The Google search for “umd dining services” yields some results from out-of-state.
When this university announced it would be moving to the Big Ten, the first question many Terps asked was what school would be chosen to replace our (rather one-sided) rivalry with Duke. While it seems after this past football season that there is fertile ground for a rivalry with our northern neighbors at Penn State, I feel that there is another unexplored rival most students already resent.
I’m speaking, of course, of the other UMD: University of Minnesota Duluth.
I know very little about this other school, much less Duluth, Minnesota, besides what I learned from the Saturday Night Live skit “Fly High Duluth” and what I’ve gathered from Google searches. But that is precisely why we need to draw a line with the other UMD.
You see, I, like many other students at this university, often struggle to find the university resource I am looking for on our main school web page. To look up terms ranging from what it means to audit a class to how much a massage costs at the University Health Center, I usually just pop a keyword into a Google search bar with the letters “UMD” in there to make sure I’m getting results directly related to this university.
But the University of Minnesota Duluth also likes to delude itself into believing that it, too, is fit to bear the abbreviation “UMD.” That means our school’s good name is dragged through the Minnesotan mud. I wasn’t even aware of that university until freshman year, when an errant Google search brought me to an oddly Terrapin-free Web page about dining services. The schools even have similar school colors! What nerve.
We are a university with enough humility to understand that there are eight states in this great nation that begin with the letter “M.” We rarely are proud enough to call ourselves “UM,” except within the confines of the mid-Atlantic region, but we proudly embrace our state’s abbreviation and wear the mantle of “UMD” proudly.
It’s in our blood. It’s in our URL. After all, our school’s website contains umd.edu. It is frustrating to find yourself taken to the wrong page on a site when making a Google search, much less the wrong university’s Web page. University of Maryland, Baltimore County knows better than to haughtily leech off our abbreviation, and the University of Minnesota Duluth should follow suit. They must acknowledge Terrapin supremacy and rebrand themselves “UMnD” or else forever subject themselves to our wrath.
Sure, this rivalry won’t ever turn into a sports-themed smackdown, but it’s more than a matter of athletics; it is a matter of pride. I’m sure all the Bulldogs in Minnesota are great students and nice people, but here in College Park, we are busy students hunting for information in a flash — and we won’t let any other university stand in our way.
