white and rural as it gets.