Posted on December 11, 2023 by Jeff Civins
Virtually all colleges have nicknames—my alma maters’ include Fighting Judges (Brandeis), Nittany Lions (Penn State), and Longhorns (Texas), and not only nicknames, but mascots to go with them, e.g., Bevo the Longhorn (Texas) , Tusk the razorback (Arkansas), Mike the Tiger (LSU), Big Al the elephant (Alabama) and Uga the bulldog (Georgia). I got to thinking the American College of Environmental Lawyers is a college–why shouldn’t we have a nickname and a mascot too? But what would be a suitable nickname and mascot? Then it came to me.
The website of the College explains: The American College of Environmental Lawyers (ACOEL) is a professional association of distinguished lawyers who practice in the field of environmental law. It includes as a logo our acronym and a blue squiggle:
I wasn’t sure what the blue squiggle was intended to represent, but it reminded me of a blue worm, which I thought appropriate because the acronym ACOEL is in fact a term for a marine flatworm. So, what could be more appropriate for our nickname than a blue marine flatworm?
From my online research, I learned that acoels are the simplest animals with bilateral symmetry, meaning the right and left halves of the body match each other. They apparently live in all the oceans of the world. And almost all acoels have an organ for adjusting themselves to their surroundings. See https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/acoels-acoela See too https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3789126/ . That sounded perfect: we as environmental lawyers are trying to help adjust to our surroundings, by protecting them.*
I asked my secretary, who has an artistic bent, to put some eyes on the squiggle and here’s what she came up with:
But then, we need a mascot to go with the nickname. Why not “Acoela,” the term for the phylum for this class of invertebrates? Think of the T-shirts, caps, cups, and other memorabilia we might market. Are you hooked?
*Note: In the interests of full disclosure, the website that was the source of my acoel information declares: “Acoels have no known importance to people.” But we are not worms—flat or otherwise—and the fact we may have adopted a nickname and mascot that assertedly are unimportant to people does not mean that we are.