In a move that baffled my fellow students, the local town of Terre Haute, and engineers around the world, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology decided to change its name to the Purdue Institute of Technology (PIT). Along with this drastic change in name, the school’s mascot has been changed to Purdue Pete riding atop Rosie the Elephant, and the school’s colors are the ever original black and P.I.T. yellow as well. And the collective 271,341 I.Q. of the student body has no clue why any of this happened.
“We weren’t informed at all!” proclaimed one student when I told him of the change. “They should have asked us! We could have been the Evergreen State College Geoducks!”
I, for one, was curious about how this happened so quietly right underneath our nose. There was no student design contest, no collective vote, not even a survey about changing the name at all. I knew something fishy was up, so I began to sniff around the Rose-Hulman society, searching for answers on how this all went down.
I started with a local alumnus, asking him how much input he had in the name change. He told me, “we had a vote, but it was about as real as the election of Saddam Hussein. They already had the Purdue hats being made as they tallied our votes.”
Stunned, I moved on to my next source of information: the student body. I soon found out that students had in fact been involved in the choosing of the new name—somewhat. Only one student, speaking on condition of anonymity, would tell me the truth:
“We gave our input, but they just laughed at us all. We really wanted the Geoducks! They threatened to transfer us to the real Purdue if we told a soul about it, so we all kept our mouths shut.”
While on the way to the administration, the final stop in my crusade for justice, I was suddenly kidnapped by four men in sunglasses and plaid jackets. They whisked me away to the far outskirts of Rose’s campus, up near the observatory, where I met a man that I never knew existed: the Rose-Hulman Godfather.
A nice old man in his early fifties, the Godfather had taken quite an interest in my activities. I quickly learned that the Godfather was the man behind many of the changes at Rose, and I was a thorn in his side that had to be dealt with. Wishing to know the truth once and for all, I agreed to quit my crusade if he would answer me one question. He agreed. So I asked him: “Why wasn’t the Rose-Hulman community involved in the name change?”
“Why not?” he said. “Because I don’t really care what the alumni think, so long as they think I care about them. As for the students and the rest of the Rose campus, I don’t really care what they think either. We don’t need to talk to them every time we want change the outstanding identity and environment they work daily to create.”
“Is that really what happened?” I dared to ask.
“No,” he replied. “But isn’t that exactly what it feels like?”