What happens when you coax random fourth-year students to sit for impromptu interviews a few weeks before Final Exercises? You get amazing stories about their times at UVA, including happiness and hardship. In this first installment of “Every Hoo Has a Story,” Dylan Moore confesses his secret identity. (UVA Communications photo)
Dylan Moore has led the kind of double life you might expect more from a Marvel Universe movie hero than a mechanical engineering major.
At the University of Virginia, a place where secret societies sometimes traipse the dewy Lawn under the cover of darkness, Moore has kept confidential his clandestine duty.
“I’ve had the pleasure of being our mascot, Cavman, the last few years,” Moore said.
UVA Today uncovered this subterfuge on the Lawn recently. Ahead of graduation, we unfolded a pair of director’s chairs on the same grass these fourth-year Hoos will soon tread in cap and gown. And then we randomly coaxed some of them to sit for interviews.
This idea is loosely borrowed from the CBS News series, “Everybody Has a Story,” where reporter Steve Hartman profiled random people he met in America. For our purposes, we confined it to random people we met on the Lawn.
Moore was one of the students we goaded into talking. The timing was fortuitous because, with his diploma in reach, he’s finally allowed to reveal his alter ego.
“It’s a fun layer of secrecy to it all,” Moore said. “That’s been part of the fun to be out there, to be in the spotlight at a basketball game, but nobody knows it’s you.”
Of course, there is so much pep to spread in Wahoo world that several students share Cavman duties throughout the year. Moore is just one of them. But like him, all keep their roles on the down low until they’re on the verge of Final Exercises.
For Moore, being Cavman offered a much-needed respite from the rigors of engineering classes.
“It’s just such a polar opposite thing from my time doing engineering that it’s like a great counterbalance in my life.”
November 24, 2024
