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:
“There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me ...
I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol ...
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)