Slippery Rock University: allowing students to experience the difference since 1889. For over 125 years, SRU has served as a high quality institution, educating hundreds of thousands of students and offering hundreds of different majors, which prepare students for their successful careers once they’ve graduated. It’s a tradition of excellence and one we are all proud of at The Rocket; however, it is also one that we are all very, very tired of hearing about.
Before 2014 even started, everyone was already hearing about the big 125 anniversary. We get it, Slippery Rock as an educational institution has been around for a long time. By March of 2014 we were already looking forward to it being over.
The year doesn’t even seem significant, as 125 isn’t anything worth celebrating. It was an excuse to celebrate a trivial point in history. Not that celebrating 50, 100 or any other typically celebrated anniversary is significant in the first place, but at least those years look more important, even if they aren’t. How much can you really talk this? Apparently quite a lot.
We witnessed multiple birthday parties for the celebration. It was like a sweet 16 for a spoiled teenager on MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16,” complete with banners, ribbons and glitter.
A cardboard cutout of Dr. Norton, a parade and essentially every sport featuring a 125 special game…there was no escaping the 125 celebration this year, and we’re not even going to touch on the disaster of the Michigan game.
The one thing we were actually looking forward to, breaking the world record for spooning, didn’t even happen. The big student engagement event: a lip dub to “Happy” that was not even executed properly.
While we’re all for celebrating our unity as students and the greatness of Slippery Rock with events like these, it’s one thing to talk about them, and one thing to effectively pursue them. It just seemed like a whole lot of hot air that couldn’t fill the weight of the 125 balloon the university’s promise of events couldn’t even fill. Instead there was just an excessive amount of advertising plastered over every item that came out of the university.
There’s a time capsule, 125 logo and all, sitting in the Student Center that is apparently just going to remain there for years, a constant reminder of the torture we went through, seeing it advertised everywhere.
Don’t get us wrong, we find the logo very visually appealing, but there is only so much that the eyes can take.
But, with April came the end of the 125-year anniversary. It’s finally time to move past it. The celebration that seemed to drag on for 125 years is finally over.
Now laid to waste is the 125 logo emblazoned on every banner, every street, and within every building from the quad to BSB.
If we never see that 125 anniversary logo again, never see signs plastered across campus and flags hanging from poles, we will die happy. However, we will enjoy the sales sure to result of the surplus merchandise that no one wanted to purchase.
