Posted: Thursday, August 28, 2008 12:00 am
Elsewhere in today's newspaper, you might notice a short item about College Colors Friday, a national campaign in which you are encouraged to show your support for higher education by wearing the colors of your favorite school.
Gov. Ted Kulongoski issued a proclamation calling for Oregonians to wear their favorite college colors this Friday. (Actually, many Oregon State football fans will be breaking out the black and orange today to mark the Beavers' season opener tonight at Stanford.)
Corvallis Mayor Charlie Tomlinson went Kulongoski one better when he called on Beaver fans to don the orange and black every Friday. Which would mean that Fridays around Corvallis will look … well, pretty much like every other day around Corvallis.
It's just a fact: We are crazy here about the Beavers. It's not like we have to go rummaging through our closets to pull out our Beaver gear every fall - we never actually put it away. A Beaver polo shirt and a pair of khakis is proper attire for just about any Corvallis event. (In fact, that's what we're wearing today.)
Try this experiment when you're out and about today: See how long it takes you before you spy some sign of Beaver-mania, whether it be a baseball cap or a shirt or a vehicle cruising down the street with those OSU pennants whipping in the breeze. If it takes you more than a minute or two, you're not paying attention. (We recommend this experiment, by the way, only for passengers or pedestrians, not for drivers, lest you crash into another vehicle with, naturally, a Beaver license plate.)
We'll leave it for others - most likely, college researchers - to ruminate about what this all means, how we use these visual cues to identify our compatriots, how these allegiances are increasingly important to us. In the meantime, it's fun to wear the colors, and in that spirit, we wish the Beavers the best this season - many wins, few injuries, no extracurricular shenanigans.
In the meantime, may we suggest that another way to support higher education would be to vote in November for legislative candidates who understand how important it is to properly fund these institutions. Black and orange are great. Green, as in the color of money, is good as well.