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:
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)
“The university must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)