LIKE MOST of us, I appreciate a good play on words. There is nothing wrong with a little innuendo from time to time, and even as most people roll their eyes in mock disgust, few things lighten a mood and get a chuckle as consistently as a corny pun. My tolerance for witticism has been tested mightily in my time at the University, however, and this trend is showing no signs of slowing.
'Hoos for Open Access is a recently minted contracted independent organization on Grounds, but it is also the latest in the long and undistinguished line of CIOs that has tried to make the lackluster play on words work as a title. The group itself has something to do with Open Access, but beyond that there is no telling what stance it takes or what sort of agenda it pursues because its title is vague and unsubstantial.
The club is in crowded, if not particularly good company, with the 19 other CIOs at the University that utilize some variation of that same pun on the unofficial school mascot, the Wahoo. That's right, there are currently 20 active groups at this school that have appropriated this would-be clever witticism and turned it into a mind-numbing and inescapable play on words that appears in and around every corner of Grounds. For the sake of posterity and originality, it must stop.
It's not that I fail to understand the pun; certainly, within the first few times of coming in contact with it, all of us recognized the phonetic similarity between the contraction "who's" and the abbreviation of "Wahoos," the informal alternative to the official Cavalier for which this school is known. I guess some humor can be derived from the fact that by attending this university, we are all "Hoos," but at a certain point this little joke eventually loses its novelty.
For me, this occurred roughly three days after fall semester had started, and since then the utter profusion of "Hoos [insert club name here]" has become a mindless and unbearably wearisome irritation. The play on words is hard to ignore, which leads to an involuntary hatred of anyone and anything that chooses to use it.
"Oh, it's obnoxious," complains Second Year Tyler Duke. "It wasn't funny to begin with and seeing it everywhere just makes it that much worse." Reactions like this are as avoidable as they are understandable; originality in the naming process of a CIO or event will allow students to make a decision about the substance of the group itself, rather than immediately shunning it as juvenile and worthless.
The phrase is so common on Grounds that CIOs that employ it in their title effectively are declaring their unoriginality. Only those involved with these particular clubs can discern them from the mass of "Hoos" organizations that exist, while the rest of us only see an overwhelming mass of the same pun, reworked and reworded over and over again in a long and nondescript list of organizations. It is enough to make a student disinterested in the whole system. "I don't even know the difference between 'Hullabahoos' and 'Hoos for a Cure,'" complains Duke, "I just know they sound the same."
Taking a little time (say, five minutes) to actually name the club, rather than just submitting to "Hoos" mediocrity, is a relatively painless and efficient manner by which to set that particular group apart from all the rest. Instead of blending into the sea of poor puns made worse, the CIO will stand out amongst others because its title sets it apart.
I do not participate in many CIOs, but it is a relatively safe assertion that distinction from the scores of clubs that exist at this University is beneficial to the group's success. Titles are easier to recognize if they have not been used ad nauseam in the past.
Wit is not in question here. Whoever first coined the play on words deserves his share of credit for the witticism, but since then things have gone desperately downhill. Using the "Hoos" pun at this point in time, when upwards of 50 groups have already taken it as a title in one capacity or another, is just unoriginal. It is an offense to the original cleverness it took to come up with the joke in the first place.
Beyond the fact that any humor it once held has long since passed, and that it is outright uninspired as a name, the "Hoos" pun can have a negative effect on groups that seek to use it as a title. Students form a negative perception about a group if the name is annoying, and the commonality of the phrase on Grounds can relegate the CIO to the status of "just another 'Hoos' group" rather thanset it apart from other organizations. It isn't funny, it isn't clever, and its use needs to be swiftly terminated. The "Hoos" pun is played out, and at this point irritation is the only effect it evokes. ?
David Infante's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at dinfante@cavalierdaily.com.
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