By Zack Sampson and Anne Steele, News Staff
On May 21, the Associated Press ran a correction. It appeared across several major news outlets, from Salon to Fox News.
“CAIRO — In a May 20 story about the Egyptian elections, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Egypt expert Denis Sullivan was with Northeastern University in Illinois. The university is in Massachusetts.”
Yes, Illinois. Home to that other school — the one in Evanston with a similar name that begins and ends with “N.” Northwestern.
Whether or not the AP made the same mistake that is all-too-familiar to many Northeastern students is unknown. But the correction certainly seems like an example of the age-old mix-up of the two universities.
“I think it just happens because the names are so similar, and there’s not really any other reason,” Bianca Vecchiarello, a junior business major, said. “But people should know the difference – they’re in two completely different states.”
She added, “It doesn’t offend me. I’ve never met anyone that has never heard of Northeastern at all, it’s just a mix-up.”
Daniella Iervolino, a journalism graduate student, said she also knows about the Northeastern/Northwestern mistake but does not treat it as an insult.
“Just last week when I told someone I go to Northeastern, they asked how I like Chicago and I just said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t go to school there,’” she said.
And the confusion goes both ways. When explaining where they go to school, undergraduates at Northwestern are sometimes asked, “How’s Boston?”
In an informal survey on his Facebook page, Alex Van Atta, the student life vice president for the associated student government at Northwestern University, asked some classmates about the mix-up. Several people responded with personal takes on the same problem.
Van Atta, a sophomore industrial engineering major, said in an email to The News that mistaking “directional schools” seems to be a fairly common error. But he said Northwestern students do not feel slighted just because some people think they go to Northeastern.
“As far as being offended, I think Northwestern students are just upset that more people don’t know about our school, not so much as being confused with Northeastern,” he said.
With his directional theory, Van Atta might just have found the root of the problem too.
Danny Zolotorevsky, a junior finance major at Northeastern, said the mix-up has happened a couple times to people he knows.
“I think it’s because no one knows where this school is – they’re starting to know as we get more well-known,” he said. “But people tend to hear what they want to hear, and I think they connect the ‘north’ sound with the best-sounding place they know.”
The name issue isn’t just confined to fellow students: Even celebrities have been known to crack jokes about the mix-up.
When comedian Jon Stewart visited Matthews Arena in 2008, he touched on the subject by leading with, “It’s great to be here at one of America’s finest directionally-named universities.”
And there are several schools that join Northeastern in that category.
Northwest College is in Powell, Wyo. Norfolk, Neb. is home to Northeast Community College. Then there’s the southerners: Southwestern College near San Diego; Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas; Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla.
The list goes on, but it’s easy to understand why people get confused. Some still need to hold up their hands and look for the “L” just to distinguish left from right.
Except for their names, Northeastern and Northwestern are actually quite distinct. As different as cats and dogs, even. Students there are Wildcats. Students here are Huskies.
Northwestern uses a quarter schedule. Northeastern operates by semester.
Northwestern is home to 8,637 undergraduate students, according to its profile on The Princeton Review website. Northeastern boasts a population nearly double that.
Almost 1,000 miles separate the two campuses, but in people’s minds, they seem to be inseparable. And they probably won’t be disentangled any time soon.
“I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to change it. Northeastern is pretty well-known for the co-op program and what it has to offer,” Vecchiarello, the junior business major, said. “So unless the school wants to change the name, I don’t think there’s anything that can be done.”
