Go Harvard Cods?

The administration has been sizing up the University for the last year, and now we're about to raise vaults of money to fund every conceivable need.

But they forgot one thing--a mascot. Harvard desperately needs a mascot. It's surprising it's come this far without one. A future without one is, to me, unthinkable.

Let me explain. In the past two years I have been involved in Harvard athletics both as a participant (basketball and soccer) and as a loyal fan for many others. Being the loyal fan can be a lonely experience. Except for major sports events, there are usually a few parents, some alums (most of whom played the very same sport) and a scattered roommate or two in attendance.

What we lack in numbers we also seem to lack in spirit. There are wakes in Eastern Massachusetts with more enthusiam than most Harvard athletic events. We all know why this is true: Harvard is not a group experience; Henry David Throe, Class of 1837, not Teddy Roosevelt, Class of 1880, prevails. Puritans simply don't cheer.

A mascot could seriously improve this unfortunate situation. Granted, the mascot might be stupid--most mascots are--but it would serve a valuable function for the athletic program and the College as a whole. A Mascot would add at lest one more fan to athletic events and in some cases that would be a significant percentage increase.

A mascot could also give the other fans some one to look at when attention to the event inevitably lags. Have you ever been to a swim meet? Or a field hockey match? Having a kid dressed up as a moose or a skunk or a cod could only help.

If we had a mascot, other schools could steal it and we could become enraged and retaliate. Frats at MIT could engineer mechanical impersonations of our mascot which would appear and behave uncontrollably at football games.

We could rally around our mascot. We could rally against our mascot. We could just plain rally.

Lack of tradition dies hard, and it won't be easy to create something where nothing has existed for so long. Woody Allen said that relationships are like sharks: unless they move forward, they die. The same is true of great institutions. It's time for a change.

Maybe a shark would be better than a cod.