No, it wasn't a swipe at your "character". The only thing that swipes at your character are your own statements demeaning the current Pitt student body for using this nickname, which they have for several years because it has been passed down by prior students. Calling them "lazy" because of a nickname that they have been using is laughably out of touch; not that they give a flying flip what we think. This is the same student body whose achievements, on average, run circles around the students that were admitted to Pitt just 20 years ago. The future is bright with these "lazy" future alumni.
And guess what, they don't care if geezers don't like Sweet Caroline either. Guess who started calling the university "Pitt' back in 1908..and adopted the Panther, and wrote Hail to Pitt, wrote the lyrics to the Alma Mater, started the Oakland Zoo, and then shorted Hail to Pitt to "H2P" which is now sold as stickers in the book store. 40- and 50-somethings don't set trends or start traditions (see the many Steve Pederson fails).
Nonetheless, it helps prove my point that many of the people suggesting they are familiar with what goes on in the campus, actually aren't, which is the majority of alumni to be honest. That wasn't directed just at you...but all the individuals stating here and elsewhere (twitter, PG comments, etc)..."we'll I'm around campus all the time and I've never heard that". Well, no, those people are either not regularly around campus or they're not familiar with the recent and current campus culture among the student body. This is a nicknamed used internally among themselves, not externally, by the student body.
I make a point of this because I happen to think keeping tabs on the current student culture is actually one of the important things to watch if you want to understand the university and where it is heading or where it needs to head, and if enacted policies are working, which is why I've tried to keep tabs on it since I left.
Regarding the use of "Cathy", it certainly has been used longer than April 2014. That's just the first Pitt News search result producing a published article that specifically states (in passing) that it is a student nickname that is used for the Cathedral. I can say I was familiar with it sometime before that article. That article suggests, at minimum, it has been around fairly ubiquitously for at least three to four years already...which is why it is sort of mindboggling that it just now is causing a firestorm.
