Pirates theme treasured
Courtney York
Issue date: 12/5/07 Section: News
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If there is one thing that a visitor to Peninsula College's campus cannot miss, it is the fact that the pirate-theme is everywhere. Posters, merchandise, the sports teams' mascot "Pirate Pete" and even the names of the on-campus bookstore and cafeteria, "The Bookaneer" and "The Galley", respectively, display the college's bold buccaneer theme.
Why pirates?
The theme has been around for decades, chosen by a student committee to represent PC the same year that the college was built in 1961.
"If I can speak for all those 1961 students who were starting a college no one had yet heard of and who were a bit worried (as our faculty were at the time) that no one would respect our academic efforts, we wanted a mascot that was strong," said school bus driver James Lunt, who was PC's first Associated Student Body president.
Peninsula College was a rarity from the start. In 1961 there were few two-year colleges in Washington, as most were four-year institutions. Despite this, the man who thought up PC-John D. Glann, then the superintendent of Port Angeles schools-made his idea for the college a reality. "Mr. Glann . . . saw a dream come true when Peninsula College opened its doors in 1961," reads page one of PC's first yearbook, the Treasure Chest, in a dedication to the college's founder. Glann had planned for and worked toward the college's creation for over ten years before it had its first student.
Glann also arranged for PC's first faculty and buildings, as well as hiring John Maier as the college's first president. Maier was in charge of hiring new faculty, recruiting students and even overseeing construction of the first building on campus.
Before construction was finished, Maier gave a task to the group of 150 or so students: write a college constitution, select school colors and establish a nickname for the college. "It was agreed that we did not want to be a clone of a district high school and we did not want to be similar to other community colleges, but we did want to be representative of the district the college was intended to serve," explained Lunt.
In order to fulfill the requirements that they had set for themselves, the students created three committees: one group of students to write the constitution, one to choose the school colors and one to select the college's theme. According to Lunt, fishing and logging were the most common activities in the Port Angeles area in 1961.
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