1 The Many Owls of Indiana University
The Bloomington campus of Indiana University is home to a veritable parliament of decorative owls. Perhaps the most easily spotted of these is the stately owl perched atop the bookstore entrance of the Indiana Memorial Union. In fact, there are twelve owls to be found on six different Bloomington campus buildings.1 Though Indiana University briefly adopted the owl as a mascot in 1908 2, this does not seem to be the reason for their prevalence as a decorative symbol on campus. It is more likely that the artisans who decorated the buildings saw the owl as an appropriate motif because of the creature’s traditional symbolic associations with wisdom and education.
Though the locations of most campus features described in Unique IU will be noted and included on the interactive map found at the end of the book, I’m not going to tell you where all the owls are hidden. It’s a lot of fun to walk around campus and find them on your own. However, if you keep an eye out, you may see a few pictured elsewhere in these pages.
Happy hunting!
