What's In A University Name?

Yesterday I read about a college here in Oregon. It's name is Rogue Community College. What? A rogue is defined as a dishonest or unprincipled person. Why would I want to go to school to become a rogue? I could figure out how to do that without paying tuition.  I decided to access the Rogue web site to find out the origin of their name. I did, but there is nothing there telling out that. All I found was that it's a two year community college and it has no course offerings in how to become argue. I wonder why a school has name like that?

This got me to thinking and I did research on line to find the strangest names for colleges and universities in the U.S. There's Rice University (where I guess they cook all day) and Tufts University (Little Miss Muffet must have studied and found her tuffet there). I am not sure I would want to tell people I graduated from Tufts. The mascot of Tufts is an elephant, weird for a country with no elephants galloping around. There is a Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. It's a long standing, and a well respected teacher preparation school. I find it odd to name a university after a rock that has too much moss on it. My research shows that is got it's name from another school it took over that was named Slippery Rock Normal School. I gave up trying to trace that school's origin because it's too slippery a slope for me.

In Indiana there is a Ball State University. Hmmm Maybe that is a porno school. If not I think it's a bad name for a school and a name change might help that university's image. The good news is that I found out Beaver College recently did change it's name (to Arcadia College). I guess that school is building bridges to a better image. Image is important, but some of the nations best academic schools have weird names. The Ivy League, which has some of the most prestigious Universities in the country, has Dartmouth and Colgate Universities. Dartmouth's name has nothing to do with anyone's mouth and Colgate's name has nothing to do with the toothpaste that brushes the teeth in that mouth. You can look up the name origin yourself if you want to know how the names cam about. I am not going to be the big Dart-mouth  to tell you what it is.

There is a Hamburger University (no fries, please) In Illinois. But the name fits because it is a University that trains McDonald's fast food employees about how to make those greasy burgers taste so bad. The web site for the school says it is devoted to teaching Mc D employees "restaurant operations procedures, service, quality and cleanliness" to the next group of managers at your local McDonald's restaurant. It graduates about 5000 managers each year. If Hamburger University is too greasy for you, you can enroll in the Ohio College of Clowns (I swear that I wasn't educated there), College of the Ozarks (No tuition. It's a work/study school), or Deep Spring's College (where you learn to milk cows).

There are plenty more weird college names ,but all this education is spinning my empty, uneducated, head. I'll leave you instead with some weird mascot names you might not know and surely won't be able to justify. How about the Scottsdale Community College 'Fighting Artichokes'. the Wake Forrest University 'Demon Deacons', the Oglethorpe University 'Stormy Petrels', the Georgetown University 'Hoyas',  the University of Arkansas at Monticello 'Bolweevals', the University of California Irvine 'Anteaters', the Arkansas Tech 'Wonder Boys', the Trinity Christian College 'Trolls', the Washburn University 'Icabods', the St. Louis University 'Billikins', the Concordia University 'Cobbers',  the Evergreen State College 'Geoducks', the Campbell University 'Fighting Camels', the North Carolina School of the Arts 'Fighting Pickles', the California State University-Long Beach 'Dirtbags', the University of California  at Santa Cruz 'Banana Slugs', the University of Louisiana-Lafayette 'Raging Cajuns', the Earlham College 'Hustlin Quakers', the Tulsa University  'Golden Hurricane', the South Dakota School of Mines 'Hard Rockers', the Purdue University 'Boilermakers'...... I would go on but now my empty head hurts too much.