Congratulations, Lake Superior State University!
The Lakers do not play football and their Division I hockey team is 6-10-4 (but has sent a dozen past players to the NHL). Their basketball team is 8-3 overall but 2-2 in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference South Division. That league ain’t big.
Just sayin.’
The tiny school has pride; they have decked national powerhouses before. Five years ago in Ypsilanti LSSU finished second to the University of Florida but beat the University of Michigan at the ASME International Conference of Manufacturing Science and Engineering. Their project? “Mobile Robotics Workcell—Using Robotics to Lure Young Minds to Manufacturing Engineering.” As if candy alone weren’t incentive enough.
The smallest public college in Michigan, the Lakers call a 115-acre campus in Sault Ste. Marie home. The lakefront city is the northern terminus for famed U. S. interstate highway I-75. The town has lovely views, hard and fast on the shore of Lake Superior. It is a bridge-crossing point of entry into Canada. The campus is beautiful and scenic, home to 14 buildings listed on historic registries.
Daily flights arrive from Detroit—341 miles away—and land at Chippewa County International. A few other planes land there too, but not many. Milwaukee and Toronto are long, equidistant drives: 400 miles and eight hours or so.
Because of its location, no one arrives at The Soo (or lives there) by accident. The surrounding public school district pulls in just 2,700 children from 308 square miles.
Over 90 percent of LSSU’s 2,600 enrolled students are in-staters. They aren’t geniuses — they average about a 3.0 high school GPA — but only two of three who apply are accepted. More women than men attend, so the guys tend to stick around.
Graduating Lakers are very employable. Ninety-four percent find jobs or advance to grad school. Short on big city style points but long on common sense, these are the kind of kids companies like to build around.
Fame shines its spotlight each New Year’s Eve on LSSU, because that’s when the school releases its annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. Friday night they released their 36th.
This year they identified 14 words and phrases as most deserving to be eliminated from the lexicon. And I say, “Good on ya, mate.” If the world needs lots more of anything, dictionary police rank near the top of the list.
This year’s number one, most pathetic word? “Viral,” which LSSU deemed as overused by just over one bajillion times. Referring to the permeation of content over the Internet, people are sick of it.
Kuahmel Allah of Los Angeles was one of many who made the nomination, adding, “This linguistic disease of a term must be quarantined.”
Runners-up included two words too often used to describe big blunders: “epic” and “fail.”
Others that made the list include such finger-in-the-throat descriptors as “wow factor,” an “a-ha moment,” and “back story.”
I stood and applauded when I saw the long overdue “BFF” (Best Friends Forever) had finally made it. Social networking was slapped twice more when the Lakers announced that using the words “Facebook” and “Google” as verbs is now illegal.
As usual, election-cycle zingers and catchwords quickly turned annoying. Sarah Palin’s invented word “refudiate” made it, as did terms “mama grizzlies” (often used to describe Palin-like right-wing female politicians), and “man up.”
The “back story” on LSSU’s popular list is this: Late in 1975 the school’s former public relations director and some friends were sitting around talking about annoying things they’d heard. Each contributed disliked expressions. From it they produced an inaugural list.
The winner? The phrase “at this point in time.” They called it out for exactly what it is — a five-syllable substitute for the word “now.”
After the release of that first list, nominations swiftly flowed in. The original list-builders, self-named the Unicorn Hunters, never invented another. Now the tradition is entrenched. Through its website (lssu.edu/banished) the school receives well over 1,000 nominations each year .
If you make but one resolution this year, resolve that whenever you hear something annoying, send it in. You too can pick a winner.
Among other previously recognized gemstones are “shovel ready” (2010), “battleground states” (2005), “24/7” (2000), and 1995’s “family values.”
Here’s LSSU’s complete list for 2011:
• Viral. The entire planet is sick of it. Penicillin for all, quick!
• Epic. Big is not epic.
• Fail. Buy a thesaurus. Better yet, use a thesaurus.
• Wow factor. Never use two words when one will do.
• A-ha moment. Picking this phrase was not one. Picking this was obvious.
• Back story. The word “story” or “history” works just fine.
• BFF. Forever does not exist. For now exists. But spare us: We do not need BFFN.
• Man up. People say this to women, which begs a question: Why?
• Refudiate. Will Smith invented “jiggy.” Sarah Palin invented “refudiate.”
• Mama grizzlies. Spare me the lamest of all.
• The American People. I think we sort of know who we are.
• I’m just sayin’. Don’t say you’re saying it … just say it!
• Facebook/Google as verbs. Amen.
• Live life to the fullest. As opposed to what, emptiest?
As we head full speed into a brand new year, an entire nation offers its heartfelt thanks to the good folks bundled up on a small, scenic campus tucked away up north at the end of the Michigan road.
Words are gifts. Thanks for sharing.
Go Lakers!