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Let’s Go!

WVU means a lot to Mountain State

Thanks to the national prominence West Virginia University’s athletic teams have achieved, millions of Americans have become acquainted with the chant, “Let’s go, Mountaineers!”

Increasingly, it is appropriate as a rallying cry for our entire state, whatever the situation, because of the critical roles WVU plays in West Virginia.

This year marks WVU’s 150th birthday.

It is much more than a premier institution of higher learning. It is more than a nationally recognized center of valuable research. It is more than the state’s most important, by far, health care provider.

WVU is not just the extension service that helps farmers and other landowners solve problems. It is not just the 4-H program that builds character among young people.

Certainly, it is all those things. They alone would be enough to set WVU among the ranks of truly great universities.

But we in the Mountain State need something more, and WVU supplies it.

We need the pride we feel when our university does something very good, whether it be when the football team plays well before a national television audience, researchers are cited for keeping an international automobile company honest, or military veterans feel gratitude that documentary makers at WVU recognized the contribution of nurses during the Vietnam War.

WVU has given us many reasons to feel that pride.

We also need thoughtful leadership in making our state better — in improving our lives and those of our children and grandchildren. Through strategies such as those detailed in the “West Virginia Forward” study, WVU is providing that.

Many people who live here — or wish they could come back — think of West Virginia as “Almost Heaven.”

It is not too much to sum WVU up as a big reason why West Virginians love our state — and can have hope for it in the future.

Happy birthday, WVU.

Let’s go, Mountaineers!

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