Oxford bought the Wahoo sign, but it should belong to Brookes

Every Brookes student has good memories of Wahoo. The madness of Fuzzies, the bargains on Skint Mondays, pulling someone and only remembering because your friends remind you the next day and dancing on the podium. These are what made Brookes, well… Brookes.

And now, some JCR students decided the sign goes with their colour scheme, and therefore have bought the legendary sign to be ‘wahooligans’. For that name alone, the sign should be stripped from their undeserving hands and hung proudly where it belongs: the Brookes sports bar. It should stand as a reminder of every sport social and club night, every ruined pair of shoes and tactical chunder.

The look of love, for Wahoo

Brookes students were raised up on a diet of VKs and Jagerbombs, and grew up stronger because of it. Even if most sports moved to Fishies, it wasn’t because we hated Fuzzies, it was that we didn’t want to watch something we love die. But now it’s dead, we’ll be dammed if we let someone else desecrate its memory in the name of interior design.

Everyone remembers their first Fuzz. The air of expectation that tonight would be messy, the costumes of the socials acting like a visual drug. The line may have stretched all the way to the bridge when you arrived and you waited out in the cold anyway. Promotors selling wristbands in the queue for those without were angels in the eyes of many. The smoking area was a mess of people making friends with random strangers and trying to figure out the name of the person you pulled. The aftermath was practically biblical, with generation of shoes ruined and awkward one night stands removed by taxi.

We were forged with duck shaped holes in our hearts that only Wahoo filled.

No single picture can capture Fuzz, but this is close

So Wahoo is ours as much as anyone’s, and more on top of that. We claim it with a thousand pairs of stained shoes and cases of chlamydia. We sacrificed Thursday mornings and Firsts in degrees for a club.

And so, students of JCR, if you read this, know one thing. We will not forget Wahoo, or you. Your purple common room will be fixed in the minds of every Brookes student with a heart full of anger, and we have long memories when we aren’t drinking. You made a mistake taking that sign.