President Kirk Schultz recently made waves at his speech outside Martin Stadium when he announced that WSU will be taking on a new mascot to replace Butch: Smoggy the Smoke Cloud. 

“Smoggy really represents the changing times,” Schultz said to a crowd of … well, we are pretty sure people were there, but we could not completely tell. “Butch is just a singular mascot and can only be in so many places at a time, Smoggy is all around us. And no, I don’t know why its eyes are glowing, we didn’t do that.”

Schultz could not have hit the nail more on the head, because, like Santa Claus creepin on you being naughty, Smoggy surrounds both student and faculty. 

“Why wouldn’t we want a mascot that is omniscient and omnipresent?” Schultz said. “I would like to see the huskies try to say that. The Cou … I mean the Smog are the biggest fans around. Smoggy is in every breath you take!”

While President Schultz and the upper admin are ecstatic about the change in mascots some of the fans have voiced their hesitancy. Freshman Brandy Hucksaw was the first to voice his disapproval, protesting the change outside the CUB. 

“I like Butch, even though he has never told me what the T stands for in his name,” he said. “You don’t have that same mystery with Smoggy H. Cloud, we all know that the H stands for ‘Help it feels like the air around me is soup.’”

While many voiced their support of Hucksaw’s protest, he ended up being the only one on the mall. We almost did not even find him, and only did so because we ran into each other. 

Despite the opposition from students, there does seem to be some positives about the new mascot. 

For one, WSU will not even need to buy a new costume. The Butches can keep dressing up as an oddly humanoid cougar because they will always be coated by Smoggy. That extra money saved could be used by a variety of departments, but has been earmarked for raising the Board of Regents pay.  

Of course, tuition will be raised to help compensate. 

Alongside this announcement of a mascot change, WSU has officially released its new school colors. No more tired Crimson and Grey, now is the time for a bold change! 

We at the Daily Evergreen (conspicuously we don’t have any of the WSU colors) were on the edges of our seats when the mass email came…

Grey and Grey! 

This color combination has never been tried before, and represents WSU’s shift towards an innovative and bold new strategy — blending into the environment at sports games. Think of how much our football run game will improve when our opponent cannot even see us! 

I am not sure how well this strategy will work with volleyball or swimming but I will leave that up to the experts. And now, sure, this only really changes one of our school colors, but that just means you do not need to buy as much new swag from the Bookie now.  

My editors asked me to find out WSU’s plan once the smoke eventually clears and claiming Smoggy as our mascot is no longer appropriate with blue skies. 

There might have been some confusion with years prior, because looking around I cannot see the end in sight, nor really anything for that matter. The red sun I see every night only harkens to our eventual transformation into the new Tatooine. 

Smoggy is our new reality, one that we cannot simply ignore since it is constantly surrounding us. Anyone who complains needs to go outside and take a deep breath, we cannot allow anger to stop this inevitable change. 

I, for one, embrace the inevitable change of Smoggy, because he is going to inevitably embrace us.