BEAVER College is having an identity crisis.The Internet has forced the Pennsylvania college, which has lived with its double-entendre identity for longer than anyone can remember – or care to admit – to consider a name change.
The problem is the word beaver triggers many Internet screening software programs and makes e-mail and Web sites inaccessible to many users.
The clock is ticking. The school’s Board of Trustees, which has been soliciting feedback from alumni, teachers and its 2,800 students, will vote on the issue on June 9.
Bill Avington, spokesman for Beaver College, can’t predict how the board will vote after considering all the evidence.
“It’s a wild card,” he said.
The school, founded in the 1853 in Beaver County relocated to Glenside, Pa., just outside Philadelphia, in the 1920s.
No one knows exactly when the word “beaver,” which once strictly meant a dam-building creature, picked up other, more vulgar connotations – Merriam-Webster’s defines it as the “pudenda of a woman.”
While the school has long been subject to one-liners (from the likes of David Letterman and Howard Stern) over its name, which would draw heh-hehs from Beavis and Butt-head, the Internet and filtering software have made school officials examine its modern-day meaning.
Because of the prevalence of online porn, many parents, libraries and high schools install word-based filtering technology to prevent youngsters and teens from entering the naughtier areas of the Web.
But most of the filtering applications can’t distinguish between the hundreds of beaver porn sites and Beaver College (http://www.beaver.edu).
So the Beaver College site is blocked when college-bound students hit the Web for research, and recruiters have a hard time following up with interested students because filters block e-mail sent from Beaver to interested students.
In March, President Bette E. Landman sent a survey to 20,000 alumni (which include actress Anna Deveare Smith and the mayor of Tulsa, Okla., Susan Savag) and staff.
“The word ‘beaver’ too often elicits ridicule in the form of derogatory remarks pertaining to … sexual vulgarities,” she wrote. The college’s own survey of high school students revealed more than 30 percent wouldn’t go to a school with such a name.
The school has also held three town meetings to discuss the matter and set up an e-mail box for responses.
Almost 6,400 of the surveys have been returned, while the president herself received more than 150 letters. People from as far away as Australia, Great Britain and France also chimed in.
Penn State University’s Nittany Lions may play at Beaver Stadium and families with children may watch TV shows such as “Leave It to Beaver” or “Two Angry Beavers,” but those things aren’t directly impacted by having a Web filter block access.
“It is unfortunate for people to even have to consider it,” says spokesman Avington, of the name change.
While some of the alumni are “vehemently” against a name change, others admit they have been embarrassed to hang their diploma at the office. “It can wear on people after a while,” he concedes.
Since the news broke the name might be changed the campus book store has seen a surge of telephone orders for merchandise bearing the school logo, from those who graduated from the school and those who probably have never heard of it before.
If the board votes to change the name, the new name probably won’t be used until after the class of 2001 graduates – from Beaver College.
“We’ve had people making jokes for years,” Avington says. “At what point do you just take the jokes and just move on? At one point does it affect the future of the college?”
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