Northeastern University, Northwestern College, Northwestern University, Northwest University, University of Northwestern: are you able to identify the school you go to? 99.99% of NU students were correctly able to identify the school they attend.

But when parents were asked which school their child attended, only 13% picked correctly. After this chilling data was published, NU decided to change their name to (42°N)orth(87.4°W)estern to clear up confusion.

“If I tell people that I go to Northwestern they’ll think it’s in Seattle somewhere,” says Kyle Tomlinson, a McCormick student from Washington State, “So I usually just say I go to school in Illinois.” Following the name change, Kyle now explains to his friends that he attends (42°N)orth(87.4°W)estern University. Unfortunately, the new name seems to confuse his friends even more.

(42°N)orth(87.4°W)estern’s administration said that incorporating the latitude and longitude into their name was long overdue.“Every day we would see mail destined for similarly named schools misdelivered here. We were getting sick of having to forward it all,” says Felicia Staamp, (42°N)orth(87.4°W)estern’s postmaster.  

But after the change to a more intuitive name, papercuts from forwarding misdelivered mail has dropped dramatically, according to Staamp, who only had 3 bandages on her fingers.

However, the name change has not been without its fair share of critics. “So what if Northwestern isn’t in the Northwest? It’s quirky,” said Jessica Williams, a (42°N)orth(87.4°W)estern senior, “It’s just a little lie. Like when someone puts ‘influencer’ in their bio because they went to a pop-up museum one time.”

Jessica also expressed concerns about buying new (42°N)orth(87.4°W)estern merch.

In other news, due to an oversight in Evanston’s permitting procedure, a new school was able to purchase the land beneath campus. The newly founded (87.4°W)est(42°N)orthern directly underneath NU may severely undermine the usefulness of the name change, and talks have been opened to change (42°N)orth(87.4°W)estern’s name once more.

An anonymous source leaked to the Flipside that administration is leaning toward “(42.0563721°N)orth(87.428003°W)estern” to regain distinction.