OUR VIEW: College’s new name is a pain

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?That’s how the old saying goes. It’s perfectly applicable in many ways at Utah State. We don’t see anybody clamoring for a change at the head coach position for men’s basketball, because what we have is obviously working. We don’t see anybody demanding that the Quickstop be closed down in place of something better, because that place is always at least decently busy.

    So why is it that the formerly named College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences feels the need to try and alter its moniker from the previously mainstream “College of HASS” to simply “CHASS”?

    Is it an effort to sound hip? Is it to try and give it a new image now that the “arts” portion of that college has seceded off to form a more perfect union for itself?

    HASS still works just fine. The arts are gone, but now the A in HASS can represent the “and” that was so long ignored from that title. Even at last week’s student elections when the new “CHASS” senator was announced, the crowd reacted by shouting, “HASS!”

    People are familiar with the College of HASS. Now with this new endeavor of nomenclatural alteration, the college is facing the issue of a lot of confusion, albeit mild, of having to explain to everyone exactly what “CHASS” is.

    This is all without even addressing the issue of redundancy, which is probably inevitable. For the most part, every other college at Utah State University has not tried any stunt like this. They simply go by their names of “College of Engineering” or “College of Agriculture”. Even the colleges that are named after somebody are referred to more often as just the “College of Education” rather than the proper full term of the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services.

    But if “CHASS” is supposed to be short for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, then saying “College of CHASS” is redundant.

    For HASS students, do you really want your graduation ceremony to simply be referred to CHASS, rather than something a little more proper like the College of Humanities and Social Sciences?

    It just seems like CHASS is dumbing things down and trying to be something it’s not. It also seems like an institution of higher education should be trying to come across as smarter and more well put together than to make some misguided attempt at a slang term nobody seems to like. Also, the word just sounds like something gross. We’re not sure what it is, but it just sounds wrong.