Emory University spent tens of thousands of dollars on a statue of Dooley, the spirit of Emory. Dooley is a skeleton with a top hat that roams around campus followed by an entourage of Emory students called "Dooley's guard." That was the spirit's physical representation until a week ago..

Many years ago, students used the pen name "Dooley" to write to the Emory Wheel as the voice of the students. This character eventually took shape as a man in costume that comes to your classes during Dooley's week. Dooley's week is a week of fun events during the spring in which Dooley and his entourage will come to your class and a) let you out of class, or b) spray your teacher with a water gun. If this sounds confusing, it's because it is. I'll try to post the actual history of Dooley sometime in the future to clarify. But many students aren't sure what they think of Dooley. Many just think he's cool because he lets you out of class and he throws a sweet costume party in the spring called "Dooley's Ball" where pretty much every student on campus gets completely blasted out of their minds. So anyway, administrators wanted to create a permanent structure dedicated to Dooley on campus. 

The Dooley statue, which now sits on Asbury circle, is an interesting and confusing sight. Some student are freaked out by a life sized skeleton staring them down on the way to class. Other are freaked out by the black shards of metal that appear to be shooting out of the skeleton. In any case, no one is in love with the new statue. 

Yesterday, someone decided to take a stand. When students walked by the statue in the morning, it was completely covered in brown mud. There was a sign that said "Wash Me. - Wash U." This was meant to make students think that Wash U. had defaced the statue as a prank, but elder students such as I know that Wash U. does not care about our rivalry. It was almost positively an Emory student or group trying to mess up the statue. But heck, I thought it was an improvement.