To Some, WSU Ads Aren’t So Funny

In the Lake Woebegone-like world of Washington State University alumni, Cougar graduates are smart, polite, honest and hard-working.

But some locals are wondering if a series of fund-raising advertisements might lead people to think WSU grads are elitist and arrogant, to boot.

Published free of charge last month by 17 Washington newspapers, the ads ask WSU alumni to give to their alma mater during its $200 million Campaign WSU to help create scholarships, increase diversity, improve teaching and advance university research.

“If the whole world graduated from WSU, lids on mayonnaise jars wouldn’t need to say ‘twist’ or have directional arrows,” read the inaugural ad.

“Give generously and populate the state with people like you,” the ad concludes.

It was meant to be funny, say its creators.

But some people aren’t getting the joke, said Tori Byington, past president of the WSU staff senate.

While it’s all in good fun to say WSU alumni are so trustworthy that a world filled with them would not need locked doors at night - the theme of one of the ads - Byington said the flip side of the ads suggests other people aren’t as smart or trustworthy.

“I graduated from the University of Idaho,” she said. “Does that mean I can’t be trusted?”

And at a time when the university is promoting ethnic and cultural diversity, Byington asked, “is it really appropriate for us to be saying things like, ‘Be one of us?”’

School officials insist the ads should not be interpreted so seriously.

By appealing directly to WSU alumni, the ads are not directed at any race or ethnicity, said Mary Gresch, coordinator of the advertising project for the WSU Foundation, the school’s private fund-raising arm.

“We weren’t trying to classify a group of people other than that they came from WSU,” she said.

“There’s no elitism in there whatsoever,” said President Sam Smith, who said such an implication is “stretching.”

“It’s very, very tongue-in-cheek,” he said. “The reactions we’ve been getting out there have been fabulous.”

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Smith himself let on to some misgivings about opening a mayonnaise jar without the help of arrows or directions.

“We could learn,” he said.

The ads were created by a team headed by Tim Pavish, a 1980 WSU graduate and executive vice president of Elgin Syferd/DDB Needham, a Seattle advertising firm.

“It’s a risky campaign,” Pavish acknowledged. “If we had come out with a picture of Bryan Tower, it would have been a lot safer. … It wouldn’t have done anything either.”

Still, said Pavish, the advertisements’ detractors have been confined mostly to alumni from other schools who ask if mayonnaise jar-twisting is a graduate-level or undergraduate course.

One alumnus from WSU’s archrival, the University of Washington, wrote to ask if ketchup was the next course in the curriculum.

“Ketchup,” Pavish said, was misspelled.