By Michael Amado 

If you are a student at the University of Saint Mary, you have most likely questioned the school’s mascot. We identify ourselves as the “Saint Mary Spires,” led by a navy blue and yellow dragon who goes by the name of Spiro. He is an unusual mascot that has no correlation to an animal or historical figure. How does this relate to Spires? Technically, according to dictionary.com, a spire is a “tall, acutely pointed pyramidal roof or roof like construction upon a tower, roof, etc.” The idea came from European influence as architects started using a spire in religious and fancy buildings. When settlers made the voyage across the sea, so did their ideas of what buildings should look like. Spires are usually constructed on top of religious buildings as a form of “touching the sky”. 

There are several types of spires: conical stone, masonry, openwork, complex, clad, pyramidal, broach and bell-shaped spires. Our campus has a beautiful, all-seeing spire on top of the Saint Mary building. At noon and 6:00pm, the bell in the tower will go off for one minute, therefore we have a bell-shaped spire. When Saint Mary was being built, I can almost guarantee the idea of having a spire was in the blueprints. After all, this is a Catholic based school. Next time you take a stroll around campus, take a small glance at our bell-shaped spire, it does not fall short of amazing.  

Michael Amado is a senior at the University of Saint Mary studying Digital Communications.