When I received an email from a previous professor of mine asking to be interviewed about his “brilliant concept” for a new mascot, I knew I had to investigate.
Adam Rovner is an Associate Professor of English as well as the Director of the Department of Judaic Studies. He is about to add another title to his name, though: DU’s No. 1 idea man.
“One of my colleagues mentioned to me that he thought that DU was currently a dumpster fire, and that kindled my idea to have a dumpster fire as the school mascot. But then I realized, once I looked it up, that dumpster fire has a negative connotation,” said Rovner.
But what could we possibly use in place of a dumpster fire? What other symbol at DU could represent such fiery passion?
For those who don’t read the Sports section, on Saturday, April 13, DU men’s Hockey won the NCAA National Championship for the 10th time, thrusting us into first place for most NCAA Hockey Championships held by a university.
Students took to the streets to celebrate, ripping street signs from the ground, climbing on top of private buildings and, of course, burning couches.
“The burning couch would be a perfect symbol for a mascot. It could unify all of our student body behind it,” Rovner decided.
“As you know, we had a very divisive mascot for a while, an informal one — Boone, who is no longer the mascot, and there was an approach to create another mascot. It was a bird of some kind, possibly a kookaburra, an ostrich — I can’t remember,” Rovner explained.
The bird in question was Ruckus the red-tailed hawk, announced in 1999 as DU’s new official mascot. Ruckus, however, never caught wind, and students pushed back for the return of Boone. Another campaign occurred in 2013, releasing a survey for students to choose between the mountaineer, the jackrabbit and the elk, but the results were indecisive.
“I feel that we can do this together, and that’s why I’ve coined the word ‘DUgether’… so that all of us, whether we have couches or have sat on couches or maybe just loveseats… wherever we’re coming from, I believe that we all fundamentally sit,” said Rovner.
But the burning couch goes beyond mere sitting.
“I think that much like the Olympic torch signifies a unity of countries and leads the way to sporting excellence, so too can the flaming couch do that,” he said.
And his ideas went far beyond a new symbol. Rovner believed the new mascot could bring about entirely new traditions.
“I foresee this as something that could become a whole festival, you know, we might call it ‘Fyre’ with a ‘y’; we might call it ‘Couchella,’ but I think ‘Burning Couch,’ along the lines of Burning Man, is really the way to go. We could burn a couch in effigy at the end of the festival each year,” said Rovner.
Of course, this change won’t happen with only one professor backing it. Rovner believes that the paradigm will only shift once the mascot has the support of students.
“I hope that a student leader promotes this through student government, that we find a kind of upswelling, if you will, an igniting passion among the student body for this idea. It really could be Burning Man but upholstered,” were among Rovner’s final remarks.
To learn more about the harmful nature of Boone and the Pioneer moniker, check out the “Settler Colonialism and the University of Denver” online exhibit from the DU library.
Only DUgether can we make the burning couch the proud symbol of our prestigious university.
