by Tom Pink

What’s in a Word?
A Great Way to Promote a Lake Superior U

In December, when other Lake Superiorites turn thoughts from sunset walks on the beach to ice fishing or the warmth of a sauna, there is a group of folks at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, involved in a subversiveactivity.

We’re looking for words to banish from the English language.

Bill was a master at concocting creative, offbeat ways to garner inexpensive publicity for LSSU, which was then and still is Michigan’s smallest public university. (Our enrollment is about 3,000.)

He created the LSSU Unicorn Hunters in 1971 shortly after the university became independent from Michigan Technological University. (An ABC crew even filmed LSSU students “hunting” unicorns.)

It was under the auspices of the Hunters that he released the first banished words list, which had eight words - input, scenario, macho, viable, detente, dialogue, implement and meaningful - and one phrase - at this point in time.

An astute newspaperman, Bill had a pretty good idea that The List would be well received by editors on what is typically a slow news day. One wonders, though, if he had any idea that 33 years later his list would still grab headlines in nearly every North American daily on January 1, as well as CNN, Fox and other networks, and would fill hours on talk shows on NPR, the CBC and around the world.

An annual cartoon by Ron Raffaele promotes The List. Jump to the 2007 List

If people on the West or East Coast have heard of Lake Superior State University, it is likely because of either The List or our NCAA-championship Laker hockey team.

Former students also get a kick out of hearing about their alma mater. In the days before cell phones, a proud LSSU alumna pulled over in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to call from a pay phone when she heard us on the radio.

As a downstate troll who came to study at LSSU in 1980, I barely knew that The List existed. It wasn’t until I was employed here and the telephone started to ring with requests for interviews about the latest hated words and phrases that I began to appreciate the PR power of The List.

If people on the West or East Coast have heard of Lake Superior State University, it is likely because of either The List or our NCAA-championship Laker hockey team.

Former students also get a kick out of hearing about their alma mater. In the days before cell phones, a proud LSSU alumna pulled over in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to call from a pay phone when she heard us on the radio.

As a downstate troll who came to study at LSSU in 1980, I barely knew that The List existed. It wasn’t until I was employed here and the telephone started to ring with requests for interviews about the latest hated words and phrases that I began to appreciate the PR power of The List.

The interviews unnerve me, even though I’ve taken Bill Rabe’s radio broadcasting classes. My colleague, John Shibley, is better at it than I, and so is our supervisor, Bill Crawford, who is the voice of the Laker hockey team. I’m quick to point out that I’m no language expert and make just as many grammar mistakes as anyone. We remind people that this is not a serious list (a few people take it quite - possibly too - seriously) and that no dictionaries have been changed (or harmed) because of our efforts.

So why do it? Certainly for the Yooper ingenuity of getting low-cost publicity. (Imagine the price of ads in so many daily papers or for air time on the major television and radio networks.)

One of my favorite responses, though, as to why we publish The List is: “No one will let us stop.”

Yes, there seems to be no shortage of people who want to talk about the English language and how it is used and abused. Apparently there also is no end to words and phrases that drive people crazy.

Beyond the publicity and the tongue-in-cheek nature of The List, asking people to slow down and consider what they’re saying and writing certainly can’t be a bad thing.

One year we received a letter from an Arizona State Supreme Court justice who took that year’s List, tacked it on the bulletin board and told the attorneys doing business in his court that they were forbidden from using the banished words and phrases in their legal briefs.

Another year, our office received a postcard from someone at a Las Vegas hotel. The writer, who said he wanted to get caught up with Lists he had missed over the years, signed his name as George Carlin. He gave an address in California, so I wrote back and asked if he was the George Carlin, the comedian. A week later, the phone rang and I almost dropped the receiver when the caller said, “Hi, Tom. This is George Carlin. Yes, the George Carlin.”

Last year, The List drew a stern reprimand from Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert because it included “truthiness,” a word that he coined and that was chosen as Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.

Not all people intrigued by The List want to talk about words. Once a hockey mom in Regina, Saskatchewan, called in on a CBC show featuring the Banished Words just to find out how our LSSU Laker team did on the previous weekend.

Word lovers continue to submit nominations, which are reviewed in December to create the new year’s list. In the early days, Bill and his students pored over hundreds of letters and postcards. (One arrived addressed only to: “The List. The College. The Soo.”)

Today, we rarely get mail, but about 2,000 nominations each year are submitted at lssu.edu/banished. The “we” reviewing the nominations these days still can include students or others like me picking the most cited or annoying words and trying to keep The List lighthearted.

By the time you read this, you may have heard about The List for 2008. If you haven’t yet made and broken all of your New Year’s resolutions, I’d like to encourage you - as a Lake Superior-region lover - to add one more thing to your 2009 list. Send in your nominations for LSSU’s 2009 list of banished words.

This issue’s Journal writer: Tom Pink has worked in the Public Relations Office at Lake Superior State University for 18 years. He is also a freelance outdoor writer, author of A Wingshooter's Guide to Michigan and has written for Michigan Out-of-Doors, Michigan Outdoor News, Retriever Journal and Traveling Wingshooter magazines. He worked very carefully on this column to avoid using “banished” words from past lists.