Imagine this: it is another beautiful day as you walk through your beautiful life and you bump into an old friend from your hometown and begin to catch up. The friend asks you where you are going to school, to which you proudly reply, “NYU! Go…”. Suddenly your mind draws a blank. Are we the Bobcats or the Violets? The only certain thing is that we are not called the Torches. This is the plight of the NYU student, and it is indicative of our schoolwide identity crisis. Why do we have multiple names for our student body to choose from when all we really need is one? And of course, the one we should be committing to is the Violets.

The Bobcat is a cookie cutter excuse for a mascot that is disconnected from the school. If anything, it is more likely to see an actual wild bobcat roaming NYU than to find a student wearing school gear with a bobcat on it. What all of our school gear does have is the proud splash of violet so vitally tied to this university’s identity. The Bobcat, as intimidating as it may be, is far better known as the face of a failed NBA team than of a school like NYU. We are a Division III school and because of that we must also realize that instead of half-heartedly attempting to create what sounds like it could be a pathetic Division I mascot, we could instead embrace our true character as NARPs, or Non-Athletic Regular People.

Why would we try to keep pretending to be something we are not? As the class of 2020’s convocation speech outlined, “We are not a school of people who play on football teams, we are a school of people that own football teams.” It is about time we stop acting like it is the other way around. The Violet represents the same merit that Stanford has with the Cardinal, and they seem to be able to make it work. Naming ourselves the Violets also helps to cement our unique identity in an already eclectic neighborhood and an ever changing city.  

The violet color that is so inextricably linked not only to the school but also to the city must be our defining factor. It is not about a generic mascot that any school could pull from a hat and call their own, but about one that is intrinsic to the identity of NYU. We are a school in and of the city, and we bleed a bold, vibrant violet.

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Email Thomas Price at [email protected].