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Monday, July 05, 2004
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THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY
Those of us who attend or teach at George Washington University are lucky. Our school has always had a high-profile, mature, and manly name. I suspect I’m not the only one at GW who has looked with some pity over the years at Mary Washington College, in Virginia, and wondered how it got saddled not only with a girly name but with the childish designation “college.” To add to its woes, Mary Washington College is named after the obscure mother of a famous politician (George Washington). In terms of the contemporary political lexicon, this would be as if, on one side of Petaluma, you had Arnold Schwarzenegger University, and, on the other, Frau Gjertrude Schwarzenegger College. Mary Washington has lately done something about this. After a certain amount of controversy involving women students wanting to protect the gender-positive implications of the original name, the college has transmogrified itself. It is now the University of Mary Washington. "It simply has a more prestigious and distinctive tone," says one administrator there. The new logo with phallic pillars is also cool: "It looks like a Matisse cutout to me so it has a real look of class and style," in the words of a board member. Class, prestige - you get the idea. Status anxiety has clearly dogged this campus for a long time. Now it looks as though they are home free. |