Editor’s Letters’ “Please can you Boar off!”

It has recently come to our attention that there is a pun in the title of this publication. A rather clever little play on words can be made out of the Boar and the word bore, as in boring.

I would personally like to thank everyone who has noticed this and brought it to our attention. We certainly never made such an association before, indeed the founding editor, Godfrey Rust, most certainly had no idea. It’s not as if newspapers are known for their puns.

By no means was the paper named the Boar because of this pun. It would be silly and a little self-deprecating to name yourself after an unflattering characteristic, such as being boring.

There are many sensible reasons why this paper is called the Boar. Before the university was founded, the area in which the university inhabits was a serene area of Coventry, known for its wild boars that would graze the undeveloped pastures.

In the Chinese zodiac, boars are renowned for being models of sincerity, purity, tolerance, and honour. All qualities in which any newspaper should aspire towards.

Boars are also rather tasty, although we would never eat a boar today, as that would be somewhat cannibalistic.

When the paper was launched in 1973, amongst much fanfare, a publicity stunt designed to help cement the name in the campus psyche didn’t pan out too well. Three boars with stacks of papers tied to their backs were released on campus, however they invaded Rootes and ate all the food in the ground floor kitchens of C block before making their way to Tocil Woods, never to be found again.

As you can see, clearly there are lots of reasons why the name ‘the Boar’ has stuck. It is rather amusing to think that we would base our existence on a pun. Indeed it is frankly concerning that we didn’t notice this before. Now that this pun has been brought to our attention, we are considering rebranding ourselves to stop this negative association with the word ‘boring’. Any suggestions would be gladly welcomed.

We would like to move forward from this frankly embarrassing revelation. Whilst it is very witty to say that an article is ‘boaring’ please think for a moment about the writer who has spent a long time working on the piece. It is not their fault that this pun has not been picked up in the 40 year history of Warwick’s student paper.

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