In light of its 201st birthday, Union University served cake in Brewer Dining Hall on Wednesday Feb. 7 at 12 p.m. and kicked off the celebration by officially introducing the new live mascot, Buster the Bulldog.
In his bulldog-knitted sweater, Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver, president of Union University, stood alongside Dannie Harrington, SGA president and junior communications major, who led the faculty and students in singing “Happy Birthday” to Union, offering slices of cake and unlimited puppy petting of Union’s newest edition.
Oliver spoke about how having living symbols on campus builds morale for Union and its students.
“One of the things living symbols does, like having a puppy, is it humanizes institutions in ways that other things can’t,” Oliver said.
The new white English bulldog puppy was recently named Buster after a student-wide voting poll was conducted. He was carted into Cobo in a red wagon. Joe Ball, the director of the Office for Leadership, had recently assembled a committee to brainstorm potential puppy names for the new live mascot. As the representative for the student body as a whole, Harrington held a spot on that committee.
“This is where we began to think of names related to Union and really trying to connect it to traditions,” Harrington said. “We wanted a unique name, so we all went and submitted two to three names with a little blurb of the significance of the name or correlation to the school.”
The committee settled on four names they thought were worthy candidates and sent them out to the student body to vote on. The name options included Buster, Blitz, Sullivan and Trip.
“Ultimately, it came down to what the student body thought the official name should be,” Harrington said, “and the majority voted on Buster.”
There seemed to be a schoolwide longing to carry on the Buster name.
“I feel like people are definitely stuck on tradition, but I also think there’s a lot of things correlating with the name ‘Buster’ that makes it hard to try and change the name,” Harrington said. “You know, there’s the Buster Breakfast Bowl in Cobo, the football Buster Bowl, you have the Buster Statue, the list goes on.”
Many people were happy with the naming of the bulldog, but others saw it as a missed opportunity for some upgrading opportunities within the university.
“Personally, I wanted ‘Blitz’,” Harrington said. “I figured this would have given us a chance to kind of rebrand some things, but at the end of the day, Buster, you know, it’s where the heart lies.”
Oliver described why Buster the Bulldog is held so close to Union’s heart.
“I just begin thinking about things that we identify with and things that we relate to, and most people have had a dog, and so it’s like, this is our dog,” Oliver said. “It’s just like when a family has a pet, and Buster is that for all of us.”
Union plans for Buster to live with Christopher Hail, a Union mathematics professor, along with his wife and kids in Sullivan, a building within the Heritage Residence Complex.