In Defense of Wildcats

The halls of Lyme-Old Lyme are echoing with revolutionary fervor, originating, unsurprisingly, from the history department. Specifically, such murmurs of discontent come from budding iconoclast and social studies teacher, Mr. Eckhart.

Mr. Eckhart and some subversive students seem to think that the halls of our school, the floors of our gym, the very inscriptions cemented into the ground ought to be remade in his image. And what image is that? A fish-eating bird of prey, of course. This unassuming educator wants to change the school’s iconography from the tried and true Wildcats to an obscure Osprey.

On purely pragmatic grounds, this is a fundamentally absurd notion. LOLHS has a gym with a paw on it, and, as far as I am aware, Ospreys don’t have paws. In fact, the only animal to which such symbols correspond is the wildcat, which is also named on a giant cement pad outside the gym. It would cost innumerable budget dollars to change these fixtures of school character, not to mention the cost associated with printing new tee shirts, new hats, new bumper stickers, new banners. The school at its most basic identity is Wildcat, and changing that would involve uprooting every image associated with us.

Say, even, that the school had the funds to spare to change the school mascot. There would still be no defensible reason to eliminating the wildcat. The Wildcat is the mascot our alumni fondly remember; it’s the mascot with which we cheer on our sports teams. Not just the school, the Wildcat is deeply engraved in our collective character. It’s the recognizable emblem of Lyme-Old Lyme. To change the Wildcat to the Osprey would be to leave the school’s enthusiasm adrift without the roots of history anchoring it.

The disestablishment of all school character and imagery would do nothing to benefit us, and would do everything to damage our stability and identity as a community. Consider the flames of animosity stoked by Mr. Eckhart’s sale of both Wildcat and Osprey shirts. Rather than keeping us united as a student body, as such merchandise ought to do, those wearing their shirts are merely declaring a factional allegiance. Not only that, but this new controversy dirties The Osprey, which was created in accord with the town’s seal, and wants no part in this divide. These divisions in a community cannot be sustained indefinitely, and when one faction becomes subsumed into the other, I know which one I’ll be supporting.

(Christian Sweeney was the original Editor in Chief of Osprey Online, and was part of the team that chose the organization’s name.)