"Welcome To Boonetown" Discussion Post
"Give Coombe the boot, change up the athletic makeup so students are fired up enough to riot in the streets, and give alumni something to be proud about to help fund future success at the school. It's a cycle. Once it's broken, things like a Boone become side effects and proof that there are some serious problems that need to be worked out."
- Annonomous
34 comments:
"You are part of the Boone Alliance and traitor. Take him away!" - Darth Coombe
I've called Coombe worse than that. But all will be forgiven on my end at least, if he does the right thing and "Cowboy's Up."
Dan Ritchie called Boone, "The People's Movement" on Saturday night at the hockey game.
That's funny that Ritchie called Boone the "People's Movement", since he was Boone's executioner in 1999. Ritchie just flat out hated Boone...
Thats a good point and he may still hate Boone. Or maybe Ritchie likes the school spirit/humor aspect of the "People's Movement."
Until we hit the streets and find out what the problem is we're fighting windmills.
I talked to a lot of people this weekend Alums, DU Administrators, Faculty, students & student leaders and it sure seems that the "Diversity Issue" is just a smokescreen and that as you mentioned a few powerful people just hate Boone. The irony is that from as near as I can tell....none of these freakin' people were ever students at DU.
Thats why we continue to push forward with the campaign. Everyone continues to tell me to keep fighting. This whole thing is really fun, stirring up trouble. :-)
That's why we keep this going...
Don't give up. University administrations bank on their opponents' exhaustion. They have staying-power whereas students graduate and move on. It's up to the alumni to maintain the focus over the long haul.
Good point Richard.
Wonder if DU will ever figure out that Boone is a huge draw for LetsGoDU. If they want to kill the Blog, just Bring Back Boone. :-)
At least Ritchie is now acknowledging the movement. I have yet to see Coombe do anything similar.
Good point, Dick K. but we're already not giving up, hence why this is growing like it is. Way to state the obvious. :P
Not only do university admin bank on "opponent exhaustion"; they also rely on betrayal and backstabbing from people that some may think are part of the group.
Or someone who is excluded from a group for a while will join said admin and usually succeed in their lame little vendetta against people who are only part of a long list of those who despise that said person's pathetic existence and know he/she will die a sad, sad, sad lonely person.
::cough::
My basic point is -- GO BOONE and FUCK anyone who is being part of the movment as a spy for the Gulag of the Coombe Admin. I hope such things aren't happening, but I don't trust these people.
FTW,
If I hadn't gone up to Denver this weekend and heard some of the things I heard, I might have thought you were paranoid.
You are not paranoid. :-)
Well, I didn't think I was paranoid. I've dealt with this kind of BS from the DU Administration while I was a student. Not at all surprised they are still up to those tricks. These are reasons why they will most likely NEVER see dime one from me for any sort of alumni contribution. At MOST I will do the onetime donation just to get my DU license plate - And I really don't even want to do that.
I want to be stinking rich now just to LAUGH at the University when they come begging for an endowment. Either that or there will be some special concessions that they will have to make in order to "appease the beast" of the past.
These losers know who they are; and if they are lucky we won't smoke them out of their little diversity caves of failtastic ignorance. If we are lucky -- Boone will return soon. (and maybe we'll find out who some of these Benedict Arnold's are!)
FUCP and FTW, I couldn't agree more, it is obvious there are a few snakes in the grass...is it whacking day yet?
Dick K...that's funny
I was moving this past Saturday and could not get over to Spanky's to get a shirt, any thought to printing more?????
All LetsGoDU shirts have been sold. Maybe someone has an extra one that want to sell to you. What size?
We're thinking about doing an '80s retro "Bleacher Creature" shirt for the CC road game in Feb.
Those would definitely be welcomed by the traveling faithful...especially those of us students who showed up at Spanky's!
I'm not a student or an alumni. I am however a Denver native and a hockey season ticket holder. I have pride in the Unversity named after my hometown. Please don't forget us. We don't graduate and leave. We do contribute in a large way to the "bottom line" in the DU budget. The city of Denver and its residents are fertile ground.
Every year I get a questionaire from the university asking my opinion. Last year I bitched about how I never ever heard the fight song during the entire season. (the exception is when the band is playing) Guess what? This year they make it a point to play it at least once during the game.
This is a great opportunity to start some new traditions for the students. One suggestion is to have the "BRING BACK BOONE" cheer at the same time of the game. I would do it immidiately after the National Anthem, or at the beginning of each period.
If you'd have some bumper stickers made, you could get the rest of the city involved too.
I think all of this is just a reflection of the problems at DU.
The school has some of the shittiest publicity and marketing I've ever seen. If we want things like Boone to be a mainstay in the culture around the area, it will take more than just an inside community to shake up the school's national presence. That's an insult directed at admin not the followers of Boone or DU hockey.
Think about it for a second. When you were growing up, what top athletic schools did you know about? Notre Dame? Wisconsin? USC? While some of these schools are pretty big, they also have promotional/marketing geniuses running the show without the usual "try something until it sticks" strategies of Angel Field and others.
As an alumnus, I'm disappointed that DU hasn't raised the flag on such a great school. A lot of the academic programs are top in the nation while a few are not even worth mentioning. However, when the time comes to set a standard in the world, DU seems to fall to the chase. Fiscal troubles run amok, students become outraged at the administration, academics become questionable, and many of the historical traditions and reputations of the school get shelved away in a cardboard box.
I know what you're thinking: there is only so much money in the world, only so much that current admin can do, and why put all the blame on the administration. To that
I say Bullshit.
Give Coombe the boot, change up the athletic makeup so students are fired up enough to riot in the streets, and give alumni something to be proud about to help fund future success at the school. It's a cycle. Once it's broken, things like a Boone become side effects and proof that there are some serious problems that need to be worked out.
I love the phrase "Boonetown" because it conjures up images of a growing vibrant university. A place where dissent is not just welcome, but embraced.
Coombe's monumental blunder was the email. If you check out any DU document these days it always has the "diversity paragraph" thrown in there, so Coombe was just sticking to the scripted formula, but in this case he went too far. He came off as attacking the western settlers instead of stressing diversity.
The email also contained many factual errors such as exaggerating the opposition to Boone and from what groups. He was racial profiling in reverse.
I heard that he expected heat for the email, but I also heard from another source that he was "shocked" at the level of rancor from the alums towards the Office of Communication & Alumni Development.
At the end of his email he called for a "community-wide discussion of what it means to be a Pioneer, for today and the future, and I ask that the history and traditions committee and our student and alumni organizations take up this question with a view to building community and clarifying our identity."
So the students hold a "discussion forum" and he doesn't show up. What has he done to further this debate as he promised in his email?
Nothing.
I would take either a medium or large. If someone has one please call me at 303-249-2552.
Sheryl
It's time for Coombe to just admit he made a mistake concerning bringing back Boone as the DU mascot. Mistakes happen. He may not be man enough to admit he made a mistake. I made one today myself. At the end of the day Coombe needs to climb down from his Ivory tower and skate and check his way back into reality. Boone is back forever.
Boone will be back. I'm a bit surprised to hear Ritchie's new take on the Boone Movement. Not completely though, because even though Ritchie has pissed me off many times; I've always thought of him as being somewhat rational. Back when he decided to move from Boone to the Doughnut, it was along with all the other changes to the University at the time. Almost everything he did at the time was working great; so as a result noone really questioned him on the Boone matter - although I think a great many of us were silently questioning the move at the time.
However; Ol' Mr. Burns decided to leave Boone in Retirement, leaving a window for him to possibly be used in some minor scope in the future. He may not have liked him; but I tend to believe that he knew that Boone was a BIG part of the Culture of DU and couldn't ever be completely removed. The DICKtator Coombe has taken the window, bricked it up, and hoped that noone would notice.
I hope he has a new found anxiety problem from the events of the last few months. Someone like this who is incapable of making a proper decision should not be in the position he is. It makes me wonder -- Would the University be forced to cut jobs with better management? Possibly they would be in a better financial situation? What has happened to the sale of land at Ritchie's former ranch? There needs to be some serious questions asked of this administration right now in many, many areas.
brett skinner traded to thrasher for former umd hobey winner junior lessard
have you noticed Coombs latest ploy .It is so amaturish it is funny -and also sad.
He is issuing thousands of t shirts to try to counteract and dilute out bring back boone campaign. A very obvious effort which actually is positive for us since it shows we are getting to him in a big way. KEEP GOING--NEVER STOP!!
Coombe doesn't hate Boone, and probably enjoys the fact the people even care about DU's image and mascot.
If no one had raised objections to Boone's return, he would have endorsed the return in a second.
Our big problem is that the DU faculty does not want Boone - not even one faculty member has expressed public support for Boone since Coombe's letter. Nor has one DU Dean or member of the DU Board of Trustees, or any major DU donor spoken out publically in Boone's favor. Those are the people that really count in a university, and they've ALL been very silent. In their minds, having a serious commitment to diversity is more important than having a western mascot.
The point here is that Coombe's strategy of pleasing his faculty by sticking to his diversity commitment is working.
We can make our usual internet noise, and we can get some right-of-center media (like Mike Rosen and the Washington Times) to help our cause, but if the Boone movement is to succeed, we need more public support among the Faculty, Deans, Donors and Board of Trustees. Until those people start putting public pressure to change, we won't see much more progress.
My Family never went to DU. But my grandpa saw every DU game from 1949 to 1994 and my family has had season tickets since the mid- 80's. (our priority num ber is in the top 20) I know the history of the program better than most people. And I don't get the Boone fascination.
To me, Boone is a rather pathetic character that is epidemic of the mascots that came out of the 1960's. He seems to say "Hey, welcome to Denver, let's smoke some pot and then you can kick our ass at hockey. I don't mind because I'm just a freindly cartoon."
I think that problem is in the message Boone conveys. In the atmopshere of sports, especially high doolar DI sports, you have to convey a sense of competiveness and desire to dominate opponents. Boone will never convey that message. This is why i'm opposed to bringing Boone back, not because he is offensive to the PC movement, but because he is a soft image.
The university neeeds a stronger image of the Pioneer. Which is a Catch-22, because is would probably be more offensive to the crowd that says that the pioneers of America brutalized the Indians. And whatever the arguments on both sides may be, Colorado does have a history of brutalization of Indian tribes.
What is remarkable is that, the adminstration of the university is rather conservative and you would think anti-liberla PC crap. But I think there true motivation revolves around fear of a massive lawsuit centered around intsitutuional discrimination. Which makes them p***ies.
When the Rocky Mountian News shuts its doors, the University of Denver will be the oldest institution in the state of Colorado. In that sense, they need to embrace the traditions of the universities past regardless of how they feel about them. The adminstration can't run away from being the Pioneers and images that are associted with being Pioneers. In that sense, bringing back Boone or an image of being a Pioneer is essential to the identity of the university
I'm a Denver native, a DU season ticket-holder. Although I love the "Boone Movement," it's only a small indicator of the incompetence by two leaders, Coombe and AD Peg. Their "layoff strategy" will come back to haunt them in many ways. While asking about Boone, ask yourself about the overall direction of things at DU.
Oh Please,
The layoff strategy is same as any other college or university feeling the economic crunch. The fact is that the University's revenue from their market invested endowments and trusts are down 40% the last year. It's not Coombe fault about the layoff's and most private universties are having the same problems.
To equate the Boone issue with the school's funding problems a symptomatic of institutional rot is laughable.
No one would be criticizing Coombe if it wasn't for a cartoon character and a college hockey blog.
I find that highly amusing. :-)
That 40% decline is there for a reason. Bad fiscal management of current resources and blind overspending don't just happen out of thin air.
I love the fact that DU Hockey fans are finally off their seats and into a great college sentiment, such as a mascot. Boone is an identity. As a a Michigan transplant, and a 30 year college hockey fan, I immediately gravitated toward DU Hockey 5 years ago. However, I had to ask at my first game what that "thing" was for a mascot. Maybe if the administration had'nt blown the marketing budget on that "doughnut", they would accept it is a poor representation of a Pioneer.
It's about time chants like "Bring back Boone" are heard instead of the lame "xyz goalie you suck". Makes the college spirit come alive at the games!
Oh, I love my Boonetown t-shirt too! It will be on my back for the rest of the season's games.
I think all universities are suffereing a 30-50% endowment hit right now with the global financial crisis, and DU's bond rating is still excellent.
DU is still heading in the right direction on many things. Coombe's 2008 convocation speech has more on that:
http://www.du.edu/chancellor/speeches/convocation08.html
Coombe may be wrong about Boone, but I don't think DU is in a dire overall position, either.
I don't understand where you can come off saying blind overspending. The University has invested millions in facility upgrades over the last 10 - 15years. they've done nothing but re-build a image of solid academics and competitive sports. If you want to blame Coombe and Ritchie for being short-sighted when it comes to a so-called controversial mascot and the will of students and alumni towards it. That's fine, but the school is well set to bounce back after this recession.
So trying to conflate the Boone issue with a decline in financial ability of the university is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Besides, as DG noted earlier, people donate to the athletics program to support the programs. I think people will support university because they support the institution. Boone or no Boone
I think we found that snake in the grass 8-) Don't you just love paranoia?
There is a letter to the editor about boone in the RMN:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/15/at-issue-benching-boone-was-the-right-decision/
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