The following letter was written in response to the first article in this section
Dear Mr. Brogan,
In view of the fact that Florida Atlantic University is located down here in South Florida (or “The Realm of Appearances” as many of us have taken to referring to it) where the prevalence of Form over Content, or Style over Substance is unprecedented, I am pleased to learn that the administration has identified image projection and the redesign of the Fighting Owl sports logo as a major university priority. However I feel it would be a shame were we to miss the opportunity to consolidate the entire enterprise that is FAU under a single brand, under which the whole campus, Jocks and Swats alike, may unite. For while our current academic logo, the Burrowing Owl, may be taken as indicative of wisdom, it is not without ambiguity in that, referencing as it does the previous inhabitants of a natural environment now substantially encroached upon by university construction, it may all so be read as a nostalgic backward glance to a Romantically conceived pastoral idyll; a past untrammeled by modernity, and as such a wholly inappropriate signifier of the (presumably forwardly) “dynamic” university image you indicate we should seek to project. Moreover being of the burrowing variety, it was always possible that such an owl would be conceived as having its head implanted in some sunless cavity, and thus, not unlike the slaves of ignorance chained inside Plato’s cave, as symbolically antithetical to the Enlightenment commitment to the clear light of rationality, to which many of us surely continue to hope FAU will someday aspire.
Moreover, while I can only applaud the sincerity with which you have undertaken this project in light of my concern that we conserve scarce resources for some equally essential project (fully funded scholarships for would-be cheerleaders is one such that immediately comes to mind) and in the spirit of the “collaborative process” invoked by your memo, I should like, if I may, to make a suggestion. I have in mind for a logo something which both within and without Florida, indeed nationwide, is inextricably linked in the public imagination to FAU, and which is, in addition, unarguably “dynamic”. I refer of course to nothing other than a little red Chevrolet Corvette sports car! After all, what else, may I ask, so appositely and unambiguously symbolizes so much of that which FAU has come to stand for?
ææ Simon Glynn ææ FAU Professor, Philosophy Department