Luke says Moo!

So it’s Rose-Hulman’s Homecoming weekend. I’m not going as I only know of one person who will definately be in the area and Mom’s birthday is tomorrow. So I’m headed down south to see the fam.

Anyway, as I still love the Rose Thorn I keep the RSS feed kicking along in my Google Reader. And today I saw an opinions piece titled “Goodbye Rosie?” and was intrigued.

Yeah, having an elephant as a mascot that’s named Rosie is a little odd. Having an elephant as a mascot and you’re sports teams are called The Fightin’ Engineers is also a little odd. Minus the fact that some where near 50% of the population sees less Rose football (sports in general) in their 4 years of school than they see commercials during a single Super Bowl. Anyway, the point being I like Rosie the elephant because it’s a little different. Plus, as the girls like to say, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” Rose is weird.

For those of you don’t want to read the article the gist is: someone complained to a student senator; the senator brought it up at SGA; majority of people didn’t like the idea of change; chances of losing Rosie are slim to none. Which is good from where I’m standing.

Rose isn’t a “normal” place. We don’t have normal sports, students, staff, faculty, or even a normal campus. We’re weird. Get over it. So you have to explain to your friends at home that your mascot is a female elephant and you’re a Fightin’ Engineer. You’re still getting a damned good education (supposedly-jury is still out on that).

Anyway, my rant is why would you want to change that heritage? Or better yet what would you change it to that has enough power to actually get someone who went to maybe 2 hours worth of sporting events in his 4 years at school to care about the mascot?

Here’s to Rosie! And no one ask Mom how old she is.

(All statistics contained in this post are based on experience and the usual set of lies, damned lies, and statistics.)

Edit: Edited for spelling. Thanks Mom.