Confusing Civic Nomenclature: Midwest Division

In a recent TV news story, the reporter referred to “The University of Indiana.” As you surely know, the official name of the school (my alma mater) is Indiana University. There is a school called Indiana State University in Terre Haute (French for ‘high ground’ even though it’s really not very). There is also a school called Indiana University of Pennsylvania because it is in the city of Indiana, Pennsylvania.

So far as I know, only one major university has officially tacked “The” in front of its name:

The Ohio State University, although the official name of Rutgers includes an emphatically capitalized 'the':

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. But there are a half dozen other state universities or colleges in New Jersey.

I worked at The Ohio State University when the name and logo were changed, which lead to no perceptible difference on campus. Coincidentally, I lived on Indianola Avenue in Columbus. There’s another school in Ohio called Ohio University. It’s in Athens, OH. I think the founders of Athens had unrealistic aspirations.

I did a stint as a student teacher in Columbus, Indiana. Columbus, IN, billed itself as the Athens of the Prairie not in homage to Athens, Ohio, but because Columbus, like the Original Athens, boasts many fine buildings designed by famous architects. The famously high architecture fees were paid for by the founder of the Cummins Engine Company because he liked nice buildings. My student teaching gig, which did not go well, was at a school designed by famous architect Eliot Noyes,

who apparently knew little about schools but a lot about poured concrete.

I worked for a time in the architecture department at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, two cities named for a city and county in Ohio. The founders were not very imaginative. The main campus library is underground. Even the architects I worked with at U of I did not know why.

So be careful when people talk about Indiana or Columbus or Athens or Urbana or Champaign or any school associated therewith; you might want to get some clarification.