To the editor:

Now that football season is over and the Axe remains in our possession, I respectfully suggest we display it in a more visible campus location.

The Axe presently lives in the Arrillaga Family Sports Center, and although the display is suitably impressive, the location (by a stairwell, near the elevators) seems a curious choice off the beaten path. I suspect relatively few people — especially visitors — ever see it.

I believe the Axe deserves to be more prominently displayed.

In my day (the Guy Benjamin-Mike Cordova-Jerry Waldvogel era), the Axe was at Tresidder — in a niche in the hallway between the two sets of double glass doors.

It wasn’t a grand display, but the location was great: The hallway was heavily trafficked, everyone knew where the Axe was, and people often lingered nearby, reminiscing. Here, in casual conversation, I learned about the Axe’s colorful history, and I’ve been a fan of Stanford sports ever since.

It should be noted that in those days the Axe wasn’t the semi-permanent campus resident that it is today — and whenever the Axe went missing, everyone felt extremely irritated. (Passing by a few days after a long-ago Big Game, I remember seeing a typewritten, 3-by-5 card in the empty display case that read simply, “Axe on temporary loan.”)

So, here’s my vote to relocate the Axe, if not to Tresidder, then to a suitable campus location where many people (including linebackers and five-star OL recruits) can see it.

– Frank Hustace ‘74