Proudly ambiguous

During my last week of high school, my graduating class had a “future college mascot dress-up day.” That day, the halls were filled with tigers, mustangs, bulldogs and even spiders. However, being the first from my school in Memphis, Tenn., to attend IU, I faced something of a predicament: how do you begin to dress as a Hoosier? \nI’ll admit, I was initially perturbed with the University for not having a “real” mascot after I spent that day wearing a poster board sign around my neck that labeled me as a “Hoosier” (I wasn’t feeling creative enough to come up with anything else) while my friends were dressed to the nines. It was only after I arrived at IU that I realized why we don’t have a “real” mascot: It’s because we don’t need one. \nAs nice as it would be to have someone dressed up as Furby doing cartwheels behind our end zone, it’s not necessary. Bloomington is a quirky place, and we pride ourselves on our oddities. When visitors to campus ask what a Hoosier is, we have a wealth of bizarre etymological hypotheses to answer them. Everybody has their favorite explanation, whether they’re of the school that believes the word was born of Indianans’ penchant for mispronouncing things (“Who’s there?”) or the bloody aftermath of frontier knife fights, when people would claim the lumps of flesh left on tavern floors (“Whose ear?”).\nSo yes, we’re weird – but we’re damn proud of it. Schools generally stick to the same few generic mascots, and we don’t want to become the 7,000th school of tigers or bears. And at least we’ve avoided adopting a lame mascot, unlike some of our in-state rival schools that will go unnamed.\nBesides, it’s always fun to get wrapped up in your school’s own uniqueness. I, for one, saw the fruits of non-traditional mascots at my high school, home of the fighting turkeys. Every Thanksgiving, we staged a mock funeral for our beloved “Ace,” which included a procession of our student council, decked out in mourning garb, bewailing the loss of our proud bird and carrying an effigy of him. Although the whole setup bordered on insanity, we looked forward to the event every year. And while some might argue that a turkey, like a Hoosier, is not a “real” mascot, there is absolutely no way that schools with more common mascots had as much fun with theirs as we did. \nAnd in my experience at IU, students have not expressed a desire to do away with the Hoosier name, despite the fact that the American Heritage Dictionary seems to think we are merely labeling ourselves as hillbillies. The true push for change comes from outside of IU - people who could not possibly understand why we love having a pseudo-mascot. \nThe IU Spartans? No – it’s overused. The IU Red Devils? Too many religious implications. The IU Boilermakers? Absolutely not! We’ll stick with what we’ve got, thanks!