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Respect
the Crimson Eye
Written October
31, 2019
College
athletic teams require symbolic nicknames. In many cases, these
represent savage beasts meant to intimidate opponents, such as Tigers
or Wolverines or Fighting Irish.
Not
wishing to celebrate aggression, some schools have merely chosen
colors: the Dartmouth Big Green, the Harvard Crimson, the
Syracuse Orange, the Stanford Cardinal.
My own
peace-loving alma mater is Oberlin College. When it introduced
intercollegiate sports in 1886, Oberlin boasted nothing but its
initial: the letter O.
The
athletes wore crimson and gold. When they donned their varsity
letters, they became known as O men. We can imagine
their supporters urging them on with cries of Go,
ye O men!
Even today
the athletic department's website is goyeo.com.
Some of
Oberlin's other Internet sites use just the
as a favicon. |
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The 1890s
Below we
see part of our 1892 football team, which beat Ohio State twice and
finished undefeated. At least we claimed an upset
victory at Michigan. The teams had agreed to play only until
4:50 PM so that Oberlin could catch the last train home. After
we took a 24-22 lead and Michigan had the ball, the referee
actually an Oberlin substitute player announced that it was
now 4:50, and our winning team hurriedly left the field. Done
is the fray and won is the day, saved by our trusty
O men! That's what an Oberlin music student
would write a few years later in A Song of Victory.
However,
the umpire was a Michigan man, and he didn't agree that the game was
over. Arguing that the ref hadn't accounted for four minutes of
injury time, the umpire handed the ball to Michigan's George Jewett,
who walked into the end zone. To this day, each school claims
it won.
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I've
colorized Oberlin's 23-year-old coach on the left. His name was
John Heisman.
Born in
nearby Cleveland, Heisman had played Ivy League football at Brown and Penn.
After
coaching at Oberlin, he later went on to even greater fame. A
prestigious trophy bears his name. |
The music
student I mentioned, John Prindle Scott, also wrote (with words by
Robert E. Brown '01) another song titled Knights of the Golden O.
Then
here is to old Varsity,
Our pride and boast to show!
And
here's to ev'ry gallant knight
Who wears the golden O!
Than
any regimental suit
On me you could bestow,
I'd
rather wear the crimson coat
Set off with the golden O.
The 20th Century
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Newspapers
adopted Knights of the Golden O as the varsity's
nickname. Here's a 1913 baseball clipping from the Oberlin Review.
But
sportswriters, even student sportswriters, wanted something shorter
and punchier.
In the
fall of 1926, the Review ran a contest. Lucius
Lee Shackson submitted the eventual winning entry, a
clever elision of ye 'O' men Yeomen. |
Unfortunately,
in common parlance a yeoman was only a lowly subsistence
farmer. There are some shocks of wheat on the Learning
and Labor college seal, but this is hardly an image to strike
fear into the hearts of foes like the Wolverines. |
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However,
Shackson noted that yeoman also could denote a member of a
fighting organization, such as a Navy petty officer or a Yeoman of
the Guard. There's a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta bearing the
latter title.
If
costumed mascots had been in vogue in 1926, a Tower Warder might have
begun prowling the sidelines, brandishing his poleaxe to inspire the
Yeomen (and later the Yeowomen). |
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My Postgraduate Years
After I
received my degree in physics in 1969, there were changes on
campus. Physicist Robert W. Fuller served as Obie's president
for a few years, tripling the enrollment of minorities.
Also,
students welcomed the arrival of another group of minorities in
Tappan Square, where the gray squirrels now included a few white ones.
These cute
little red-eyed albinos became an endearing icon. |
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Oberlin
College, or OC, officially adopted a determined-looking white
squirrel in 2014 as part of its Athletic Department branding.
Then
former college president Fuller was heard from again. In 2016,
at the age of 80, he published his eleventh book. This was a
children's tale about a nut collector.
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Theo
just wanted to belong. However, when he and his gray
friends played hide-and-seek, he was embarrasingly easy to find.
That is,
until the first snowfall. Then he became an eluding star. |
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And Now . . .
Finally,
in the summer of 2019, current college president Carmen Twillie Ambar
introduced a proper collegiate mascot.
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The new
symbol of the Yeomen and Yeowomen, over seven feet tall and wearing
size 32½ Birkenstocks, is neither a farmer nor a Beefeater but a
furry albino squirrel!
A true
Obie, passionate about politics and the environment, loving
music and art, this bushy-tailed sciurinian is said to prefer the
pronouns they/their/them.
By what
name should
they be called?
There were
397 suggestions, including Macademia, a blend of
macadamia nuts with academia. |
The
question went to a nationwide vote. The Review expressed
its preference among the six finalists, and that choice turned out to
be the name that was unveiled at the homecoming football game on
October 5:


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