When people ask me what I got out of college, I'm going to give them a visit to the gun show.
The gloves will come off; the fisticuffs will ensue. As I raise my dukes and begin to float around my now bewildered interrogator, I'll roll up my sleeves and lay a sloppy kiss on each of my biceps, and flex them so that the tattoos there are prominently displayed - on one arm, Pax; on the other, Lux. Then I'll land a sledgehammer fist of virtue to their sternum and end the conversation.
Rumors abound, my fellow Jumbos, and when gossip reaches even my isolated corner of the grapevine, I treat it as fact. Something is happening in the upper echelons of the Tufts' administration that is about to change the face of Tufts forever. Soon, the light blue crest of Tufts that we all know, the very same that flies under Old Glory herself, will cease to exist.
Say goodbye to the seal.
While most of what I write today is based off of hearsay and postulation, I don't doubt that this is false. Certain administration officials feel that changing the seal of Tufts will make this school "better." One proposed change is to make all the words on the seal in capital letters. Another is removing the Latin motto from the seal entirely. The former is apparently part of a plan to give the school an entrepreneurial face-lift. The latter, according to rumor, is in an attempt to distance ourselves from the Ivy League schools and the stereotype that we are all Ivy rejects.
And of course, studies show that capital letters are more attractive to young soon-to-be entrepreneurs. There's a line of credible experts that will vouch for the removal of Latin as a way to bolster student morale. In other words, I smell stupidity. Someone didn't do their homework. Someone was asked to come up with a viable solution to some of the school's problems, watched cartoons all night instead, and threw a project together the next morning.
Here's the thing: they are dead wrong. You hear me, administrators? The seal is not your problem. Let me go through all these rumors, just in case one of them is right. First, you're not going to attract would-be entrepreneurs by changing the seal. No, my friends, you need a business school to do that, and that is something Tufts doesn't have. It's not a chicken or egg question; build a school and they will come. Changing the seal will not guarantee an influx of business-minded students and future contributors to our endowment.
Second, why remove the Latin? Peace and Light is a damn good idea, as well as a great motto. Considering that the opposite of that pairing is War and Darkness, we've got some upright and honorable morals as a school. Those losers over at Harvard only have "Veritas." Give it a try, Jumbos - next time you say goodbye to a friend from Tufts, try using "peace and light." It's a Tufts-exclusive saying, and singular inside jokes like that are what school sprit is made of.
More to the point, removing the Latin is an insult. You may be trying to distance Tufts from the Ivy Leagues, but it only reinforces that Ivy-reject atmosphere. We couldn't get into Harvard or Columbia, and now we can't even boast a Latin motto. We have to use regular English, the layman's language. Who cares if we can't speak it (the title of this article is probably grammatically incorrect)? Are we an institute of higher learning or aren't we? Don't you realize that we are a closer-knit student group because of our dejectedness and resentment toward the Ivies?
Yet the straw that breaks the camel's back is the fact that this is going to cost money that could be spent elsewhere. Because it's not just the seal - there are stickers, flags, that huge wooden carved seal in Hotung that will all have to be replaced because the administration went out on a whim.
Well guess what: My 300 grand says that the deans and the higher-ups should be focusing on something more immediate and something less wrong. I don't like paying for grand experiments that sound stupid to begin with, nor do I appreciate the fact that the administration undoubtedly already hired someone to psychoanalyze the campus and then glibly let him spoon-feed them a load of crap instead of a solution.
Sometimes I don't even know what the deans do - anyone knows that this isn't the first time something like this has come up - because there is an obvious disconnect between the administration and the student body that is too large to ignore. Just remember this: Your salary is being bankrolled by the very students whose problems you are circumventing with idiotic projects like this. You can tell the next freshman you cram into a forced triple that instead of furnishing him a room, you redecorated the Tufts seal.
Peace and Light, Jumbos. Peace and Light, forever! If the administration decides to go through with this project, at least remember the motto - because it truly is so virtuous it's cool. Adopt it as a slogan. Keep it close. Or do what I do, and name your fists Peace and Light. Landing a right hook of Peace in someone's face, followed by an uppercut of Light would feel so damn righteous it would blow your mind.
