Is the name of the building owned by Wyoming Catholic College on Main St. between 4th and 5th St. correctly spelled “Auger”, or “Augur”? Being a technical analyst for IIT, I decided not to rest on memory, conjecture, or the opinions of the many, but to determine scientifically and statistically what this building should be called. For this extensive project I called upon my extensive experience as a near lifelong Landerite, interviews with renowned scholars on this topic, extensive statistical analysis performed with the latest techniques on the latest supercomputers, comparative aesthetic intersectionality, and even the latest artificial intelligence scholars to determine an answer, that will be controversial to many, but undeniably shocking if true. And of course, I think it’s true. This is my opinion.

First, I asked a friend what he calls the building. He said “ahh-gerr”. Well, he said it verbally, he didn’t write anything down, so I don’t know how he would spell it. I just spelled what he said the way I was accustomed to write it. This by itself doesn’t distinguish between “Augur” or “Auger” but at least confirms even further I’m my mind the strong belief that either “Augur” or “Auger” are at least plausible predicables of the building in question.

Next, I decided to take a historico-theological route, seeing what Aquinas had to say on this topic. Unfortunately, Aquinas has no articulus directly answering the question “Whether The Secondary Classroom Building of Wyoming Catholic College Should Be Predicated Auger or Augur.” Neither does Aquinas even make an offhand reference to the proper nomenclature in any other of his works. However, I was indirectly able to discern, with the great help of the Aquinas Institute, that Aquinas wrote “Auger” more frequently in his works than he did “Augur”

“Auger” appears 239 times in Aquinas’ writings compared to “Augur” appearing a mere 43 times, meaning that Aquinas inscribed the sound “ahh-gerr” as “Auger” 85% of the time.

Further, Aquinas’ references to this sound where he spells it as “Augur” usually come in sections where he is describing the sin of superstition. At the same time references to “Auger” come in areas where Aquinas is describing “increase.”

Therefore, it is my conclusion, also supported by the little-known writings of St. Martin Aloysious of Canberra, that “Augur”, merely looking at the historico-theological record, is the more orthodox way of inscribing this sound, and, therefore, of naming a building in use by a Catholic college, especially a building that often houses theological studies in particular where one ought to increase in charity, lifting one’s mind and heart up towards God.

Next, I decided to interview a few modern experts on this topic, Big Chuck, a freshman at WCC, and Steve Gilson, a marketing consultant for the college.

Chuck, drawing on his extensive time at WCC over the last few months, disagreed with even calling the building by the sound “ahh-gerr.” He preferred to call the building the “Schmooz on a Couch Theatre”, a name that highly confused me, but that I took as merely the raving mutterings of an unenlightened young student.

Gilson, however, sounded at first like he was going to answer my question. He said he had strong thoughts and lots of historical evidence to back these up about what the traditional name for the building was. But first, Steve, told me, how did I feel about making a tax-deductable donation to the college to pay for the cost of digging up all this evidence?

Being a poor recent college graduate I declined, and decided to turn to online evidence because most of this is “free.”

The Wyoming Catholic College website mostly spells this building’s name as “Augur”. However, local reliable news source County10 briefly outlined the history of the building, built on the site of a former U.S. Military Fort in the 19th Century, under the name of “Auger”, as it was named after Brigadier General Christopher C. Auger.

Given that these two sources were in conflict, I decided to trust neither, as the truth often changes, and WyomingCatholic.edu is not always known for keeping up with it (especially in the case of their “Downtown Campus” page).

Instead, I looked through references to this building in all email communications by school officials since the building’s acquisition by the college in 2017. These, were, interestingly split in the exact opposite manner as Aquinas’ references. WCC officials call the building “Augur” 85% of the time and “Auger” 15% of the time. But again, I could come to know perfectly trustworthy conclusion from this as the data was not sufficient to give a p-value below the typical alpha of 0.05.

So, I was forced to move on again in my relentless search for the truth of WCC building nomenclature, this time to OpenAi’s ChatGPT artificial intelligence program:

ChatGPT refused to respond, proving even more in my mind the theory I heard from a Greek Orthodox icon-maker who appeared on Jordan Peterson’s podcast several weeks ago that ChatGPT is itself the antichrist.

However, a spiritual director advised me that it was safe to try again with the program for the specific case of answering this pressing spelling question. So I tried again.

ChatGPT gave insight on the distinction between “Auger” by itself and “Augur” by itself, but again refused to come to a conclusion when asked for greater clarity:

Next, again coming up short from this tack of analysis, I decided as a last resort, to walk to the building itself, aiming to see if it bore a naming inscription in its very structure.

And, well, the building has this plaque:

Well, I guess maybe “Augur” is the proper name for the building, because it was built on the site of Ft. Augur. But, this now confused me even more, because, even more recently than Ft. Augur, there was a Ft. Brown on this site. Which in my mind means that the building should be called the Brown Building rather than the Augur Building.

So, again, no conclusive evidence as to the current structure again. The plaque is just naming something that was on this location not what is on this location now.

And, so, to my last, last resort. I asked another freshman how to spell the name of this building.

“Augir,” she wrote on the whiteboard.

And, because I’m too tired right now to do real scientific analysis, that, I guess, is where this analysis stops.

Call the building “Augir”, because everyone else disagrees, and this bold new perspective on the spelling is what our country needs to break free of the restrictive left-right, republican-democrat binary and move forward in a new direction towards greater enlightenment and…

Wait, why is this sounding like a pitch for the Libertarian Party?