COLUMN: Meet me at that one place
As a pseudo-journalist I feel it is my duty to tell some of the tragic, untold stories that happen here on campus. One of these I feel responsible to divulge is the little known fact that one of every four incoming freshman drops out of school after the first year. The reasons for this can vary, from disinterest and bad grades to lack of money and intimidation of large bull costumes at sporting events. Besides these, however, there is one more reason for freshman drop outs that tragically remains unknown to most: building
names.
You may wonder what in the world building names have to do with freshman drop out rates. You may also wonder who in the world is intimidated by men in large bull costumes. While I only have theories for the latter, the reason for the former question is really quite simple: confusion.
Nearly every building on campus has the name of a person attached to it, but hardly anybody knows the official names of all these buildings. If I told you to meet me in the Ray B. West building, you would probably never leave your apartment, partly because you would want to avoid me but also partly because
you have no idea where that is. If I told you to meet me in the English building, however, that would change everything (except “the wanting to avoid me” part). The shocking revelation to most people is that those two buildings are, in fact, one and the same.
Even though students don’t usually know the official names of buildings, they have still managed to survive by adopting nicknames for the buildings. Unfortunately this slang does you no good when you receive your schedule for any given semester and you are bombarded with the confusing and unfamiliar
official names of the buildings.
Thus even at the mid-semester point we have students wandering aimlessly around campus still searching for the strange building on their schedule until finally they decide that they might as well drop out of college because the building they are supposed to be in apparently doesn’t exist. Another one
in four freshman lost to the cause of higher education.
Well not only does the building exist, but there is also an easy solution to this problem. All we need to do is switch the official building names to a slang term that we would all recognize. Finding your class would never be an issue again.
Considering that we did make such a transition, the next semester you may have a schedule with classes in such places as, “The Building With the Wood Stack Sculptures In Front of It,” “The Big Building at the Edge of Campus Where You Can Occasionally Watch Movies,” “The Building That Has All the Sports Stuff In It By the Rugby Fields,” “The Building With That Weird Mosaic In the Entrance,” “That Big All-Glass Building That Isn’t the University Inn But Is Close to It.” Just like that, no more building name confusion.
I do realize that this is an imperfect solution. Obviously there is a reason all these buildings have been given names of certain persons, and if we remove those names we also remove the names of the noteworthy people who deserve to be remembered. So how can we remember the names of these wonderful USU predecessors and keep the useful building slang at the same time? I can think
of one method that works for helping me remember someone’s name better than any other: make action figures of those people.
So if you would like to get your very own USU legendary action figure, such as a Stanley Cazier figurine, or an Erma Eccles, Stan Laub, or Widstoe, then go to the Bookstore and order one today. The Bookstore, by the way, is located in The Building That Has the Hub in the Basement.
Marty Reeder is a senior majoring in history education. Comments or building slang ideas can be sent to martr@cc.usu.edu