The Case for Renaming COM to COC
By Anonymous | Photo by Maddie Lam
Ah, Boston University’s College of Communication. A prestigious institute that has shaped some of the brightest minds in media today– Howard Stern, Andy Cohen, Hong Chao, the Safdie bros, that one guy who showed his asshole on youtube, and the girl reading this <3.
For such a noble institution, its acronym is nothing short of tragic. COM is nothing but a sad misnomer. The College of General Studies isn't STU. The College of Arts and Sciences isn’t SCI. The college of engineering isn–
The College of Fine Arts isn’t ART. You get me. Plus, COM? Really? It exudes disappointment. Com what? inCOM-petent? What it really is is COM-pletely stupid. It’s abundantly clear that we need a new name, and I have just the thing.
C.O.C
A Proper acronym, paying homage not only to such a fine institution but also to the noble chicken and the mischievous phallus.
I mean, the soon-to-be-named COC lawn already has a penis statue, making the name change easy to adjust to. The statue will remain a visual symbol of the COC’s glory, spewing water symbolic of both knowledge and innovation.
Studies have shown that schools with penis related names make better merch (see the University of South Carolina). COC can put advertising students to work and use the profits to mold the next generation of baristas.
The new acronym also asserts the school’s superiority through a sort of reverse-psychology. In the skewed words of John Mulaney, with a name like COC in higher education, think how much better it has to be than everybody else.
In researching the many benefits of renaming the school COC, I discovered a Scottish soup called cock-a-leekie. Don’t ask how I got there, I just did. As the author of this article, I hereby declare that the rest of this piece will be about this soup. This is unrelated to the fact that I am out of COC jokes.
Wot the fock? Cock-a-leekie. Cock a leaky. You’re foockin kidding, mate. This soup beh-ah be cock-leakin’ good, roight? Looks bloody terrible to be honest. This is the official fookin wikipedia page for it:
Cock-a-leekie
It’s the national soup of Scotland, because of course it is. Let's take a wee dive into this wikipedia page, shall we?
They start strong, emphasizing the soup’s simplicity. “Cock a leekie soup, a chicken and leek consommé with a little flesh and pieces of leek.” This subtly implies that ANY flesh could be used in this soup— including yours, the girl reading this’s <3
Then we reach the part where they concede that it’s actually terrible: “The original cock a leekie is delicate and refreshing and difficult to make flavoursome.”
Then they hit you with the real bombshell. “‘Cockie Leekie’ was an offering on the 1st Class passenger luncheon menu of the RMS Titanic on April 14, 1912.” For the historically inept, that is, in fact, the day it sank. Cock-a-leekie’s PR team covered their tracks well.
Such a PR team, I reckon, could have only come from a strong, well named institution. Unfortunately, that institution was not BU COM (I wonder why). For the cock-a-leekie crisis teams of the future, I implore you, Boston University, change the name to COC.