after more than two decades battling with our own consciousnesses, college of william and mary students and alumni have a mascot to call our own … an eagle that has misplaced its pants.

back in the 1980s, the school realized that the then current moniker (the “indians”) wasn’t going to cut the social mustard anymore, even if one of our original mandates was as a school to educate those who had the alleged misfortune of being born non-european.

at the time, the school boldly chose to drop the nickname, but curiously insisted on keeping an obvious indian-derivative (the “tribe”) in its place, and then fought tooth-and-nail to keep an indian feather on the school logo (a fight they eventually lost).

(note to school: that last part about the tribe and the feather might have tarnished some of the nobleness of the re-logoing effort.)

anyway, a multi-year lack of identity ensued, which included a couple of dark years where we had an asexual amorphous green blob as our mascot.

but then … the same branding geniuses that sacrificed a beloved president to appease out-of-state christian fundamentalists came up with an *even better* way to market the school:

instead of coming up with a new mascot that matches the “tribe” nickname (or, you know, changing our nickname to something that matches our new mascot) the college of william and mary now has the very worst of both worlds …

… we’re a tribe of eagles that have misplaced our pants.

in due fairness to the administration, the creature is apparently a mythical Griffin, “a mascot that unites strength and intelligence, recalls our royal origins and speaks to our deep roots in American history.”

unfortunately, that still doesn’t explain to me what happened to the dude’s pants.