For the record, those are two different things:
The pre-2004 version of CC is what Roger called classic. It was the second version of College Confidential. The version we just lost was the vBulletin forum that lasted many years. On this third version, an attempt was made to “refresh” the styles by introducing a “lite” version with baby blue and lots of white. Fortunately, the option to remain classic was not abandoned and users could choose their fav’ color schemes.
We did not get so lucky this time. And again, for the record, I am not sure how old the design team or the forus group was, but that choice has been middle-schooly!
I really think you should start of poll in the Parents’ forum and take it from there!
PS As far a revisiting the threads of the Classic Forum, my option of choice has been to load the site and use the “search this site” feature of Google. Of course, I usually know what I am looking for and that helps defining the searches.