Symbol and Impact
The Alma Mater has long been a public symbol of the University of Illinois. Her image is currently the profile image for the official University Twitter account, figures prominently on the University website, and the statue is featured on the i-Card, the official university identification card for the flagship Urbana-Champaign campus.
The statue is sometimes adorned to reflect current events. In 2005, during the Final Four, the Alma Mater sported an Illini jersey. In 2007, the Alma Mater was decorated with a variety of red, orange, and blue roses to signify the Illinois football team's Rose Bowl appearance. In 2010, the Alma Mater was decorated with a UIUC cap and gown custom-made by Herff Jones to signify the University's graduation exercises.
In the 2012-13 absence of the statue, it has become popular for students to don costumes mimicking the Alma Mater's robes and pose on the empty granite base.
Read more about this topic: Alma Mater (Illinois Sculpture)
Famous quotes containing the words symbol and/or impact:
“The symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground.... So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)