OCU is officially keeping its acronym “OCU.”
After experimenting with the acronym “OKCU” for the past three years, Kevin Windholz, vice president for enrollment management and university communications, said he decided to keep the acronym “OCU.”
“OCU has always been the official acronym of Oklahoma City University, and that’s never changed,” Windholz said. “What the difference was, about three years ago, if my memory is right on time, because our email address is OKCU and because the website is OKCU, it had been thought often times we will have prospective students and prospective families refer to us as OKCU.”
Windholz said he thought the website and email being different from other means of advertising in the school would create confusion among incoming freshmen and parents. Windholz said he and the university communications team experimented with changing the acronym to OKCU.
“The communications team, about three years ago, had the thought that what we would start doing, in prospective student communication, is we would start cutting the acronym OCU, because we thought that could be advantageous for recruiting, because not only does it match what they are consistently seeing, but also, when you are looking at national and international recruitment, the term OKC does have a recognizable brand because of the Thunder,” Windholz said.
Windholz said the experiment was mainly to see if students would start referring to the school as OKCU.
“So the years passed, and, to be honest, that never really happened,” Windholz said. “The idea and the concept behind it was great, but it perhaps maybe created its own sense of confusion. We felt that it was OKCU in prospective student communication, but when students got here and they were actually a part of the student culture, they didn’t refer to it as OKCU.”
Will Watson, film freshman, said he prefers the OKCU acronym to OCU.
“When I was applying to the school, the website I went to was OKCU, email is OKCU and so I’ve been introduced to the school as OKCU,” Watson said. “Born and raised in Oklahoma, and all my life, people called the city OKC, and I do kind of find it absurd that we would take the ‘K’ away.”
Watson said he thinks there are plenty of benefits for changing the acronym to OKCU.
“I don’t think OKCU is a bad acronym at all,” Watson said. “Every school in the metro has an ‘O,’ a ‘C’ and a ‘U’ in it, and it is in some weird variation, whether it’s UCO, OCCC, OCU, or OC. There’s too many O’s, too many C’s and too many U’s.”
Watson said he did a standup comedy set for the open mic night during the first week of school and most of his material was poking fun of the acronym.
“I got up on stage, and half of my material was ‘why are you guys saying OCU, I’ve been hearing it all week. It’s OKCU.’” Watson said. “No joke, that’s the most I’ve been heckled on stage as a comic.”
Watson said he wants more people to talk about the absurdity of the acronym being OCU and not OKCU.
Watson said, from what he has experienced, most freshmen feel similarly.
“Freshmen feel similar because every email was ‘congratulations, you are an OKCU Star!’” Watson said. “They sent us merch that said OKCU. And so, we have been, not led to believe, but that has just been the acronym since we got here.”
Watson said he thinks the branding for the university would be for the better if OCU changed to OKCU.
“It is really absurd to me that we are getting really hung up on an acronym, and we should just embrace the K,” Watson said.
Troy Freeman, music theater junior, said he is glad the university is changing back to OCU.
“I personally prefer OCU because of the way it rolls off the tongue,” he said.
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