The University of Okoboji is a fictitious university in the state of Iowa in the United States. The university was the creation of three brothers (The Three Sons) in the early 1970s, who printed t-shirts with an "official" school crest. The word "Okoboji" refers to several lakes, and to the town of Okoboji, in the Iowa Great Lakes region that are popular recreational destinations.
It is common among those claiming to be alumni to display university decor, such as car decals and t-shirts without informing unsuspecting out-of-staters that the university is fictitious. The name is now used in connection with several annual fund-raising events for charity, including bike rides, a marathon, and a winter games competition. A local radio station, KUOO, has joined in the joke and refers to itself as the "campus radio".
Famous quotes containing the words university of and/or university:
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)
“I am not willing to be drawn further into the toils. I cannot accede to the acceptance of gifts upon terms which take the educational policy of the university out of the hands of the Trustees and Faculty and permit it to be determined by those who give money.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)