University at Buffalo: Reporter

Letters

A buffalo as mascot? Bull would be better
Your article on the bronze buffalo that will be placed on the Amherst Campus of UB seeks to compare UB to Penn State, Maryland and UCLA. I do not see the analogy. Those schools have their mascots on campus. The Buffalo has not been the mascot since the teams were renamed the Bulls early this century from the Bisons. The comparisons would be correct if say UCLA had angels on its campus, but they don't. How about putting up a statue of a Bull or a Royal to join those other institutions. Or maybe you seek to see if Elizabeth Taylor might want to donate another bull to the school as her late husband, Michael Todd, did when he gave the school Buster the First in the 1950s.

RONALD BALTER
Via e-mail



Bronze buffalo is step in the right direction
DEAR REPORTER:

Don't look now, but UB is looking more like a campus than a business park every day.

It's far too late now to complain about why the campus wasn't built on the waterfront or why the subway ends on Main Street-these are moot points. What the university community needs to focus on is why a school with over 25,000 students can't seem to identify itself; why the Amherst Campus is devoid of the camaraderie and spirit that other schools have in seemingly endless supply.

Sure, it'll be a long road for UB to travel if she truly wants to become what she should be: the premier public university of the northeast, but hell-at least now we can see the road. Thanks to Dr. Gerald Goldhaber of the Communication Department, and everyone else involved in the project, the campus will be considerably improved by the addition of the bronze buffalo that will graze in Coventry Loop.

It's about time. With the arrival of the buffalo will also come some of the swagger and charm currently absent on a campus that can, on some days, leave you feeling desolate and forgotten.

Of course you can't just throw a bronze statue on the front lawn and consider the job done. But positive ideas like an annual basketball game against Syracuse University, President Greiner's plans for on-campus apartment-style housing, and maybe even a pub in the Commons where students and faculty alike can congregate, all go a long way toward realizing what this university can be.

MATTHEW MAURER, COMMUNICATION 1996
Washington, DC
Via e-mail

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