JUST WHEN you thought the practice of collegiate branding had been forever buried in the dingy frat-house basements of the past, our Board of Visitors has brought it back. Not, of course, in the grand fraternal tradition of poking at each other's nether regions with red-hot cattle irons. Instead (and much less amusingly), our Board members have focused their attention on branding as a marketing ploy. The idea seems to be to distill and capture the University's best features in a competitive brand that can be easily packaged and pitched to potential donors, students and faculty. Not surprisingly, however, some of the ideas that have surfaced in the wake of the Board's branding brainstorm sessions have been