Outside his name

[Joel S. Berson]

At 12/5/2007 08:58 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>At 8:48 PM -0500 12/5/07, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>At 12/5/2007 06:39 PM, Alice Faber wrote:
>>>I'm surprised Larry didn't already post this, but there you are. This
>>>morning (12/5/07) on Mike and Mike in the Morning (ESPN radio), they had
>>>a segment with a new football analyst, a recently retired paper. One of
>>>the topics of discussion was the incident late in the Monday night
>>>Patriots-Ravens game, in which Ravens players allege that an on-field
>>>official repeatedly addressed one of them as "boy". (Both player and
>>>official are African-American.) The new analyst, Marcellus Wiley, an LA
>>>native who played at Columbia University
>>
>>That's "Columbia College", Alice.  The university does not have
>>athletic teams.  (And if you sense some parochialism here, I'm sure
>>any Harvard College graduate would make the same comment.  What do
>>they say at New Haven's Yale?)
>>
>>>  prior to his 10-year NFL career
>>>(as this was his first appearance, he started by discussing his CV),
>>
>>Did he really refer to his team as "Columbia University"??  If so,
>>his CV is fraudulent!  :-)
>I think he said Columbia, but since Columbia College is at Columbia
>University I think transitivity would apply and predict that both
>uses are possible.

Not so at Columbia.  Part of my freshman indoctrination was to make
this distinction between College and University.  (If Wiley said just
"Columbia", without either "College" or "University", he's OK by
me.)  And as well, always to say "men" of Columbia College, not "boys".

>Besides, my alma maters, the University of
>Rochester and UCLA, fielded athletic teams that went by those
>non-"collegiate" designations.

I imagine it would be rather awkward to refer to "the College of the
University of California at Los Angeles football team."  And did
anyone say "the University of Rochester football team", or simply
"the Rochester football team"?  Is there a "Rochester College", or
"UCLA College", by that name?

>Maybe it's sloppy usage, but
>certainly this distinction is not made all that consistently (except
>perhaps at Columbia).  Here, the team is usually called "the Yale
>Bulldogs", "the Blue", "the Elis", etc., not Yale College or Yale
>University.

And as well at Columbia -- "the Columbia football team", or "the
Lions" (or "the light blues" -- no, not often).  But that's always
understood -- by Columbia men -- as meaning the "the Columbia College
football team [and lions]"

>The Yale College Dean is not the Yale University Dean,
>but that's a different matter.

As is the main research library at Harvard, Widener, a library of
Harvard College, not of Harvard University.

Joel

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