RICK HARRISON
Staff Lampoonist
Rick Harrison here, reporting from my pawn shop.
In order to pay tribute to the late Harambe, a gorilla who was killed at the Cincinnati Zoo in May, the athletics program will be changing its name and logo. The announcement came from Athletic Director Greg Prechtl early on Wednesday afternoon.
“We had tabled a name change for a few years now,” Prechtl explained. “It grew tiresome for people to hear our name and say ‘Oh, like Duke!’ No crap, our teams have the same name as Duke. But please, stop comparing us to the scum of Division I athletics.”
The opportunity was then seized to change the name to the “Harambe State Harambes.”
“We just thought it was a great opportunity to honor the greatest of all-time,” explained President Virginia Horvath. “It’s not often you get the chance to do the right thing on such a large scale. We definitely made the right call on this one.”
We at the Lampoon attempted to reach out to the Cincinnati Zoo for comment via Twitter, but the zoo promptly deactivated its Twitter account on Tuesday afternoon after the request. It grew apparent that the zoo had tired in recent weeks from all of the dank memes and responses they were getting on social media regarding Harambe. It got to the point that, on Monday, the zoo put out a cry for help.
“We are not amused by the memes, petitions and signs about Harambe,” Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard said in a statement.
Clearly, people at the zoo do not understand how the internet works. Within the next 24 hours, the Harambe train gathered steam previously not thought possible. The backlash from the internet was the final push that Fredonia needed to green light the name change.
“Like I said, it’s about paying homage to the GOAT,” Horvath said. “Or in this case, the GORILLA [greatest of real/ imaginary large land animals]. Harambe was the best, and everyone needs to know that. Harambe State is a place where we can all recognize that until the end of time. Period.”
Students across campus have had a positive reaction to the name change thus far.
“About three months ago, I would have pressed for us to change the name to Dat Boi University,” said student LeRoy Jenkins. “But now it is all about Harambe. It will always be about Harambe. He is essentially the GORILLA of gorillas.”
The new mascot will be donned initially by the women’s volleyball team for their game on Sept. 3. After that, all sports teams competing in events for the school will sport the gorilla as their team logo.
“I am so excited for the season opener now,” said Dan Smith, a soccer player who recently transferred from Brigham Young University after changing sports. “We are gonna go out there and kill them, man. Kinda like how that crappy parent at the zoo got Harambe killed.”
If that is the mentality of all teams for this season, Harambe State athletics could make some serious runs in the SUNYAC playoffs this fall.