After a brief hiatus (and it has actually been brief this go-round!), Ra Ra Brunonia is BACK with a titillating installment on bears aplenty, bears galore. As Nick Bibby’s bronze, indomitable bear sculpture travels to Providence by boat in a massive reinforced steel container, it only seemed appropriate to dive into Brown’s century-long, storied relationship with its beloved mascot, the bear. For contemporary students, the robust Kodiak bear in Meehan Auditorium reigns as the most Ursus arctos presence on campus. According to Encyclopedia Brunoniana, alumni Ronald M. Kimball ’18 and John J. Monk ’24 solicited funds to donate that Kodiak bear to the University in October 1948, and they were even thoughtful enough to cover the cost of the bear’s mothproofing.

In 1955, the legendary documentarian Elliot Erwitt photographed the Kodiak bear, entitled the image “Brown University, Providence, RI,” and included it in his book Museum Watching. The Kodiak bear’s portrait is in good company within this oeuvre: Erwitt shot some of the most iconic images of the 20th century, ranging from grieving first ladies, to scenic trysts, to celebrities, to whimsical compositions of dogs. But, as photogenic and statuesque as Meehan’s Kodiak bear is, there were days long ago when Brown’s mascot could be found beyond the confines of a glass case…

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*Learn the words to the traditional and modern versions of the Brown fight song, “Ever True to Brown”, here.

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As we come to the end of another glorious season of Brown Athletics, it’s important to take a second to sit back and think about all the wonderful moments we’ve spent watching Brown teams succeed on and off the field this year. Let’s dash through season recaps for every one of our 37 varsity sports:

Baseball: A 7-33 finish, including 3-17 in Ivy League play, marks a successful and unprecedented effort by the baseball team to win even fewer games than last year’s nine. They did push #2 LSU to the wire in a narrow 4-3 walk-off loss, though, so that’s something.

Basketball (Men’s): A 7-7 Ivy League record was a big improvement on last year and good for a tie for third. Memorable wins included a comeback over rival Providence and eliminating Princeton from league title contention with a beatdown in the season finale. Sean McGonagill ’14 was named first-team All-Ivy; Cedric Kuakumensah ’16 was name Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year. Show the fuck up to their games next year, please.

Basketball (Women’s): 3-11 Ivy and 9-19 overall records were nothing to write home about, but women’s basketball alum Lindsey Gottlieb ’99 coached Cal to the Women’s Final Four, which is pretty damn cool.

Crew (Men’s): Hard to figure out, since apparently men’s rowing isn’t an NCAA sport but is still varsity (?). I don’t know. Anyway, Brown has had another great season, losing only to No. 1 Washington and Ivy rival Harvard. (I think. Crew results are really hard to understand.) The year will conclude with Ivy and National championships in late May/early June.

Crew (Women’s): The NCAA sponsors women’s rowing, so this one is easier to figure out. Brown is ranked 12th and fresh off an Eastern Sprints victory heading into Ivy and National championships in late May/early June. Sounds promising.

Cross Country (Men’s): A bunch of Brown students ran distances that would kill you or me, but didn’t qualify for nationals after finishing 11th at Northeast Regionals.

Cross Country (Women’s): A bunch of Brown students ran distances that would kill you or me, and finished 8th at Northeast Regionals. Standout Margaret Connelly ’14 placed 7th to qualify for Nationals, where she finished 130th out of 253 runners.

Equestrian: The team placed third at Ivies and sent three riders to Nationals. Honestly, the results of this shit are totally indecipherable, but I can report with some certainty that no one from Brown won the national championship. Still, it sounds like they did pretty well.

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Dylan Remick ’13 had both assists for Brown

Yesterday afternoon/evening Brown Men’s Soccer took care of business like we all knew they would, comfortably downing Drexel 2-0 to advance to the second round of the NCAA tournament. Tom McNamara ’13 and Daniel Taylor ’15 each scored first half header goals off passes from unanimous all-Ivy selection Dylan Remick ’13. The live stream of the game available through Drexel’s website was actually pretty good, and I’m confident that at least ten other Brown-affiliated fans used it besides me. Maybe. I hope.

Next up is #2 overall seed Maryland, which will be easily the best team Brown has played this year. The “Terrapins” (basically a bitchy turtle) have racked up an impressive 17-1-2 record in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which some experts have deigned to suggest is more competitive than the Ivy League. (The previous sentence assumes that 1) there are college soccer “experts” and 2) that if there were, they would ever bother to compare the hyper-competitive ACC with a league that includes intramural-quality teams masquerading as varsity teams, like Penn and Columbia.) [Read more →]

Captains Ryan McDuff ’13 and Eric Robertson ’13

Alright, so originally this column was supposed to hit every one of our sports teams, and not be the OMG GUYS BROWN SOCCER column, but OMG GUYS BROWN SOCCER!!! Unfortunately, due to a late season-collapse bad luck and bullshit officiating, Brown has tumbled a bit down the rankings, and will have to play its NCAA opener on the road, TOMORROW AT 4 P.M. AT DREXEL. Obviously, I’m not saying you should drive to Philadelphia for the game, but just be aware it’s happening. If you are so inclined, there will be a Gametracker play-by-play feature as well as live streaming video of the game available. Here’s a quick preview from someone who knows literally nothing about soccer, especially Drexel soccer:

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Did you have fun tailgating in support of Brown State on Saturday? We may have lost the football game, but we definitely had more fun than our foes from Cambridge, and we have the photos to prove it. Like our Facebook page, click through the photos, and tag your friends in this album from Homecoming. Enjoy!

Check out tomorrow’s BDH for more photos from today’s game.

Here are a few of our favorite shots from the night.

It’s Homecoming. It’s time to temporarily leave the realm of academia, release our inner Brown Bares Bears, and enter the state of nature. Proudly donning our Brown swag, we take to Brown Stadium in revelry and unite as a cohesive sleuth of Bears to cheer on our fellow athletically-inclined Brunonians as they engage in an old American pastime: kickin’ some good old Crimson behind… uh, we mean football.

The concept of men throwing around the pigskin and tackling each other may or may not be appealing to you, but we all can agree on two things: we’re proud to go to Brown, and we hate Harvard. There’s seriously no better time to show it. So put your work on the back burner, shelve your stress, and come on down to the game. Paxson will be there too, which is a huge plus.

Let’s go Bruno!

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The London 2012 Olympics kick off tonight with a Shakespeare-inspired, Danny Boyle-directed spectacle. Some of y’all might have already made plans to watch the Opening Ceremony and drool over Ryan Lochte, but here’s another reason to tune in: two Brunonians will be reppin’ our school in London this summer. Craig Kinsley ’11 is a javelin thrower for the U.S. track and field team, and Nikola Stojic ’97 will be making his fourth appearance at the Olympics as a member of Serbia’s men’s rowing team.

We wish them both luck in their respective events! As for the rest of us…

Finally, Brown’s most pressing mysteries and “bruin” controversies solved and settled. Ever wondered about the origins of our mascot or the exact physics of the SciLi wind tunnel? Well, dear reader, BruKnow-It-All is here to answer your questions and satisfy your inquiring minds with all the Brunonian trivia, timely campus news explanations, and silly speculations seriously researched investigations with which to impress and/or annoy your friends. Sure, curiosity killed the cat — but who likes cats anyway?

Have you seen CPax’s new paws-worthy scarf? (Weak pun? Bear with me.) It features a sleuth of bears, of course. But why not a parliament of owls or an array of hedgehogs? How did we end up with the largest land-based predator as our beloved, chromatically appropriate, and very alliterative mascot?

Every superhero has an origin story, and Bruno's no exception.

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