Why “Blackout”? I figure this is about as frank and succinct as I can be. Mercyhurst’s colors are officially forest green, white and navy blue. If you ask the men’s hockey team, the colors are kelly green and royal blue, but hey, who’s counting?

The Laker Spirt Club gave away 100 black t-shirts at the Jan. 16. Mercyhurst College women’s hockey game.Black is not a school color! I don’t care how cool it might be to wear black, don’t slap a Mercyhurst logo on it and call it school apparel. We should not have a blackout at a hockey game! It doesn’t make any sense! It doesn’t make any sense at all, and I find it hard to believe that nobody said that at the meeting where they came up with that insane idea!

Whiteouts at games have been done since the days of the Winnipeg Jets, and it’s been quite effective all over.

How about a Sea of Green for our Lakers? Or a good ol’ fashioned whiteout? Let’s come up with something that actually fits with the college. Why did we set a specific set of colors otherwise?

Maybe Laker Spirit Club (LSC) should work on something more effective, like encouraging people to be loud at the hockey games. That would be nice: hearing people cheer for a goal. The Rochester Institute of Technology came to the Mercyhurst Ice Center and you’d never know that the Lakers were at home. It’s pathetic!

Did you know that Mercyhurst has a fight song? We do! I know, because I got a little card with the lyrics at the beginning of the football season last year. It’s set to the tune of “Anchors Aweigh.” It’s actually pretty awesome! Now maybe if we used something like that.

How about a pamphlet about Laker traditions? Include in it the chants, cheers, logos and such that we always used to do. Make it dirt cheap to print, and hand them out at the games for free. Let’s get people involved in ways that make sense!

I’m sure somebody is going to point out that the men’s hockey team’s warm-up jackets are black with green and blue, and I realize this, but they aren’t even complying with the school color change, so I’m not really all that concerned.

Anyways, black is not a team color. Use a color that the school has adopted, so-called Laker Spirit Club!