A picture-perfect snowfall greeted us as we rubbed the sleep from our eyes, rushing to the one class that hadn't been cancelled the day before Thanksgiving.

That morning in 2002, Professor Urquhart led our sophomore music theory class tramping through the snow to the bell carillon, to program our freshman Cantus Firmi compositions where they could be heard across the campus from the bell tower.

It was quirky. It was old-fashioned. It was one of our fondest memories from UNH (tied with singing backup for Kenny Rogers).

The new logo is pretty. It looks like a ying-yang.

It also looks like it was designed by an eight-year-old. It looks like the New York Yankees logo on a shield. It was designed by a fancy NY ad agency and cost $65k.

As this petition goes live, 42 people have commented on LinkedIn about this logo. 41 the of 42 people feel that the new logo does not represent UNH. We are concerned that the new logo has automatically updated to all of our LinkedIn profiles, and makes us look unprofessional.

On behalf of other like-minded alumni who will someday be old and ugly and rich, and thinking about where to donate all our money, next time you have a PR project, please consider making it an in-house job, a challenge for your budding art and marketing majors. Your students and alumni crave opportunities to create something awesome, something that reminds us why we went to UNH, something that gives us pride. That old logo is simple and beautiful; maybe it could be better. Perhaps add bells to it. But make it a public contest and give that $65k as a scholarship to the winner.

Great ad agencies know it is symbols, not letters, that navigate the ever-changing, ever-evolving tides of change. A great symbol offers the ultimate simplicity: the Mercedes wheel, the Nike checkmark, the Apple apple.

That bell tower has evolved with the university, updated over the years to broadcast complex polyphony and digital feeds. It was aesthetically remodeled a few years ago at great expense. Everyone at UNH hears that bell tower every day; alumni remember the sound of it when they see that logo in funding requests they get in the mail. It is a strategic error to the UNH brand to replace it. It won't cost the university $65k; it will cost millions.

Our work was inside that old logo, but that isn't what matters. What does matter is that Professor Urquhart is still at UNH, playing the work of his students from that bell tower.