The big merge

One of the biggest college rivals in the state is coming to an end; UW and WSU come together.

Washington is in for a surprise. The decades-long rival between the University of Washington and Washington State University is coming to an end, as the two have decided to merge as one school in the coming year. The schools opted to quash their rivalry and come together in an effort to bring their knowledge and expertise together as one and increase availability across the whole state.

The concept is one that we are already familiar with at UW. It is set to align with the current UW system — which has campuses in Seattle, Tacoma, and Bothell — only with the new addition of WSU in Pullman. Any student who is a part of these four campuses will soon have access to anything that the others have access to as well. So, now with UW and WSU merging, the schools are providing students with access and opportunities to things that they might not have had previously.

This also gives students the option to be able to stay closer to home and still get the education they wanted. This also means that students aren’t made to make that difficult decision in choosing which school is better. 

This gives students access to the best of both worlds considering they will have a wider range of experts available to them.Though students have access to resources at all campuses, if a student has interest particular field of study then picking a particular campus may be more beneficial to them, as specialized classes are offered at the particular campuses. 

For example, UW Seattle is home to UW Medicine, and as such, resources and classes will be most accessible from that campus. However, following the merger, this student would still have access to things such as study abroad programs hosted by the other campuses or classes that are at the Bothell, Tacoma, or Pullman locations if needed.

Beyond this, the merger also gives students the opportunity to not have to choose between school and family, they can have both. But one important question remains when merging the two schools, what is the name going to be? And it all came down to football.

Both UW and WSU compete in the Apple Cup every year around thanksgiving, this tournament is one of the biggest games of the year bringing the two schools together to battle. To finally settle the rivalry once and for all, the name was decided based on which school won the most Apple Cups to date. 

UW has won 74 games and WSU has won 32 out of the 112 games that have been played. UW is currently the school with the longest win streak. With 8 wins between 1959-1966 and another 8 win streak from 1974 to1981. UW also has a current streak of 7 continuous wins from 2013 until now. 

With the rivalry settled once and for all, WSU will be renamed to the UW Cougs, with a Siberian cougar as their mascot. Making an imagined animal a school’s mascot is a bit unusual, but so is merging two different schools together! 

April Fools! There won’t be a Siberian Cougar mascot after all, the schools aren’t merging together as one. And let’s be honest, it’s probably for the best, we love our rivalry, seeing someone from the other school and exchanging lighthearted jabs or being the black sheep of the family for choosing the wrong school out of the two.