Welcome to Iowa State University.

Every new student can always use a guide to help them get acquainted with the college they decided to attend. Some may use the student’s handbook.

Instead, let me tell you the truth about your university.

This university can never settle on one name for anything.

For example, we are called the Cyclones, but our mascot is a cardinal.

We were once called the Cardinals, but after kicking Northwestern’s butt in football (36-0) in 1895, a year when several tornadoes struck the state of Iowa, the Chicago Tribune metaphorically declared that cyclones struck Evanston. So, the name just stuck.

In my opinion, Cyclones is a much more distinctive name than Cardinals anyway, but I still love Cy, our Cyclone cardinal mascot.

Another example is our football stadium. Completed in 1975, it was entitled Cyclone Stadium in 1983.

Students had rallied to have it named after Jack Trice, the first ISU black football player who died during a game against those Minnesota Golden Gophers in 1923, his first game. (There’s a statue of him between Beardshear Hall and Carver Hall.)

So the university decided to still call the stadium Cyclone Stadium, but call the playing field Jack Trice Field.

It’s a nice gesture on behalf of the administration, but it feels like a tie football game. It gives you a blah feeling in your gut.

Nowadays, we have Catt Hall. Carrie Chapman Catt was an ISU alum who was instrumental in attaining the right to vote for women when the l9th amendment was passed in 1920.

After the university’s administration decided to name what used to be Old Botany Hall (it used to be Ag Hall before that!) Catt Hall, an article came out in Uhuru magazine on Sept. 29 last fall that Catt had made racist and xenophobic comments while playing politics to get the amendment ratified.

The university administration would like to see the issue go away, but the Sept. 29th movement continues to devote their time to keeping it an issue, although the administration has repeatedly stated that it won’t change the name.

Personally, I’m just tired of that issue. I imagine some day it will have two names also.

I’m sure you’ve already decided it is a beautiful campus. It really is just beautiful. I have yet to see a campus that can compare.

But the university thinks it would be more beautiful as a commercial zone. During the summer they planned to put a McDonald’s in the Hub, that little building just north of Beardshear Hall.

You see, the Memorial Union is a separate corporation from ISU. It is the place where commercial businesses belong, and so I guess it is fine that they destroy the Union’s classic architecture to put a food court in there.

But the administration is too old to walk the two-block distance from Beardshear Hall to the Memorial Union to eat lunch and too dense to think of packing lunch in a brown bag.

So the MU Corporation thought it would be a good idea to have a McHub. At the same time they could suck the student loan dollars out of even more students than they could at the Memorial Union.

After much protest from the students and faculty, the university administration made the public relations move to hear more input. A good move. (The administration isn’t all that bad. You’ll find that they are pretty accessible.)

It will probably go through though, and the Hub will also be called McDonald’s. My guess is October.

In all actuality, I love Iowa State. I have been a Cyclone fan for as long as I can remember. One of the reasons I decided to go here because I wanted to get cheap football and basketball tickets!

It is my love for ISU that has me concerned for ISU’s future. I don’t want to be 40 years old and have to admit to co-workers that, “Yes, Iowa State is that school with a mini-mall on its central campus.”

I hope you, too, are concerned for the future of your alma mater.

And by the way, if you read Thursday’s Iowa State Daily, ISU President Martin Jischke’s letter to the students was the same as last year’s letter, except it said 1996 instead of 1995. I guess he got lazy this year because in 1994 he had a different letter.

At any rate, I look forward to a great year for Iowa State.

GO CYCLONES!

Tim Frerking is a senior in journalism mass communication from Pomeroy.