Introducing...The Marquette...Huh?

Marquette University's Board of Trustees yesterday completed their six-month study into whether or not the school should change their nickname back to "Warriors", or stick with the current "Golden Eagles". The Marquette universe had been waiting to overturn the 1994 name change since its inception, and it looked like it might finally happen. What the Trustees decided was:

Surveys found that fans were unenthusiastic about the Golden Eagles nickname and found it boring, weak and too common.

This is all true, which is why many expected the University to change back to the popular Warriors name the school had when the basketball team was good. But that turned out to be way to easy and popular for the needlessly courageous and sensitive trustees, who also decided:

The perspective of time has shown us that our actions, intended or not, can offend others. We must not knowingly act in a way that others will believe, based on their experience, to be an attack on their dignity as human beings. We cannot teach one principle about respect for human dignity in our classrooms, than fail to act by the same principle when making decisions.

Which is a wonderful sentiment, but doesn't take into consideration the fact that sometimes those who are offended by something are offended for no good reason. This statement lays down some disturbing ground rules that I'm sure the Marquette alumni (who overwhelmingly wanted the Warriors name back) will be howling about:
1) "Time" is apparently a stand-in term for "Postmodernism".
2) It doesn't matter if the offense is intentional or not, it must be treated the same way.
3) Some Native Americans believe the extremely generic and non-ethnic term "warrior" to be an attack on their dignity as human beings. They believe this based on "experience" instead of rational thought, and we must view them as right about this, even though they're wrong.
4) There is apparently a class at the University that teaches "Respect for Human Dignity". Therefore, if anyone says the University is taking away that dignity, the University should stop the offending action, no matter how spurious the claim might be.

I don't want to harp on this too much, because deep down I don't care about the Marquette nickname, nor do I view it as a slippery slope into politically correct oblivion because we are already there (as evidenced by the brainwashed Marquette students' quotes here. I especially liked the girl who said, "Anything would be better than Warriors". Really? How about...I don't know -- Injuns? Redmen? See what I mean when I say brainwashed?) What I want to concentrate on is the Trustee's solution to this nickname problem, which was to come up with a new name entirely. The name they chose:

The Marquette Gold.

Hey, I kinda like it, even though it's just a color. Wait -- it's also a currency. The Marquette Money. They are so money. At least nobody will ever be offended by it. I wonder if they considered "Golden Warriors" or "Blue Warriors" or "non-Native American Warriors" as a possible solution. We may never know.

This just in -- the Milwaukee paper has the early poll results on the name -- 94.2% of respondents say they don't like the new name, 5.8% say they do (ever the iconoclast, I voted as one of the 5.8%). This was a slap in the face to the alumni, and will not go over well. I can't wait to see what happens.