Name: Jay Busbee
Homepage: Sports Gone South
School: The College of William & Mary
Location: Williamsburg, Virginia
School Colors: Green And Gold
School Mascot: An Indian…kind of. We’ll discuss that in a sec.
Do outsiders “get” your mascot?: If you’re talking about the NCAA, then hell no, they don’t “get” our mascot. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have said that the feathers on W&M’s logo–this is not a joke–were offensive to Native Americans…and needed to be removed. It’s cool for Florida State to have a severed Seminole head–with feathers!–but a couple dinky feathers on W&M’s logo–oooooh, that’s gonna cause riots.
School Fight Song: “Hark Upon The Gale”–not really a “fight” song, more of the school’s alma mater, but the closest we’ve gotten to a fight song has been a rewritten version of “Rock and Roll Part Two” questioning the sexual orientation of one fraternity on campus. (They don’t sing along.) As for “Hark”–I dunno what it means, but the last time I harked upon the gale, a lady called the cops on me! Hot-cha!
Traditions: Funny you should ask…I wrote the book (or at least the article) on such traditions. Some notable ones: No, W&M does not have the highest suicide rate of any school; yes, there are underground tunnels beneath part of the campus. Another cool tradition is “jumping the wall” at the nearby Governor’s Palace in Colonial Williamsburg–sneaking onto the grounds, preferably with a member of the opposite sex, ’cause there ain’t no booty like Colonial booty.
Geographical Features: The Sunken Gardens is a huge expanse of land right in the middle of campus. It’s so long that, were someone so inclined, they could launch water balloons at tour groups using a funnel and surgical tubing as a slingshot, and be off hidden in the woods before the balloons hit. Also pretty is Crim Dell, a lovely cove where–legend has it–you’ll marry the person whom you kiss on the bridge. Avoid.
Architectural Features: The Wren Building (left) is the oldest academic building in the United States, and the rest of Old Campus has a similar multiple-centuries pedigree. We can’t prove definitively that Thomas Jefferson ran ho’s here, but he damn sure had the opportunity.
Notable Alumni: The aforementioned Thomas Jefferson and two other presidents (John Tyler and James Monroe), The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, comedian Patton Oswalt, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, actress Glenn Close (who learned all she needed to know about acting psycho in Fatal Attraction from observing her fellow W&M coeds–kidding, ladies!)
Anything else we need to know?: Contrary to popular opinion, William & Mary is not a Catholic girls’ school. Unfortunately. Oh, and we’ve never been to the NCAA basketball tournament. We do, however, get the luxury of playing in a football playoff as a Division I-AA school, and made it to the Final Four in 2004. And somehow, our poor athletes were not irreparably scarred by having to play two extra games. Oh, and we had all kinds of controversy recently because of a decision to remove a cross from the Wren Building chapel. Politics + religion + naive students + opportunistic outside blowhards = acres of fun publicity!
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[...] addition, Jay was kind enough to add a profile of his distinguished alma mater over at College Rule Notebook. Fans of the Daily Show will want to read [...]
[...] contributed an entry on our alma mater, the College of William & Mary, to the great open-source campus wiseassery blog that is College Rule [...]
While it is true that there is no booty like colonial booty (I dig a girl in a bonnet), it’s taboo to jump the wall with a member of the opposite sex. A rumor has been floating for a while that an escaped mental patient slit the throat of a girl who jumped the wall before her boyfriend climbed over. Since then, no one does it as a couple….